Is the United States of America Doomed?

Recently I posted a piece in this blog entitled, ‘On the Existential Threat to Israel.’ In it, I discussed the manifold, deadly threats confronting the Jewish State and how many of them eventually, and perhaps imminently, could prove lethal. I also located the threats in the context of three portentous developments in the world:

  1. A worldwide resurgence of Islam, much of it in a radical and deadly mode;
  2. A worldwide resurgence of virulent Anti-Semitism, much of it cloaked as anti-Zionism, but in reality nothing more than old-fashioned Jew hatred;
  3. The steep decline within Western Civilization of self-esteem.

Finally, I pointed out how each of these developments also posed a mortal danger to the nations of the West (specifically in Europe and North America). It was easy to justify the latter claim for numbers 1 and 3; the justification for number 2 was somewhat subtle and restricted to Europe.

In this article I will look more closely at these ‘existential threats as they apply to the United States. While alarmingly present in Europe, number 2 above is, thankfully, not really pertinent in the US — but its place in the list is taken ably by another malignant threat to our nation, our gargantuan federal government. Thus, with some revision to the first and third to make them more applicable to the US as opposed to the entire West, the threat list now reads:

  1. The rise of Islamist fundamentalism, or Islamism or Islamo-fascism as some prefer to call it — is it as much of a threat to the US as it obviously is to Europe?
  2. An increasingly powerful, coercive, unresponsive, irresponsible and repressive federal government.
  3. The sharp decline among the American public of faith in American exceptionalism, esteem for the historic culture of America and Western Civilization, respect for and adherence to the Constitution, and public displays of virtue as this would have been understood by the Founding Fathers.

Now the majority of the threats to Israel’s existence are physical —should they be fulfilled, it would likely result in the actual destruction of the State: the slaughter or expulsion of its people, the annihilation of its cities and towns, the total loss of sovereignty — that is, the physical extinction of the State in any corporal sense. (It makes my blood curl just to write that sentence.)

The threat to the US is more political, cultural and economic than it is physical. Even though one could imagine an attack or attacks on US soil by Islamists with WMD, it is not possible to foresee the Iranian Revolutionary Guard occupying the US, declaring an Islamist totalitarian state, and killing or forcibly converting those Americans who resist. Rather, the envisioned consequence, especially of the latter two threats to the US, should either reach a cataclysmic stage, is that our beloved republic would cease to exist in any sense in which our Founders understood it. Our people, our towns, our industry,our farms, our infrastructure, even our armed forces might remain intact. But: liberty would no longer be our most sacred value; our freedoms would vanish; our Constitutional rights would be replaced by the ‘bounty’ we receive from the State; a phony tolerance for all cultures would supersede our Judeo-Christian heritage; our morals would be defined by the government and its lackey media,not by religious principles; our economy would be directed by the government and entrepreneurs would not exist; our standard of living would sink precipitously; our military would atrophy and we would cease to be a great power; and the concept of American exceptionalism would be relegated to the dustbin of history as we take our place as just another cowardly, Euro-socialist, crippled nation watching as the might of China, India, Islam or whomever grows and supplants us as the most powerful force on Earth. America has been a beacon of freedom and a force for good in the world for nearly a quarter millennium. Will that be true of our successor if we fall?

How real are these threats and, if they are, what can we do to forestall them? They are very real. First, the end of the Cold War has seen the emergence of a virulent, fanatical and apocalyptic brand of Islam. It has always been there, just in decline and/or slumbering for the last few hundred years. But now ‘Islamic Civilization’ is displaying some traits that seem to be disappearing in the West — namely, self-confidence, religious fervor, ample foot soldiers willing to die for the cause and a bold vision of the future. The ascendant forces in the Islamic world would seem intent on restoring the caliphate and extending Muslim hegemony over vast stretches of the planet, commensurate with their reach a millennium or more ago. They see Europe, and increasingly the United States, as soft, retreating, lacking faith and morale,and ripe for the plucking. It would be the height of folly for the US to ignore the goals of the Islamists, and thus fall prey to the malevolent harm they intend to inflict (and to some extent have already inflicted) on our society.

