Author Archives: Ron Lipsman

Obama: Please Shut Up Again!

There was a period about ten months ago when every time Obama opened his mouth, the stock market plunged another 100 points. At that time, the Anointed One rarely missed an opportunity to trash the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, automobile companies and of course big banks. When he wasn’t verbally accosting these industries, he was promising sweeping new legislation and regulations that would supposedly rein them in and curtail their abusive practices.

Not surprisingly, the market reacted very negatively to these threats—both to the specific prospects inherent in Obama’s threats as well as to the uncertainty caused by their enunciation. Untold hundreds of millions of dollars of asset wealth were destroyed by the resultant decline in the Dow and other indices.

Since more than half of Americans are now shareholders, it is not unfair to lay the blame for a decline in the typical American taxpayer’s wealth at Obama’s feet. It is ironic that, last year, when too many Americans were still under the illusion that Obama’s stimulus program, deficit spending and cap and trade and health care monstrosities were going to help rescue the economy (they aren’t any longer), his loose tongue was already diminishing the wealth of the American people. It got so bad that even Bill Clinton had to tell him to button it.

Well, here we go again. This past week his Excellency reprised his repeated thrashing of the banking and insurance industries. With the same result on the stock market! Now, many expected that the recent market surge would yield to a correction. Leave it to our clueless President to initiate the correction and render it more severe than necessary. It’s time for Bill to tell him to shut up again.

This is what we get for electing an ignorant community organizer with no expertise in running a newsstand, much less a country. Republicans might be happy that his Presidency is going up in flames, but that brings scant comfort to those whose wealth he is shrinking. As for the Democrats, if I may quote Monty Pelerin in a blog in the Jan 23 issue of this magazine: The only happy Democrat today is Jimmy Carter. He probably senses the chance to pass his heavy mantle of ‘worst President in my lifetime’ on to ‘The One.’
This piece also appeared on the American Thinker blog site on Jan 24, 2010. (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/obamas_bank_bashing_killing_we.html)

A Flight of Fantasy: What Conservatives Should Do When They Regain Power

I first conceived of the idea for this article in the spring of 2009. At that time the thought of conservatives in power again in the US really did require a flight of fantasy. But since then, the arrogance, duplicity and recklessness of the Obama-Reid-Pelosi gang has caused many Americans to conclude that entrusting the fate of the country to this radical triumvirate was a huge mistake. If the polls continue their current trend, we might yet see a Republican Congress and/or a Republican President before the year 2012 is out. So perhaps the flight I am about to take the reader on is not really that fanciful; nevertheless, the title is catchy and so I did not alter it.

Now conservatives can come to power in one of two modes. One mode would be as it was with Reagan and with Gingrich—i.e., a strong, yet limited mandate. For example, Reagan ran and was elected as a staunch conservative, but he never enjoyed a conservative Congress, even in the Senate where the Republicans had a majority. Similarly, Newt and his band of followers in the House enunciated a strongly conservative platform of governance; but he was easily checked by a liberal President and the remaining liberal members of Congress. Still, Reagan and Gingrich did have some signature successes. If nothing else, they substantially slowed the inexorable march to the Left that the US has been on during the last century. And if conservatives come to power in this mode again, they need to prepare now in order to make better use of the opportunity than either Reagan or Newt did.

But there is a second mode in which conservatives could achieve power. That would be with a vigorous, sustained and clear mandate to return these United States to a truly conservative political, economic and cultural system of the type that characterized the nation during its first 125 years of independence. This would be heralded by a smashing conservative electoral victory, which installs a strongly conservative President and a very conservative Congress, and then a repeat of the process multiple times for at least a decade or two (comparable to what the liberals enjoyed in 1932-1952, albeit of course in the opposite direction).

Now that’s a flight of fantasy. Or perhaps not! Given the horrendous mess that Obama and his liberal minions are making, there are signs that the American people might finally be coming to their senses. An increasing number realize that the utopian dream of fairness and equality (of misery) toward which the liberals have been driving us for a century is in actuality a gigantic nightmare that will destroy the American way of life. Perhaps the people will be ready shortly to throw the bums out, abandon statism and start over. If so, conservatives must be ready to lead that counter-revolution. I will lay out a grand program for doing so in a future article. Here, I will concentrate on a simpler program that will be suitable if, as is more likely, conservatives come to power in a more limited mode.

