Category Archives: Government & Politics

Obama: The Joke is on Us

Here is a joke, entitled “Looking for Work,” that has worked its way around the Internet:

An Israeli doctor says: “In Israel, medicine is so advanced that we cut off a man’s testicles, put them on another man and in 6 weeks, he is looking for work”.

The German doctor says: “that’s nothing, in Germany we take part of a brain, put it in another man, and in 4 weeks he is looking for work”.

The Russian doctor says: “gentlemen, we take half a heart from a man, put it in another’s chest and in 2 weeks he is looking for work”

The United States doctor laughs: “You all are behind us. Five years ago, we took a man with no brains, no heart and no balls and made him President. Now, the whole country is looking for work!”

How could the people of the United States perform such a reckless act: install the most manifestly unqualified presidential candidate as CEO of the US and leader of the free world? I will offer a brief and well-worn answer to that question and then attempt to answer two important follow up questions:

  1. What does the fact that we did elect – and re-elect – Obama say about America?
  2. Do the results of Obama’s presidency and the events of the last five years support the conclusions drawn in the answer to the first question?

Many theories have been advanced purporting to account for Obama’s election: he was exceedingly charming and intelligent; he represented a clear alternative to the style and policies of his unpopular predecessor; his competition was exceptionally weak; his organization ran an unusually innovative and technologically savvy campaign far beyond those of his opponent. But the most common explanation served up, and the one that I believe is the most accurate is the following. The country viewed his elevation to the presidency as an act of expiation that: was merited by the USA’s wicked history of slavery and segregation; would heal the deep wounds inflicted on our society by that bitter legacy; and would unify our country and cement our status as the most successful multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multicultural society in the history of the world. And it would grant us renewed moral authority to continue to pursue our American experiment to create the freest, most prosperous and most exceptional nation on the face of the earth.

It was impossible not to see that, in a formal sense, Obama was totally unqualified to stand for the job. He had no executive experience, no managerial experience, and he knew virtually nothing about business, economics, foreign policy or national defense. He had no military record, a meager congressional record, and what few positions he had were handed to him without his demonstrating any qualifications to justify them. It is truly correct to assert that by any objective measure, he was completely unqualified to be considered as a candidate for president. Moreover, that was totally obvious to anyone who paid the slightest attention.

Nevertheless, the people chose him to be their president. And the only explanation that makes any sense is the expiation one offered. Well, there is a second – namely, that the American people are overwhelmingly stupid, ignorant, myopic and self-destructive. I don’t buy that – although, sometimes I wonder.

Now let us deal with the two follow up questions. First, what does Obama’s election – and perhaps even more seriously, his re-election – say about America? Well, the expiation explanation certainly says that the stain of slavery and racial bigotry weighs heavily on our souls. We desperately wished to wash out the stain and the election of a black man to the presidency would go a very long way toward accomplishing that goal. But given that he was unqualified and that the likelihood of alternate possibilities arising in the near future were good (in fact, Colin Powell might very well have preceded Obama if he had had the courage to run), surely it occurred to many that the price of electing Obama might easily outweigh the benefit. If one allowed oneself to go beyond the atonement issue, it was also impossible not to see the radically left proclivities of the man, the sordid background of some of his closest associates and the intolerance and arrogance that characterized many of his attitudes. Yet America ignored these dreadful warning signs and installed him anyway. And then they re-installed him!

What that says about America is much more than that we were desperate to expunge our racial sins. It says that we were equally interested in expelling far more of our culture and character than just our racial biases. In short, it announced that the US is now infected with the same disease that has laid low our European cousins: the loss of faith in our own culture.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Europeans surveyed the wreckage of their twentieth century achievements: two world wars that killed tens of millions of people; a Holocaust that exceeded any genocide in history in its cold-blooded, meticulous planning and execution; and a legacy of corrupt and rapacious colonial regimes that they viewed as the cause of vast misery in Africa and Asia. The Europeans decided that their culture – more commonly known as Western Civilization – was to blame and resolved to cast it off. Finding little to replace it, the peoples of Western Europe have sunk into a motley group of centrally-governed, irreligious, amoral, meek, increasingly poor, social welfare states that bear little resemblance to the powerful and confident societies of the past (e.g., Spain and Holland in the 1600s, France in the 1700s, Germany in the late 1800s and England for roughly 300 years ending in the mid-1900s).