With the prior assessment of the first threat, I suspect a significant portion, perhaps a majority, of my fellow citizens might agree. But I doubt any such agreement is forthcoming on the second threat.

The ranks of conservative, republican (small ‘r’) patriots have been thinning rapidly since Ronald Reagan passed from the scene. I venture that no more than 20-25% of the US citizenry is aware of the century-long degradation of our Constitutional republic that has occurred. From Teddy Roosevelt, through Wilson, then FDR, Johnson, Carter and now Obama we have seen a near constant retreat from the original liberty-focused, market-oriented, limited form of republican government that our Founders established, and a concurrent march toward the egalitarian, government-controlled, Constitution-ignoring, business-bashing, soft tyranny that our system has become. If Obama wins on either cap and trade or nationalized health insurance, we might pass the point of no return and the Republic will be lost forever.

Am I overstating the danger posed by our overgrown government? Recently, a financial adviser speaking to me about the economy and the stock market, acknowledged the grave dangers that Obama’s and the radical leftists in Congress’ programs portend for the economy. But then he asserted that historically, the market has factored in the constraints caused by the introduction of the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Sarbanes-Oxley and myriad other government laws and regulations that have hampered American business; and then continued its inexorable, if uneven, march forward. Well then, he continued, the market will just factor in Obama’s monstrosities as well and continue as in the past. I would sum up that stance in the words: we’ve been alright in the past despite stupid and self-destructive moves, so we shall be alright in the future, despite stupid and self-destructive moves. I’m not so sure! As Thomas Sowell has said, there is a tipping point and I fear we are getting mighty close to it.

Yet, I doubt there is widespread agreement with my fear of an existential danger posed by the federal government. Some folks believe, like my colleague, that we’ll withstand the government’s latest assaults and continue our march forward. I suspect an even greater proportion of the populace doesn’t acknowledge the threat at all. They cherish all the ‘security’ and goodies that big government provides for them and ignore the wisdom of Reagan, who said that Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

Finally, the third threat — loss of self esteem — poses, in my mind, the gravest threat of the three. History reveals that great civilizations more often die by suicide than by conquest. The nations of Western Europe, having lost their faith in the cultural, political and economic principles that sustained them for centuries, are playing the death scene right now. The US is manifesting the same symptoms, albeit at an earlier stage. And yet again, I think there is even less support for my belief in this threat than there is for the previous, I sense that the vast majority of my fellow citizens do not recognize that the egalitarian, anti-religious, anti-patriotic, anti-free market, anti-family, big government, unconstitutional and basically anti-American program that is being thrust on them — and to which they appear increasingly receptive — is a recipe for the death of the United States as a free republic. People say reflexively that America is still the greatest country in the world. But because of the brainwashing to which they have been subjected for many decades at the hands of the media, government schools, the higher education establishment and all the other liberal-dominated, opinion-forming organs of American society, those naively optimistic folks have little understanding of how much the US has changed in the last century and where it is headed sans a conservative course correction.

So what is to be done? As I outlined in a previous article, ‘Different Visions,’ while there is definitely a political and economic component to the struggle, the effort to recapture the nation and preserve the structure bequeathed to us by the Founders must be primarily cultural. Repeating part of the argument there, ‘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, etc. It might take a hundred years to achieve success; after all it took the Left a century to reach the dominance it currently enjoys. If we don’t do this, then the America that we have loved and which has proven to be such a boon to the peoples of the world will surely – perhaps slowly, but maybe not so slowly – wither into one more Euro-socialist State. Then the light from mankind’s last best hope will have gone out.’