Polls and pundits continue to assert that the US has been and remains a center-right country. I am not so sure. In the 110 years since 1900 we have had 19 Presidents—eleven Republicans and eight Democrats. The Democratic Presidents have ranged (in philosophy) from moderately liberal (Kennedy) to ultra-leftist (Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Obama) with the average far closer to the extreme left than the moderate center. The Republican Presidents, on the other hand, varied from center-leftish (Teddy, Hoover, Nixon and the Bushes) to strongly right (Coolidge, Reagan) with the average definitely closer to the center than the right. This does not strike me as strong evidence of our country’s supposed center-right orientation. In fact, in the last 80 years—during which time we have experienced the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society and Obamania—there have been only two strong surges to the right: the election of Reagan and the Republican takeover of Congress led by Gingrich. Newt’s surge fizzled in a haze of faux conservatism wherein the ensuing Republican President and Congresses engaged in a spending frenzy and social engineering worthy of their liberal nemeses. Reagan had more success—especially in foreign affairs (victory in the Cold War) and economic matters (more than 20 years of economic growth and prosperity). Newt’s Contract with America was too grandiose, broad and generic. Reagan, on the other hand, had three clear and focused objectives:

  1. Cut taxes and pursue deregulation in order to jump start the economy.
  2. Defeat the Soviet Union and win the Cold War.
  3. Shrink the government and return it to its proper role as servant, not master, of the people.

Reagan succeeded magnificently in achieving objectives (1) and (2), but he failed spectacularly with (3). Well, two of three is not bad. And his rate of success easily exceeded that of Gingrich, whose agenda was less focused. Therefore, when conservatives return to power, presumably in limited mode, they must be ready to pursue, like Reagan, a short list of clearly defined major goals. And conservatives must stick to them, even though there will be scads of other worthy things they will want to do. But if they attempt too much, they will accomplish, a là Newt, relatively little. So, here are three specific goals that I suggest be the main objectives when our turn comes again—hopefully soon:

  1. Role of Government. Shrink the New Deal/Great Society/Obamania-inspired gargantuan government that is choking freedom out of American life.
  2. Defeat Islamic Fundamentalism. Reduce, and hopefully remove the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to the US, to the West, indeed to the World.
  3. Recapture the culture. Initiate a multi-faceted approach toward rescuing the culture of the US. The basic goal is to restore (a reasonable facsimile) of the traditional culture that permeated American life from the 18th to the 20th century. Start on the long path toward delegitimizing the pornographic, anti-family, anti-religious, egalitarian, multicultural, environmentally wacky, anti-achievement, socialistic cesspool that passes for culture in America today.

Let me elaborate somewhat on each of these.

1. Shrink the government. This objective is identical to Reagan’s unfulfilled third. The need is even greater now than it was 30 years ago. There is virtually no area of American life into which the federal government has not inserted itself. It ranges from the picayune (how many gallons our toilets may flush, which direction our small children may face in our automobiles) to the serious (what we may eat, where we may build our houses, whether we can be promoted at work, where our children may go to school) to the tyrannical (controlling our health care, imposing crippling taxes and regulations on our industry, taking our property on an unconstitutional whim). In many ways, the US government today oppresses Americans to a greater extent than King George’s Britain did in the mid/late eighteenth century. To make matters worse, our government leavens its tyrannical behavior with incompetence. It continues to expand entitlement programs that are on the cusp of bankrupting the country; it increases the national debt to levels guaranteed to impoverish our children and grandchildren; and it refuses to identify clearly and fight resolutely the Islamic fundamentalists (foreign and domestic) who have declared war on us.

The task seems herculean, especially in light of two enormous obstacles. First, the entire education establishment (from kindergarten through graduate school), aided by the media and other leftist-dominated, opinion-forming organs of society, has brainwashed too many Americans into thinking that the government is actually performing its assigned role properly and that in fact it is not doing enough. Second, the liberals have arranged it so that an ever increasing portion of the populace is dependent on the government—for direct payments, jobs, contracts, grants and various ‘benefits.’ Such people may recognize the threat that the government has become, but they resist any change for fear of jeopardizing their own welfare.

Shrinking the government is indeed a tall order as Reagan’s inability to manage it substantiates. But there are things a conservative government could do; for example: eliminate the most egregiously wasteful programs, reduce the budget of every federal agency by at least 20%, close at least one cabinet level department (Education, Energy and Labor would be my first choices), re-energize the deregulation  process started by Reagan, and of course cut taxes and spending in general. There is infinitely more that could be done, but that would require the second mode of power. Even in the limited mode, I believe the country would support an effort to shrink the leviathan and move toward restoring the government to the more modest role intended by the Founders.

2. Defeat Islamic Fundamentalism. This objective is of course analogous to Reagan’s second. It is worth recalling that the United States (under Wilson) led the West in the defeat of the German-Austrian-Ottoman alliance—although historians have begun to doubt the worthiness of that effort. On the other hand, there is no question as to the moral correctness or necessity of the effort led by the United States and Britain (under FDR and Churchill) to rid the world of German-Italian-Japanese fascism. Similarly, the effort sparked by Reagan (aided by Thatcher and Pope John Paul II) to dispatch communism to the ash heap of history was a monumental achievement of the Western World. Much as we wish that these sorts of challenges would stop coming our way, the US and the West are confronted once again by an ideological enemy bent on our destruction. The next conservative government must strive to defuse this threat as well.