Despite the fact that the US had little to do with initiating any of the twentieth century misery created by the Europeans – indeed, we spent a good bit of blood and treasure cleaning it up, our country has, as of late, decided to join our European cousins in their march to oblivion. We too have seemingly lost faith in our own culture. That is the central meaning in the election and re-election of Barack Obama. Our dear president never manifests any love for or pride in the country that entrusted the oval office to him. He has made clear in his books and his utterances – and in the friends he keeps – not only that America has not been a force for good in the world, but rather its legacy of: slavery, discrimination against women and minorities, internment of Japanese-American citizens, military aggression in the Middle East, income inequality, and myriad other social evils are indelible stains that must be atoned for by redistributing American wealth, diluting America’s power and subjugating its will to that of the “international community.” He clearly holds in disdain: the Christian religion, middle American morality, success in business, the concept of American Exceptionalism, American military might and the Constitutional system upon which our society was founded. Therefore, by choosing him – and then re-anointing him, the American people have proclaimed a loss of faith in America’s traditional ideals and principles. The people are ready to cast them aside, or if not that, then not to resist as they are torn from our hands.

Now for the second question: Do the events of the last five years reinforce or subvert the allegations made above? The answer is unequivocally the former. For what are the signal events of the last five years? Let’s identify only those that can be tied in a significant way to the fact that Barack Obama has been president during that period:

  • Obamacare became the law of the land. One sixth of the US economy has been nationalized; tens of millions of people have had the cost and quality of their health care adversely affected; all to insure less than one-quarter of the 10% of the population that was previously uninsured.
  • The federal debt has exploded and has been set on a catastrophically unsustainable path that poses an existential threat to our nation.
  • America’s defenses have been eviscerated. At the same time, the nation has been repeatedly embarrassed and derided by its enemies; while our allies have lost faith in our ability to protect them.
  • The economy has as yet to recover in anything approaching a normal fashion from the economic tumult of 2007-2009.
  • Family structure is crumbling, religion is on the wane, smut and pornography saturate the entertainment media, but abortion and gay marriage are thriving.
  • We are witnessing the arrogant behavior of the most lawless administration, certainly since Nixon and perhaps ever.
  • Despite the discovery of new domestic energy resources, the administration is doing everything it can to cripple the domestic energy industry. In its stead, it seeks to put a green roof over every head and an efficient flush handle in every hand.

Moreover, with the exception of the first and fourth bullets above (Obamacare and the economy), the American public doesn’t seem to care very much. Obama and his henchmen are working as hard as they can to fundamentally transform America from a constitutional republic into a centrally-managed unexceptional, militarily weak, egalitarian, poor, social welfare state. The American people should be up in arms. Obama’s impeachment should be under serious consideration. But, as I said, with some exception, the public does not seem terribly disturbed about the coming fate to which Obama is leading us. Again, the only possible explanation is that a major percentage of the American people has lost faith in the classical American ideal and is content to see the country transformed.

The joke that opened this piece is very funny. But the real joke is on us.

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative

Is Henninger Right about the ‘Carterization’ of Obama?

In a March 5 Wall Street Journal piece, Deputy Editor Daniel Henninger asserts that “it’s official. Vladimir Putin has turned Barack Obama totally into Jimmy Carter.” Henninger goes on to compare Obama’s foreign policy disasters (Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, Ukraine – he actualy doesn’t mention Benghazi) to those of Jimmy Carter. He then quotes Reagan (talking about Carter) and avers that, like Carter, Obama manifests “weakness, inconsistency, vacillation and bluff in response to foreign threats”; thus causing “our allies to lose confidence in us and our adversaries to no longer respect us.” [paraphrased ever so slightly].

In fact this theme, that Obama is as awful a president as Jimmy Carter, has been a thread woven through the narrative of many conservative writers (including yours truly) ever since BHO assumed the presidency.  And indeed, I believe that history will record these two naïve and unexpected presidents as among the absolutely most horrible of our chief executives. Moreover, that assessment will pertain to domestic as well as foreign policy.

But I would like to point out three significant differences between our 39th and 44th presidents; differences which may affect history’s judgment of their relative merits.

A fawning media. The overwhelmingly leftist tilt of the media, which was nearly as pronounced in the 1970s as it is today, did not result in Carter adulation in the same way that the lamestream media is in the tank for Obama today. In fact, most of the left wing media did not like poor Jimmy. It might be because he was religious, or he had a southern accent, or he served in the military, or perhaps because he once ran a business. It certainly wasn’t his liberal policies, which they adored. No, it was clear then, and especially in retrospect, that they did not hold him in high esteem. And so they did not cover for him by suppressing stories that reflected poorly on his presidency. They hammered him over the Iran hostages and the gas shortages; whereas, regarding Obama, they couldn’t care less about Benghazi, the IRS targeting conservative groups, Solyndra or Fast & Furious.

Lawlessness. The administration of Barack Obama is certainly the most lawless since that of Richard Nixon – and arguably, the most lawless in American history. From Obama’s wanton altering of congressionally passed laws, to illegal recess appointments, to the ignoring of congressional subpoenas, to regulatory agencies routinely and drastically exceeding the scope of their authority, Obama and his acolytes cavalierly violate the Constitution that they are sworn to protect. One can make no such claim about the administration of Jimmy Carter.

One signature achievement. Thankfully, Jimmy was so inept that, even with a Democratic Congress, he was unable to enact any major legislation that would alter the character of the nation. Alas, not so for Barack. Although endowed with a Democratic Congress during his first two years, and although intent on passing several game changing laws like Cap & Trade, Card Check, legalization of millions of illegal aliens, and massive tax increases, he (again thankfully) chose to ignore all those in favor of a single-minded, determined push to enact “health care reform.” It required an inordinate amount of chicanery and skullduggery to secure passage, but Obama got his Obamacare. This is a
major piece of legislation that will indeed alter the character of the nation. Although passed, it’s not yet “institutionalized” and it may be reversed or emasculated depending upon the outcome of the 2014 and 2016 elections. Whatever transpires, the eventual fate of Obamacare will have an enormous impact on Obama’s legacy.

Reagan was able to reverse and erase many (if not most) of Carter’s mistakes. We may not be so lucky this time.

This article also appeared in The American Thinker

It’s Not a Fair Fight

Conservatives are smacking their heads these days wondering how the USA could have arrived at such an unbalanced state. On the one hand, Obama suffers little, if any, punishment for his blatant lies and mischaracterizations: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” The American deaths in Benghazi resulted from an out-of-control demonstration in protest of an anti-Islamic video, not an organized terrorist attack. The targeting of conservative organizations by the IRS was the work of a few rogue agents in Cincinnati and not a systematic attempt – ordered at the highest levels of the Obama administration – to undercut conservative efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election.

On the other hand, conservatives are lambasted for defending the classic principles of the nation. Mitt Romney is demonized for succeeding in business. Paul Ryan is depicted as a grandma-killing loon for proposing what was in reality a minor attempt to put America’s fiscal house in order. Scott walker is vilified for asserting (in a bluish State – how dare he!) the peoples’ right to negotiate contracts with government employees without the compulsory and corrupt influence of public sector unions.

It’s enough to make you scratch your head in wonder and ponder how the public arena in which the classic give and take between liberals and conservatives could become so warped. The struggle between Right and Left is as old as the Republic. But in the last two generations, the nature of the public battlefield has been so skewed that one cannot avoid the conclusion that the field of battle is no longer level. Indeed it is not. It is my purpose here to identify several subtle reasons why the political contest between Left and Right in America no longer represents a fair fight.

The explanations range from the philosophical to the practical. Let’s begin with the former and work our way to the latter:

Dynamism. Liberals are constantly urging change. The last two Democratic presidents won their elections in no small part due to their promise to fundamentally transform the nation. Liberals assay what is, pronounce it rotten, propose sweeping changes and promise that said changes will make things better. Conservatives, on the other hand, are more interested in conserving what is worth preserving. Conservatives assess the current status, identify what is working, seek to strengthen and entrench it, and warn that tampering with success will lead to disaster. Now, human beings, being what they are – which usually involves a less than sterling self-assessment of their condition – are hopeful that change will improve their situation. They prefer the dynamism of the change artist to the stodginess of the play it safe mode. Alas, they frequently fail to assess the worthiness of the change artist’s plans and they equally often fail to appreciate the value of the tried and true, if somewhat stale, current mechanisms. It’s more fun, and the potential payoff might be better, to follow the fellow advocating change.

Self-confidence. What liberal have you ever encountered who’s not thoroughly convinced that Obamacare is the right way to fix the nation’s health care problems, that its passage was justified – even with the chicanery and skullduggery that was required, and that it will succeed as has Medicare and Social Security? Liberals are absolutely certain that their government-centered, redistributionist, egalitarian and anti-business programs will improve the lot of middle and lower class Americans. No past failure in any comparable endeavor has ever diminished or reversed their enthusiasm for and belief in their statist political, economic or cultural programs.