The hardest part of this effort will be deciding to do it. The detailed plans will be drawn of course by those who will implement them, but it seems to me that at a minimum those plans must include:

  • No more pussyfooting around the identification of the enemy—rather a clear pronouncement that radical Islam, together with the countries that harbor and promote it, is indeed the enemy. Unfortunately, we must also recognize that this pernicious movement enjoys wide support in the Muslim world.
  • Dealing with Iran, whether or not it has become nuclear—presuming that the Mullahs have not been done in by the locals before then.
  • Dealing with Saudi Arabia, the seedbed of Wahhabism and therefore the font of much of the philosophy that motivates the enemy.
  • Helping Europe to deal with its large but undigested Muslim population. Those that pledge allegiance to radical Islam and refuse to be assimilated should be deported; and Muslim immigration must be drastically curtailed.
  • Ditto with our Muslim population.
  • Developing strategies to help bring the non-radical part of the Muslim world into the 21st century.

3. Recapture the culture. There is no analog to any of Reagan’s objectives here. Certainly Reagan recognized the dreadful effect that the liberals’ capture of the culture was having on the nation. But I think he didn’t see it as a political problem, at least not one he could address in a fundamental way. (He did on rare occasions though; e.g., in his ‘farewell’ speech, when he talked about a re-emphasis on the study of American history by the nation’s youth.) Well, not only should the culture be seriously addressed by a new conservative government, but in fact, I believe this objective to be the most important of the three. I (and others) have spoken often of the slowly developing, deadly scheme by which the Left captured the culture of our nation. (See e.g., http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/05/17/what-culture-is-it-that-the-politics-have-caught-up-with/) The theory was that ‘the politics would follow the culture’ and that is precisely what has happened. Therefore, I believe it is impossible for conservatives to permanently regain political supremacy unless they first recapture the culture. This must be one of the fundamental objectives of any future conservative government.

Once again, those who actually do it will set the agenda, but that agenda should certainly incorporate the ideas expressed in another of my IC articles (http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/04/10/different-visions/), to wit: ‘We need to have conservative philosophers and cultural icons that state the case for and epitomize the worth of traditional Western culture. More mundanely, we need to nurture conservative film makers, fund conservative law schools, build conservative foundations (like Heritage, but more of them), defend and expand talk radio, establish conservative newspapers (like the Washington Times, but more of them), concoct an organization to counter the NEA in the minds of the country’s teachers, abandon the mainline churches and support religious institutions that champion traditional values…’ I would augment those ideas with the need to: develop major conservative media outlets (beyond Fox News) to combat the big three networks; aggressively attack the liberal mindset that dominates higher education; and finally demand that our founding documents (the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers) be studied regularly by all members of society—adults as well as children.

 

Hopefully, a conservative recapture of the culture will not take a century—as the successful liberal assault did. A conservative renaissance in limited mode will allow us to get started. If the miracle of a strong mode occurs, we can surely get it done in a matter of decades. The politics will follow and then my grandchildren will not have to worry—as I do—about whether their grandchildren will live in a free and prosperous United States of America.

George Gilder’s Israel Test: Who Passes? Who Fails?

In his remarkably philo-semitic book, ‘The Israel Test,’ George Gilder poses a short series of moral questions—addressed to both individuals and to nations—the answers to which determine on which side the respondent falls in the ongoing struggle for the political, economic and cultural soul of the world’s people. Mr. Gilder’s dramatic thesis is stated forcefully and clearly in the opening paragraphs of his book, which I quote in part:

The central issue in international politics… is the tiny state of Israel. The prime issue is not a global war of civilizations between the West and Islam…The real issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous ‘fairness,’ between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it.

Israel defines a line of demarcation. On one side…are those who see capitalism as a zero-sum game in which success comes at the expense of the poor…On the other side are those who see the genius and good fortune of some as a source of wealth and opportunity for all.

The test can be summarized by a few questions: What is your attitude toward people who excel you in the creation of wealth or in other accomplishment? Do you aspire to their excellence, or do you seethe at it? Do you admire and celebrate exceptional achievement, or do you impugn it and seek to tear it down? Caroline Glick…sums it up: ‘Some people admire success; some people envy it. The enviers hate Israel.’

Today tiny Israel… stands behind only the United States in technological contributions. In per-capita innovation, Israel dwarfs all nations.