Conservatives, to the contrary, who are always reluctant to mess around with long established traditions, are inherently skeptical of change, especially radical change. Even if it is change that they espouse. They might recommend the so-called Fair Tax over the Income Tax; or charter schools over public schools; or enhanced vocational training programs over welfare handouts. But their recommendations always come with a tinge of self-doubt as they recognize that the most important law in the universe (which is the law of unintended consequences, not – pace Einstein – compound interest), always applies. Well, what is the average guy drawn to: confidence or wariness? A second advantage for liberals.

Belief. Liberals have an inordinate faith in human reason. They are drawn to the concept, which reached full flower in the French Revolution, that human beings are endowed with enormous capacity to evaluate their surroundings, develop meaningful plans to improve their lot and then successfully implement those plans. All that is required is calm reflection, a cadre of experts in the matter at hand and the will to formulate and follow through on concrete plans. Thus society, acting through change agents, can overcome the political, economic and cultural problems that confront it.

Conservatives tend to rely on faith more than reason. They recognize that man is basically a flawed creature. It is the height of folly to impose and then (try to) implement complicated schemes for perfection without accounting for the inevitable human screw ups. One critical way to deal with that recognition is via faith – that the universe is under the guiding hand of an unseen force and that the hand might even be influenced by the entreaties or behavior of mankind. Well, once again, who are you throwing in with – the optimistic rationalists or the pessimistic pietists? Yet another advantage for the liberals.

Constraints. This might be an oversimplification, but liberals believe that the ends justify the means. This is most clearly demonstrated in the passing of Obamacare. Employing every legislative trick available to them, ignoring unanimous GOP opposition and engaging in bribes, kickbacks and payoffs to secure the support of reluctant Red State Democrats, the liberal architects rammed Obamacare through in the most blatantly partisan fashion. They were convinced that Obamacare is vital to American society – at least their conception of it – and so any tactic was legitimate to pass it.

Contrast this with (arguably) conservative initiatives (Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind), which were passed with broad bipartisan support. Indeed, conservatives generally do not subscribe to the “ends justify the means” paradigm. They value process, rules, consensus and the need for persuasive argument. But again, consider the impression on the public. In the choice between unconstrained and constrained systems, for those who want to get things done, the choice is likely to be for the unconstrained modus operandi.

Hope. Because of the liberal’s belief in rational man, he subscribes to the idea of man as perfectible. Human beings have the innate ability to correct their flaws and create a perfect society. Conservatives, on the other hand, due to their intrinsic belief that human beings are flawed, subscribe to no such theory. The best we can do is structure our society so as to maximize the likelihood of beneficial social behavior and punish those who violate our legal norms. Alas, which of these is cause for hope and which for despair? It’s beginning to sound like a broken record, but once again: advantage liberals.

Feelings. It is a well-worn adage that liberals play to our emotions, while conservatives appeal to our intellect. The adage reflects truth. Liberals feel deeply about how society should work and they invoke emotional arguments to express their feelings. People shouldn’t be poor; it’s not fair that some have more than others; it’s shameful that anyone – regardless of race, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, whatever – should not have access to the same opportunities as anyone else. And if the statistical breakdown of our population according to any particular category reveals disparities in income, accessibility or rights, then we feel badly and the imbalance must be corrected.

Conservatives agree that at birth, we are all equal and that society should afford equal opportunity to all. But they also accept that because of innate drive, motivation or other inherent qualities – but alas sometimes just because of luck – some will do better than others. It is an immutable law of human life. Keep the playing fields of life level, but – just as on the sports fields – some will get to the finish line before others. It may be unfair in some cosmic sense, but the only way to rearrange society so that all finish equally is to trample on the individual rights of the people.

Which of the above approaches is more likely to make you feel good about yourself and your chances in life? Not a hard choice, and yes one more time – advantage to the liberals.

Coup de Grâce. As powerful as the preceding arguments may be, the fact that the battle between liberals and conservatives is not a fair fight is overwhelmingly determined by the fact that the liberals control virtually all of the opinion-molding organs  of American society. Following a century-long march through the cultural organs of the society by the progressive movement, it is indisputably true that liberals are in command of America’s: media, public schools, federal bureaucracy, higher educational institutions, seminaries, legal profession, libraries and major foundations. With rare exceptions (Fox News, Heritage Foundation, Hillsdale College), the information that flows from liberal-dominated organs into the brains and hearts of America’s population is heavily slanted to the left. It’s as if in a contest between two armies, 95% of the weaponry is supplied to one side. Not likely to result in a fair fight.

These biases (the six that I outlined plus the opinion-forming imbalance) have been in place for quite some time. Therefore, it is somewhat of a miracle that the contest between Left and Right still rages at all in America. It is a testament to the resilience and value of the fundamental ideas that animate American conservatives. And cause for us not to despair. The lefties may have the guns, but we have the truth. David slew Goliath in an unfair fight. Conservatives: load up your slingshots.

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative.

Uninventing Freedom

Daniel Hannan, the famous Euro-skeptic, recently published a magnificent book, Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. In it he traces the history of the Anglosphere – the English-speaking countries of the world – from its origin in the British Isles to its greatest flowering on the soil of the USA. It is not my purpose here to formally review the book – two excellent reviews have already appeared. (See Mark Tooley’s essay in The American Spectator [Jan/Feb 2014] and Barton Swain’s piece in the Wall Street Journal [11/29/13], the latter of which is also featured on the Reviews page of this web site.) Instead, I will supply several trenchant  quotes from the book and then use them as a stepping stone to draw some conclusions pertinent to the political mess in which America finds itself. By the latter I mean the predicament emanating from the fact that the people of the US have recklessly elected – and re-elected – a president whose basic political beliefs run totally contrary to the fundamental axioms, which have formed the foundation upon which this nation was established and has been governed.

Elected parliaments, habeas corpus, free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials: these things are not somehow the natural condition of an advanced society. They are specific products of a political ideology developed in the language in which you are reading these words. The fact that those ideas, and that language, have become so widespread can make us lose sight of how exceptional they were in origin… [Indeed] the three precepts that define Western civilization—the rule of law, democratic government, and individual liberty— are not equally valued across Europe. When they act collectively, the member states of the EU are quite ready to subordinate all three to political imperatives. The rule of law is regularly set aside when it stands in the way of what Brussels elites want.

Barack Obama’s view of America matches the EU premise. He sees the US as just another country among the nations of the world; its culture, political philosophy and economic system are of no more intrinsic merit than those of any other country. His goal is to meld us into world society as one among equals. He completely rejects the messianic idea, common to our Founders and all of our leaders from Washington to Lincoln and even to FDR, of American Exceptionalism – which posits that the American experiment is unique in the annals of history and that America is to be a beacon of freedom to the world.

What distinguishes the common law from the Roman law that predominates in Continental Europe and its colonial offshoots? Chiefly this. The Continental legal model is deductive. A law is written down from first principles, and then those principles are applied to a particular case. Common law, to the astonishment of those raised in the Roman or Napoleonic systems, does the reverse. It builds up, case by case, with each decision serving as the starting point for the next dispute. It applies a doctrine known to lawyers as stare decisis: previous judgments should stand unaltered, serving as precedent. Common law is thus empirical rather than conceptual: it concerns itself with actual judgments that have been handed down in real cases, and then asks whether they need to be modified in the light of different circumstances in a new case.

Our president cum law professor has little use for common law or stare decisis. This is evident in his increasingly lawless behavior. As his actions regarding Obamacare, the Dream Act, gay marriage, recess appointments and many, many other areas indicate, he is content to ignore the constraints imposed upon him by the Constitution and create law by fiat – that is, by executive order. He sees himself and his minions as wise beings who know what is best for America. The law is merely a vehicle to implement his vision. The opinions of the people on any particular matter are of little import.

Tenth-century England had undeniably started down the track to constitutional liberty. What might have happened had it continued on that path we’ll never know, because, in 1066, it was brutally wrenched out of the Nordic world and subjected to European feudalism. Harold Godwinson, an English nobleman with scant claim to the throne, but with the unequivocal backing of the Witan, was deposed by William of Normandy, who had his own ideas about the duties owed to a king. It was a calamitous defeat for England, for the Witan, and for the development of liberty. Indeed, the next six centuries can be seen in one sense—and were seen by many of the key protagonists—as an attempt to reverse the disaster of 1066.