As if the anti-Semites of the world needed another reason to hate the Jews. Gilder has not only highlighted two of the most historic causes of Jew hatred, but he has wrapped them in a brilliantly colored package, which, on the one hand, explains much of the vilification of Israel that occurs today and, on the other, will surely attract more hatred in their direction. To explain, let me quickly recall a (probably incomplete) list of seven main reasons for anti-Semitism. The first four of the following are couched in terms an anti-Semite might use.

1. The arrogance of the ‘chosen people.’ That this tiny, in some ways wretched band of people would declare themselves the chosen people of God, entrusted with His mission of redeeming humanity, and then flaunt their arrogance by holding themselves above all mankind in their perverted pursuit of that goal is insulting, contemptible and incendiary. Small wonder that their haughtiness has earned them the enmity of most of humanity.

2. Ethical monotheism. As inventors of a demanding morality (embodied in the Ten Commandments) and by their continued promulgation of their God’s moral law, they render uncomfortable those, and they are many, who would prefer not to be bound by the standards of the Jewish God’s law.

3. Refusal to accept Christ. They spurned the true Messiah when he appeared on Earth and their continued existence is an affront to the Christian religion, which superseded the original mandate the Jews received from God.

4. Infidels. They rejected Mohammed and they epitomize the infidels of the world who stand in the way of a world-wide caliphate and the global reign of Islam.

5. Generally obnoxious. I am not engaging in self-hatred here, yet I think that it is not incorrect to assert that no other ethnic group has any leg up on the Jews in the category of ‘behaving obnoxiously.’

6. Money grubbers. With their seemingly natural affinity for commerce, the Jews of the world in their roles as bankers, investors, entrepreneurs, accountants and businessmen have proven repeatedly that their ability to accumulate wealth—sometimes deemed at the expense of others—far exceeds that of any other ethnic group, which thereby engenders the envy and resentment of their Gentile neighbors.

7. Unnatural success. Envy and resentment of the Jews is not restricted to their role in commerce. In the arts, sciences, technology, politics, law and even war (at times), the achievements of this tiny tribe is so far above the median that it causes wonder and amazement. The ensuing reaction of many is more than envy and resentment. It encompasses a belief that the Jews must be lying, cheating and stealing from the Gentiles—behavior that merits punishment and retribution.

It is the last two reasons that Gilder has highlighted and conjoined. How? Well, in the last two decades Israel has performed a sharp about-face in regard to its fundamental economic philosophy. Its founders a century ago were hard core socialists and the Labor Party that unilaterally ruled the nation (from pre-State days until 30 years ago) was representative of that mentality. From Labor’s fall in 1977, it took more than 15 years for the nation to overcome its economic blindness. But beginning in the last decade of the 20th century, Israel finally unleashed the entrepreneurial power of its highly educated and creative citizenry. The Zionists became capitalists.

The long delay in the arrival of that transformation is ironic, for as Gilder points out, ‘The great irony of Israel is that for much of its short history it has failed the Israel test. It has been a reactionary force, upholding the same philosophy of victimization and Socialist redistribution that has been a leading enemy and obstacle for Jewish accomplishment throughout the ages. As a Jewish country, Israel should have arisen rapidly after the war as a center of Jewish achievement. Instead, its leftist assumptions actually inclined it toward the Soviet model…Until the 1990s, Jews could succeed far more readily in the United States than in Israel. The Israel test gauges the freedom and equality of opportunity in a country by the success of Jews there. By this Israel test, the United States was far freer and more favorable to creativity and excellence, and thus to Jewish achievement, than the state of Israel itself.’

But the Jews of Israel have more than made up for the lost time, as the closing paragraph of the opening quote from Gilder makes clear. (The actual statistics are on p. 109 in his book.) To reiterate, in terms of technological innovation, Israel ranks ahead of all the nations of Western Europe, ahead of all the Asian tigers, behind only the US. And that is only in absolute terms; per capita, Israel’s entrepreneurial productivity dwarfs that of any other country. ‘Wonder and amazement!’

Thus it is clear how Gilder has folded together items 6 and 7. The Jews are ‘guilty’ not only of an abnormal ability to handle money and of achievements way beyond the norm, but the two come together in an explosion of capitalistic entrepreneurship in the small desert nation. Swell! The Jewish nation is now a model of free market capitalism. One of the prime reasons that too many of the world’s people loathe the United States—and for which it is indeed lustily despised—is its grand success as the greatest capitalistic nation in the history of the world. Israel now joins the US as a second exemplar of democratic capitalism. As I said, the world did not have enough reasons to hate Israel. Now it has a ‘new one.’ But note: the first four reasons for anti-Semitism that I cited are special to the Jewish people. (Some would say, ‘So is the fifth.’) On the other hand, the amalgam of 6 and 7 that Gilder has identified is now intimately tied to the United States.