This quote is included to highlight the effectiveness of the liberal brainwashing that is administered in America’s public schools. Long ago, I identified for myself the falsehoods that were drummed into my head in school: from the nonsense that FDR saved the nation from the Great Depression to the obscenity that Communism was an alternate – and in some ways more effective – economic system as opposed to capitalism. Well, it never dawned on me that the Norman conquest of Britain was a disaster that set back the cause of liberty for 600 years. In school and college, I learned that the conquest was a result of a more or less legitimate dispute over who should possess the British crown, and that its effect on English life was relatively minimal with the exception of hastening the end of slavery on the island. Hannan presents a compelling case that the Normans attempted – with some success – to replace the decentralized, rudimentarily free legal system in England a millennium ago with a centralized authoritarianism. Such a viewpoint is never presented in school. Well, this is perhaps a minor example, but it is representative of the distorted history that was taught, and is taught even more egregiously in today’s public schools.

In most of Europe, landownership was settled, with farms being treated as an inalienable patrimony. In England, by contrast, there was a lively land market from at least the thirteenth century (earlier records are harder to come by). In most of Europe, children would work on their parents’ farms, receiving board and lodging rather than wages. In England—to the surprise and occasional disgust of overseas visitors—children would generally have left the family home by their teens, either for apprenticeships or to work elsewhere. The farmwork would instead be done by hired hands for competitive pay. In most of Europe, the family was recognized as the primary unit, not just in custom but in law: parents generally could not disinherit their children, and the family plot was treated as a communal resource. In England, there was almost no notion of shared ownership. A boy who had reached legal maturity was, in the eyes of the law, a wholly free agent: his father had neither claims over him nor duties to him.

Barack Obama, July 13, 2012 in Roanoke, VA: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Perhaps George W. Bush’s single greatest foreign policy success was to draw India back into the alliance of English-speaking democracies when he accepted the nation’s nuclear status in 2006. That relationship has been vigorously cultivated by David Cameron but neglected by Barack Obama. Fortunately, Indians seem prepared to wait for a different attitude from Washington. They are a patient and courteous people.

Obama is working hard to separate the US from the Anglosphere. One of his first acts as president was to expel the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. He has denied that there is any special kinship between the US and the UK. He keeps Canada cooling its heels for five years waiting on the Keystone XL Pipeline. And I have never heard him utter a warm word about Australia or New Zealand. But perhaps this is unfair as he has been equally rough on America’s non-Anglo allies. His treatment of Israel has been an abomination. And while he bows to kings, hobnobs with Venezuela’s (now dead) Marxist leader, and is anxious to negotiate with Iran, Assad and the dear leader of North Korea, he gives the back of his hand to Poland, the Czech Republic and Honduras. His sense of American history and Western Civilization is … is … well, he doesn’t have any sense of them.

Americans take pride in being self-reliant, optimistic, ambitious. But these characteristics are not a by-product of Mississippi water or turkey meat, and neither are they some magical quality in the American genome. People respond to incentives; culture is shaped by institutions. If taxation, spending, and borrowing keep rising, if more and more Americans become dependent on the state, it won’t take long before they start behaving like the French, rioting and demonstrating in defense of their acquired entitlements… Margaret Thatcher’s political godfather, Sir Keith Joseph, used to remark that if you give people responsibility, they behave responsibly. What goes for individuals goes for entire nations.
There has been a general loss of confidence in the superiority of the Anglosphere model, which fended off every extremist challenge throughout the twentieth century. Cultural relativism feeds into hard policy. Once you reject the notion of exceptionalism as intrinsically chauvinistic, you quickly reject the institutions on which that exceptionalism rested: absolute property rights, free speech, devolved government, personal autonomy. Bit by bit, your country starts to look like everyone else’s. Its taxes rise; its legislature loses ground to the executive and to an activist judiciary; it accepts foreign law codes and charters as supreme; it drops the notion of free contract; it prescribes whom you may employ and on what terms; it expands its bureaucracy; it forgets its history.

For Obama and today’s liberals, America’s decline is its just reward for its checkered history. For them, America has failed to live up to its promise. Moreover, that failure was ordained by America’s flawed founding. Its sins are numerous and great: slavery; segregation; abuse of Native Americans, women, gays and minorities; nuking Japan; corporate greed; international pillage; and the promotion of laissez-faire capitalism, States’ rights and gun rights. The fact that America has confronted its true failings (to be found among the previous list, which contains some bogus elements), and made enormous progress in correcting them is irrelevant. Only a fundamental transformation of America into a pliant, social welfare state can expiate its sins.

Hannan calls attention to these perverse views held by Obama and describes in detail how they violate the history and calling of the Anglosphere. Nevertheless, Hannan remains optimistic that the US can overthrow the tyranny of Obama’s fundamental transformation and restore the nation to its historic calling, to its rightful place as the leader of the Anglosphere and thereby guarantee freedom and prosperity to the American people for ages. His final words evoke an American patriot of whom Ronald Reagan was fond:

For we are not finished. We remain an inventive, quizzical, enterprising people. All we need to do is hold fast to the model that made us that way. Edmund Burke’s words about America in 1775 apply, mutatis mutandis, to the Anglosphere as a whole today. English privileges have made it all that it is; English privileges alone will make it all it can be.”
[And in Burke’s time] at the other end of the Anglosphere, a young doctor in Boston named Joseph Warren—the man who sent Paul Revere on his ride—was seeking to rally his countrymen in defense of the same principles. His words ring down the ages: “You are to decide the question on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”
You, reading these words in his language, are the heirs to a sublime tradition. A tradition that gave us liberty, property, and democracy, and that raised our species to a pinnacle of wealth and happiness hitherto unimaginable. Act worthy of yourselves.

______

This essay also appeared in The Intellectual Conservative

Are Conservatives Kidding Themselves?

Many conservatives are salivating at the prospect of the coming Congressional midterm elections. They think that a Republican takeover of the Senate is increasingly likely. Moreover, they are equally giddy about the 2016 Presidential election bringing not only a merciful conclusion to the Obama era, but also the arrival of a Republican president and the final defeat of Hillary Clinton. Finally, they are optimistic that Obama’s falling poll numbers herald a return to sanity by the American people and a reversal of the liberal trend in American politics. Are they kidding themselves?

Such optimism might have been warranted in 1920 upon the advent of the Harding-Coolidge administration following America’s first massive dose of progressivism at the hands of Woodrow Wilson. It might have been a reasonable anticipation in 1952 that Eisenhower would reverse the collectivist madness of the Roosevelt era. And yes it might sill have been sensible in 1980 when Reagan took the reins intent on overturning the “Great Society” and the other flourishes of leftist statism inflicted on the country during the 60s and 70s. Those periods of optimism were borne out to a limited extent by the actions of Coolidge and Reagan and the attendant reactions of the country – much less so in mid-century when Eisenhower made little attempt at a course correction regarding the New Deal. But today, more or less a century since the progressive infection began to corrupt American society, is there truly any reasonable chance that the malady – which has coursed throughout the political, cultural and economic veins of the nation – can be overcome?

The answer that I am about to give is pretty grim. But stay with me until the end when I inject a note of optimism – occasioned more by faith than reason. Anyway, let us take stock:

We have elected to the presidency a man with no executive or managerial experience, indeed with no significant accomplishments of any kind. This man’s main mentors all his life were communists, race baiters, violent radicals and corrupt politicians. His style of governing manages to combine divisiveness, mean-spiritedness, lawlessness and manifest incompetence. He has made no secret of his intention to recreate the United States as an internationally weak, equality-obsessed, unexceptional, centrally managed, social welfare state. His main accomplishment has been to convert the health insurance industry into a public utility. And we re-elected him! What does that say about the political savvy of the people of the United States of America?

Virtually all of the main opinion-forming organs of the country are controlled by progressives. This includes the media, educational system, universities, libraries, seminaries, legal profession, federal bureaucracy, much of the major corporate boardrooms, public sector unions and the foundations established by the “robber barons” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Given the thorough brainwashing that the populace is subjected to, it is a miracle that any conservative thought survives. Yet polls indicate that 40% of the people self-identify as conservatives. But more than half of them have no idea what being conservative entails. I warrant that much less, certainly no more than 20% of the people have any understanding of how far the nation has drifted from its Constitutional moorings.

Since Reagan left the scene, the so-called conservative party in the US, that is, the GOP, has held seven presidential nominating conventions that anointed five different men. Not one of them is one-tenth as conservative as any of the five men the Dems nominated in that period is liberal. The extreme left wing has taken control of the Democratic Party, while hard core conservatives are often marginalized in the GOP. Prospects for a truly conservative nominee in 2016 are somewhat better than they’ve been since Reagan, but the likelihood of that happening is far from certain.

Our military has shrunk dramatically; our influence in the Middle East, Far East and Latin America has ebbed precipitously; we have managed to tick off all of our traditionally strongest allies (Great Britain, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, even Canada); our enemies (Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, the Islamic Jihadists, and of course China and Russia) not only no longer fear us, but hold us in disdain. We have ceased to enforce the post WWII/Cold War Pax Americana and in the process rendered the world a much more dangerous place.