According to Gilder, all those who hate Israel—and the US, for that matter—because of their economic success are flunking the Israel test. Incapable of celebrating the exceptional achievements of a small nation, they seethe at Israel’s accomplishments. Rather than emulating Israel’s methods, they impugn Israel’s motives and seek to blame the poverty of Israel’s Arab neighbors on the Jewish nation’s economic prowess. They hurl the epithet ‘Nazi’ at Israel, even if they are aware of the obscenity that such an accusation represents.

But make no mistake. The hatred of Israel extends to an equally virulent hatred of America. In the words of Iran’s Mullahs, the USA is the ‘Great Satan’ and Israel is the ‘Little Satan’; both must be eradicated. Well the Mullahs are certainly one of the Israel-haters referred to above. Who are the others? That is, let us examine who has passed the Israel test and who has failed it. First, I’ll discuss those who receive a passing grade—a pathetically short list, actually. It includes the United States, a few other nations in the Western Hemisphere, a small group of European countries, and a very limited number of Asian and South Pacific states. I have purposefully not identified the specific countries that pass the Israel test (beside the US) for the following reason. It is a highly subjective exercise and I venture that the list’s contents would depend heavily on who is compiling it. For example, Canada is on the list, but is Mexico? Poland makes the cut; sadly Britain probably does not; what about Germany? Regardless of who compiles the list, it is guaranteed to be short.

Fifty years ago the list was much longer. However, the Israel test was also much easier to pass then. Israel was a socialist country, the world was restrained by the shame of the recent Holocaust, and the tiny Jewish nation was still cast as the underdog in its battle to survive in the Middle East. But the Six-Day War in 1967 removed the underdog status; the check that the memory of the Holocaust exerts has weakened substantially; and Israel has cashed in socialism for capitalism. The list of those who pass the test has shrunk dramatically. Former friends like France vanished from the list long ago. Other Western European and South American nations have followed suit in recent years.

Now who has failed the test? Above all, the Muslim world. With the exception of Turkey—and it seems to be reassessing its stand lately—the unremitting hostility toward Israel from the Muslim world is nearly universal, not to mention fierce and grotesque. The next group of failures includes all the left-leaning socialist and semi-socialist countries of the world. Outside the Soviet bloc, that group was relatively small and declining during and after the Reagan era. But in recent times, it has expanded dramatically and all those who have fallen into the leftist mode are now chalking up failing grades on the Israel test. Then there are the third and fourth world basket cases throughout Africa and Asia. The fact that they extort foreign aid from the US and Israel does not prevent them from falling in line behind the previous two groups in their condemnations of Israel. That doesn’t leave many countries left on the map. In summary, aside from the US and a few other friendly countries, the vast majority of the world’s nations earn failing grades on the Israel test.

Here is a really sad postscript to the previous observations. Even within the countries that pass the test, there are substantial segments of the population that fail individually (or in groups). This is even true of the United States. For heaven’s sake, the President of the United States gets a resounding failing mark on the test. And finally, painful as it is to admit, one must acknowledge that a not insignificant part of the Israeli public—largely left over from the Halcyon days of Labor rule—flunks the test.

Let me be close by stating more forcefully what is implicit in much of the above and very explicit in Gilder’s thesis. Namely, Israel is the canary in the coal mine of Western Civilization. In some ways at the moment, the prognosis for the canary is better than that for the mine. That is an audacious assertion, not easily or quickly justified. Therefore, for lack of space, I must refer the reader to my article, ‘Broken Deals: Violating the Commandments, Abrogating the Constitution’ (http://new.ronlipsman.com/2009/12/14/broken-deals-violating-the-commandments-abrogating-the-constitution/), which fleshes out the claim. Here, in its furtherance, I will also note the following. Benjamin Netanyahu, who as Prime Minister of Israel in the 90s and Finance Minister in the early part of this century, gets the lion’s share of the credit for altering Israel’s economic path, has set an astounding new challenge for his nation. One of the gravest crises confronting the US, Israel and what’s left of Western Civilization is the overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels. While Barack Obama leads the US down the blind alley of climate change through ‘cap and trade,’ Netanyahu has challenged the scientists, technicians and entrepreneurs of his country to really solve the problem. This seems almost laughable. How can tiny Israel meet this monumental challenge? Whether it can or not, the fact that it will try is a testament to the role that Israel plays in the world today. And of course that effort will only increase the size of the lightning rod that Israel has become for the flunkees of the Israel test.

If Western Europe continues to decay and if the US succumbs to the socialists who are currently running our country, then it is legitimate to ask: What comes next? Who will be the world’s top dog? China? Russia? India? An Islamic caliphate? The answer to that question is only partly clear. Russia and the Muslim world flunk the Israel test hands down. If Gilder is right, neither will be top dog of anything. What about China or India? In some sense both are still sitting for the test. Their—and our—fates await the outcome.