As a consequence, while in the Reagan years (and for a time thereafter), democracy and freedom were on the march in the world, in the last decade and a half, a tremendous reversal has occurred. From Latin America to Africa – reeling from our disengagement – many recently freed peoples of the world have seen their nations revert to statism, authoritarianism and tyranny.

Our Founders emphasized that that the Republic they created could only survive if the society was made up of individuals possessing high moral character. Now one man’s morals may be another’s taboos. But it is totally clear in retrospect what were the moral values that the Founders held up as exemplary: religious faith, individual responsibility, self-reliance, a robust work ethic, traditional family values, temperance, modesty, humility, respect for law and human life. The decay in American society in the prevalence of almost every trait in this list is too painful to contemplate.

Freedom of speech, thought and opinion is the very touchstone of the American experiment in individual liberty that the Founders established. And yet we live at a time when the atmosphere has been so poisoned by “political correctness” that the Founders would be aghast at the constraints on our freedom. It is true that no jack-booted thug is going to detain you for criticizing the High Priest Obama (although Dinesh Dsouza might quibble with that assertion), but the subtle, yet pervasive control of the public arena by the Left subjects those who hold conservative views to ridicule, calumny and demoralization. One of the most wholesome grass roots movements in the history of American society was the emergence of Tea Party groups. In short, these contained primarily folks, previously uninvolved in the political process, who believe that the government is too big and too powerful, that it oppresses the populace via excessive taxation and regulation, and who want to reassert their rights as free people. (Remind you of anything – perhaps 1776?) What could be more American? Yet Tea Partiers are vilified as racist Neanderthals who want to undermine all the “progress” America has made in the last century. The assault on the Tea Party is dastardly, disgusting and dangerous. The political atmosphere in the US is so poisonous that expressions of fealty to the ideals, which motivated the Founders of America, are viewed as almost traitorous.

The decline of America is ratified by the results in numerous surveys that measure freedom, opportunity and prosperity of various societies around the globe. In many of these, we have fallen from the top spot and even out of the top ten. Examples include measures of: political freedom, economic freedom, how easy/hard it is to  start a business; the level of poverty; percentage of the population actively engaged in the work force; the national debt; and the debt or deficit as a percentage of GDP. For the time being, America remains an attractive palace and people from all over the world still want to come here. But the numbers don’t lie and there are already some unsettling signs that the most entrepreneurial people on the move are taking notice.

Finally, all of these concrete manifestations of a declining America in which conservatism has been routed are overlaid by a massive loss of self-confidence. Prominent American conservatives are wont to point out the crisis of confidence that has afflicted Europeans. The good folks of the continent – goes the argument – have surveyed their handiwork over the last century (two horrendous world wars, the Holocaust, colonial empires that pillaged native peoples) and decided that their culture (parts of which were sometimes known as Christendom and/or Western Civilization) was to blame. They have decided to shed it. They have disarmed, forsaken religion, renounced nationality, organized themselves into a centrally managed, softly tyrannical social welfare state, and flooded themselves with indigestible Muslim immigrants. The past glories of Spain, France, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Great Britain are a distant memory as the peoples of Europe have totally lost faith in the structures and ideals that helped them to create those past glories.

Well guess what! It’s taken a little longer for the disease to spread to the western hemisphere, but the US is now treading the same path. Led by the progressive-dominated organs outlined above, America is slowly but surely renouncing the structures and ideals of the Constitutional Republic bequeathed to us by our Founders.

In such an atmosphere and in light of all the previous points that I have made, how can a conservative not be kidding himself today when he anticipates a conservative renaissance in the USA? It is very hard to imagine how, but here is one way. Historians estimate that the percentage of the American colonists who were fully on board with the revolt against Great Britain was certainly less than 50% and quite possibly as low as 20-25%. That is to say, the percentage of the American population in 1775 that seriously supported the break from the mother country was about the same as the percentage who currently identify with the desire for renewed liberty à la the Tea Party. And yet the American Revolution occurred, and was successful. Is it too far-fetched to hope that history might repeat itself? Is it possible that Tea Party conservatives, being so totally fed up with the progressive garbage that is clogging up the arteries of the American bloodstream, will incite a successful counterrevolution against the progressive putsch that has taken control of the country? Might there not be a modern day Martin Luther King, who will address America from the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, and with a ringing call to freedom, echoed by the words on the Memorial’s walls, summon all the people to recapture the liberty, the opportunity, the prosperity that has been stolen from us by progressives over the last century? One can only hope!

This essay appeared originally in Canada Free Press.