_____
This article appeared originally in The American Thinker (www.americanthinker.com) on Jan 3, 2010.

Broken Deals: Violating the Commandments, Abrogating the Constitution

I happen to be a member of two communities, inside each of which a majority of the members is in the process of abandoning the fundamental agreement that established the community. I am speaking about the Jewish people and the United States of America. In the first case, the deal was struck more than three thousand years ago; in the latter, a mere two and one quarter centuries have passed since the bargain was made. My purpose here is: to briefly describe the deals, who made them and how they were ratified; then to present some evidence to establish that indeed they are being broken; and finally, to compare the two processes of revocation in order to uncover both the similarities and differences between them. The latter comparison will lead me to some speculative thoughts on the consequences these broken deals might have in the future.

The deal that set the Jewish people off on their at times majestic, at times horrific journey through history was struck in the Sinai after the Exodus from Egypt. The deal was between a ragtag bunch of homeless tribes unified in their belief in a single God and that God. The people promised that they would lead a holy life, chiefly by complying with a set of complicated, onerous and in some ways incomprehensible laws that He ordained for them. In return, He would make them a mighty nation whose example would lead all the peoples of the world to accept God’s reign under which humanity would know peace and harmony. It is not unreasonable to view the Jewish people’s willingness to endure 40 years in the desert without losing their faith and the resulting successful conquest of Canaan as the ratification of the deal by both parties. But God’s promise has not been fulfilled. Many Jews would argue that that is because the Jews have not kept their part of the bargain.

The deal that established the USA is more recent and more concrete. It is laid out clearly in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The parties to the deal were the American people, that is, the Yanks of the late eighteenth century made the deal with themselves. Of course, like the Jewish deal, it obligated the descendants of the original deal-makers to adhere to the terms. And like the deal the Jews made with God, the terms of the deal the American patriots made with themselves are not hard to state. Briefly, in exchange for establishing a system of government characterized by: clearly delineated limited powers, entrusted to distinct branches of government, subject to checks and balances between the branches and between the federal and state governments, and capable of modification only by an elaborate process that required the support of the great majority of the people; in return, the people would enjoy individual liberty, clearly enunciated rights and freedoms, equal opportunity to achieve prosperity and a civil society upon which the government and its members would not tread. The deal was ratified by the thirteen colonies and the American people largely lived up to the bargain for more than a century. But in the last hundred years, the deal has been slowly unraveling.

That both deals are in a poor state of repair is self-evident. First, the percentage of world Jewry that adheres to the laws God set down for them is very low—certainly no more than 10%. Moreover, one probably has to go back to the nineteenth century to discover a time when that percentage was significantly higher. God hasn’t been doing such a great job holding up his end either. It is only two thirds of a century since he allowed one third of his partners to be ruthlessly butchered. Yes, the State of Israel was born and American Jewry enjoys great freedom to pursue its Jewish culture and traditions. But ‘a mighty nation leading the world to peace and harmony.’ I think not. The world-wide animosity toward Israel and the Jewish people is as deep and wide as at any time in recent centuries.

Sad to say, the American deal is not in great shape either. Let me review: limited government—hardly; checks and balances—Congress has relinquished its power to declare war, the executive violates the Bill of Rights with impunity, and the Courts usurp the powers of both the executive and legislative branches with abandon; a federal system with sovereignty shared by the national and state governments—that would be news to the States; and finally, both the government and the people ignore the Constitution as if it were a dusty old family document in the attic that invokes fond memories but has little relevance to life today. As a consequence, our freedoms are eroding, our prosperity is at risk, group rights are eclipsing individual liberty and society is not so civil any longer.

Well, you might say, this is very interesting, but what do the two phenomena have to do with one another? The answer will emerge from a close examination of where the two processes resemble each other, and where they differ.

First, the processes of severing their seminal agreements—which is being perpetrated by Jews and Yanks—are alike in at least four main ways:

1. Double deals. The Jews concluded their deal with God, but certainly the deal was also with themselves and with their posterity. The 12 tribes might have been unified in their monotheistic belief, but they also had separate identities and they saw the deal as a mutual obligation. Furthermore, it goes without saying that they expected their progeny to maintain the agreement.

Similarly, although the Yanks of 1775-1787 were binding themselves to a specific form of government and organization of society, they saw themselves as fulfilling a holy vision, and in particular they believed that their success in the Revolutionary War could not have been achieved without the benevolent hand of Divine Providence. The writings of the Founding Fathers are well-stocked with references to America as the new Jerusalem and the American people as the new Israelites. They definitely saw God as a party to the deal. And like the ancient Israelites, they expected that their descendants would live up to the agreement.

So in both cases, the deal breakers are betraying themselves, their God and their children.

2. Not a recent phenomenon. The cracks in both deals have been evident for a very long time. The Jews were fashioning golden calves almost from the beginning. The spies Moses sent to scout the land of Canaan doubted God’s ability to keep His promise. Indeed, Jewish history is overflowing with examples of both parties violating their obligations under the Sinai agreement. It’s a wonder that the parties still pay any homage to the agreement at all. (More on that later.)

As for the Yanks, I and others have repeatedly written about how the origins of the unraveling of the American experiment in self-government trace to the socialist ideas imported from Europe in the late nineteenth century. I won’t repeat the litany here, but let me just mention again that from John Dewey’s idea of ‘free’ public education intended to capture the minds of American youth, to Wilson and the 16th and 17th Amendments, to Roosevelt’s New Deal (note the choice of noun), to Johnson’s Great Society, to our current Messiah, we have seen a more or less steady drift of American society away from the ideals bequeathed to us by the Founders.

3. Remaining remnant. Neither revocation is complete. There exist ardent adherents in both communities who remain faithful to the terms of the deal as fervently as their forefathers were at the inception. Their percentage might be small, but they are deeply committed.

4. Failure to recognize. In both revocations, the descendants of the original deal-makers, who are throwing the agreement out, are either blind or naïve. Either they are unaware of what they are doing, i.e., they are truly ignorant of their obligations under their ancestors’ agreement. Or they believe that the course they are pursuing—which is in direct violation of their obligation—will actually improve on the deal, and that the radical changes they intend are consistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of the  agreement. Thus, one has Jews who see the pursuit of ‘social justice’ superseding religious obligation; moreover, they pronounce that such a pursuit is in fact a fulfillment of the deal at Sinai. Similarly, there are Americans who do not accept that their statist philosophy is a perversion of the founding agreement, but instead see it as consistent with the Founders’ Constitution—and even if not, it will yield a more just society than living under the Constitution has.

Next, let’s consider the key differences. I will highlight three.

1. Size. This is obvious. There are three hundred million Americans and perhaps as many as 14-15 million Jews in the world. The proportion is no better if instead one considers the size of only the remaining remnants. It’s hard to say in either case exactly what the size of the remnant is. But I venture that no more than 2-3 million Jews see themselves as bound by the deal at Sinai, while there might be as many as 60-75 million Americans who believe that the US should continue to be governed according to the principles of our founding documents. This would suggest that the latter (i.e., the remnant Americans) have a better chance of reinstating their deal than do the former (remnant Jews). But let’s see.

2. Dispensation. What I am after here is an understanding of ‘what comes after’ should the deal be totally forsaken. In fact, as with the matter of size, this issue appears to be transparent. Should the end of the ConstitutionalRepublic that is the USA come about, there will be no great Gotterdammerung. Our country will simply morph into a clone of a Euro-socialist state, as Canada has. Gradually, the memory of American exceptionalism will fade away and the people of the USA, or should I say the servants of the US Government, will live their lives unaware of what they have surrendered. Still, there are many unknowns. Will China come to dominate the world? What about India? Or will the Islamic fundamentalists succeed in creating a world-wide Caliphate? Whatever happens, the best we could hope for America is a continued existence as a second-rate power with scarcely a trace of the creative drive and prosperity that was fueled by the unparalleled freedoms we enjoyed in the past.

The fate of the Jewish people, should they totally renege on their deal, is easier to describe—oblivion. From the end of the Second World War until now (roughly two thirds of a century) the Jewish population of the world has increased by at most 25%, and probably less. Most of that increase can be attributed to the remaining remnant. If there will be no remnant, there will eventually be no Jewish people. If the maniacs in Iran and/or the Arab world manage to defeat Israel, the end might come very swiftly.

So while neither fate is particularly appetizing, one is much harsher than the other—extinction versus a radical change in the nature of the organism, but not its destruction.

3. Survival. Now I am thinking about what might happen should there continue to be a strong remnant, but its percentage does not rise significantly from its current state. Here my projection might surprise the reader. In fact, unlike #2, the advantage is to the Jews over the Americans. The Jewish people have proven, over a history whose length exceeds ten times that of the Americans, that their ability to survive—even the most horrendous circumstances (Shoahs, expulsions, pogroms and the like)—is unequaled by any group in history. I have absolutely no doubt that even a small group of Jews, if committed to the ideals of their forefathers, could survive—perhaps for another few millennia.

I am less sanguine about the survivability of the AmericanRepublic. We are perilously close to changing the fundamental nature of the nation. In a majority rule country like ours, should a sufficient percentage of the citizenry decide that it wants to make a completely new deal, there will be little the surviving remnant will be able to do save leave.

So let me conclude with a speculative glimpse into the future of both communities. As I said, time has proven that the power of the ideas put forth at Sinai is sufficient to guarantee the continued existence of a critical remnant of Jewry, committed to upholding the deal. Even if—God forbid—Israel and America should fold, that remnant will continue, likely in South America or Australia, perhaps even in corners of North America or Europe. Even if the light from the star that the Jewish people represent in the firmament of the world might dim, it’s not going out. Nevertheless, that does not excuse the Jewish people—all of them, not just the remnant—from its responsibility to do everything it can to ensure that the star continues to shine brightly. Unfortunately, as I have shown in two recent articles (http://www.freeman.org/MOL/pages/july2009/are-american-jews-the-most-foolish-voters-in-the-united-states.php and http://www.freeman.org/MOL/pages/sept2009/are-american-jews-the-most-foolish-voters-in-the-united-states–ii.php), the American Jewish community has not been doing such a good job discharging that responsibility. If the star dims, the percentage of the Jewish people that the remnant constitutes could grow—and then the ‘foolishness’ might cease.

As for the American deal, I fear that the vectors are pointing in the wrong direction. If I may quote from a previous article:

‘The Left has been advancing on many fronts in our country for more than a hundred years. They have captured the media, the educational establishment, most foundations, the legal profession and more. Their progress has been steady, highlighted by periods of huge leaps to port (under Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and perhaps now Obama). The only successful counterattacks in the 20th century came under Coolidge and Reagan. And while Reagan had some success, his good work has largely been undone by the Bushes and other fake conservative Republicans who aped and appeased the liberals over the last twenty years—which has resulted in the unmitigated disaster that the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime represents.

It is easy for a conservative to survey the scene and be dejected. The behemoth that the Federal Government has become constrains our individual freedoms on a daily basis—and the Obama team is working feverishly to turn the screws tighter. The respect for Western Civilization and our Constitutional, republican system among the people is at an all-time low—and declining. Our economy is crippled by massive debt, a crumbling dollar and runaway entitlements; the latter summons the image of a train speeding on a one-way track toward a brick wall—and Obama is stepping on the accelerator. Who or what shall rescue us? Oh despair…’

Still, as the catchy line goes, ‘Predictions are difficult, especially of the future.’ At the time of Johnson’s Great Society, who could have predicted Reagan? And in the days of Reagan’s morning in America, who could have predicted Obama’s dark night? But I don’t foresee many more seesaw movements like this. It seems to me that one of two eventualities is in store for us. I believe that within a generation, two at most, either there will be a true, powerful and long-term conservative renaissance in the USA or we will slip irreversibly into a permanent leftist nightmare. By the former I mean a complete reversal of the statist path we have been traveling. I’m talking huge majorities in Congress, several presidents at least as conservative as Reagan, and the marginalization (but preferably the dismantling) of the liberal hegemony that the leftist-dominated media, educational system, legal profession and foundations have imposed on the nation. I know, it’s hard to imagine that happening, but I believe it is possible. If it doesn’t occur, then I think the slow (and sometimes not so slow) inexorable drift of American society to the left will pass what Thomas Sowell has called the ‘tipping point,’ on the other side of which is an egalitarian tyranny that spells the death knell for the Republic that our Founders envisioned. If that happens, given the horrendous mistake the American people made in the last election, I doubt that we will even recognize the moment that our collective heads slip under the water.

Obama Practices Reverse (or is it Perverse) Hospitality

In this past weekend’s headlines, I read: ‘Obama to meet with Myanmar rulers.’ This is reminiscent of other headlines of the same ilk like: ‘Obama bows to Saudi king’ or ‘Obama is nonplussed by Chavez’ tirade and gift of anti-US book’ or ‘Obama offers hand of friendship to Iranian Mullahs.’ Of course, Obama’s obsequious courtship of certain world leaders does not extend to everyone. Past headlines also include: ‘Obama to snub Israeli Prime Minister’ and ‘Obama removes bust of Winston Churchill from Oval Office’ and ‘Obama snatches missile defense shield from Poland and the Czech Republic.’

There seems to be a pattern here. If a country has long-standing, friendly relations with the USA, if its people share common values with the American people—like love of liberty, commitment to a society governed according to the rule of law, freedom of religion, free market capitalism—then it can expect the back of the hand from our enlightened President. Conversely, if a country is committed to repression of its citizens, a government-controlled economy, world-wide revolution and above all, enmity toward the United States, then its leaders can expect warmth and love from our post-American President. It wouldn’t surprise me if Obama extended an invitation to the White House to Hezbollah’s Nasrallah or Hamas’ Mashaal.

The ancient Chinese philosopher Sun-Tzu is reputed to have said: ‘Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.’ Popular culture attributes the aphorism to Michael Corleone in Godfather II. The thinking of our new godfather, er, that is, the President, modifies that to ‘you should fall all over yourself to be nice to your enemies, but it’s perfectly alright to kick your friends in the teeth.’