To summarize, I believe the US will cope with the first threat. We took care of the Nazis and the Communists; we’ll defeat the Islamists as well — provided we don’t succumb to one of the latter two threats first. As for the second threat, I don’t believe we can meet it without successfully overcoming the third. If we continue to lose self-esteem, that is lose faith in our heritage, pride in our achievements, trust in free markets and respect for the system established by the Founders, then surely the government will continue to grow into a republic-destroying monster that will make our current soft tyranny seem tame in relation to the much harder tyranny we shall experience.

On the other hand, if there is a resurgence of patriotic spirit, cultural pride, renewed faith in American exceptionalism and respect for our historic, republican, Constitutional heritage, then the people will be ready to tame the government beast. America has faced grave crises previously: the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Depression, Fascism, and Communism. In every instance, we managed to prevail. But with diminishing self-esteem prevalent, it is easy to be pessimistic about our prevailing again. And yet we have ammunition in this battle that Europe lacks — such as, God-fearing people, a formidable military, guns in the closet, talk radio and of course our Constitution. What we lack is another Reagan, or — recognizing that the battle is cultural more than political — a Martin Luther King who will inspire the people to reconnect with their liberty, rediscover their heritage and overcome the forces of tyranny that are dragging us down.

A Fundamental Disconnect

This article appeared originally in the American Thinker at
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/a_fundamental_disconnect.html

Hollywood and the media routinely offer up two standard portrayals of government officials — inept and comical idiots or sinister characters. The latter is especially true of media depictions of NSA, CIA, and FBI employees, but both are quite typical of the reigning liberal elite’s opinion of all government agencies and their employees: bureaucrats are either hilarious nincompoops or dangerous evil-doers, and amazingly enough, sometimes both at once. Hollywood seems to think that the government is either screwing up the country because it doesn’t know what it is doing or it is destroying the country because it is trampling on the rights of its citizens.
However, the people who hold these convictions are the exact same people who want to turn over the operation of all the key components of the country to the government to manage. Health care, energy, education, the economy itself — these and dozens of other critical features of American society should be directed, according to the Left, from the hallowed halls in which the bumblers and betrayers work.
These liberal elites, who are now in positions of great power in the nation, seem to believe that the politicians and bureaucrats who populate the federal government, are on the one hand part fumbling meatheads who can’t tie their shoes and part evil plotters who want to screw John Q. Public. At the same time the left believes that those who run the bureaucracy should be entrusted with the management of virtually every aspect of American society. Is there not a fundamental disconnect here? What could possibly explain this self-contradictory faith in the power of the government to successfully solve the nation’s problems? I willoffer three explanations and then speculate as to which applies to the celebrity who now occupies the White House.
The first explanation is ignorance. The people of our nation have been subjected to an intense liberal indoctrination for so long that there are a huge number of them for whom the tenets of liberalism are so deeply ingrained that they accept without question the proposition that the government must address any problem that arises anywhere in America. Under a relentless assault from the liberal dominated media, educational establishment, legal profession, arts community, foundations, and even segments of the business and religious communities, many have succumbed to the brainwashing.
Consequently, they believe:
  • FDR’s New Deal saved us from the Depression rather than prolonged it;
  • the Great Society helped to lift minorities out of poverty, rather than institutionalizing it;
  • capitalism creates unjust, inequitable outcomes in the US, ignoring the fact that it has powered our economy to unimagined and unequaled heights of prosperity;
  • government creates jobs by spending the tax payer’s money, rather than preventing their creation because of the tax dollars pilfered from entrepreneurs;
  • government regulations improve the functioning of our economy, revealing obliviousness to the enormous drag they impose;
  • the rich don’t pay their fair share, whereas in fact the ‘rich’ pay the overwhelming majority of the income tax that Uncle Sam extracts, while the lowest 40% of income earners pay virtually nothing;
  • the Constitution is a malleable document that serves as a guide to the making of law — in fact, it is a binding document that can be changed only by a demanding Amendment process and the American republic has survived and prospered precisely because continuing generations have agreed to abide by the deal struck by our founders with the people;
  • radical change not adherence to tradition, is the American way.
I venture that a large proportion, perhaps a substantial majority of the folks who voted for Obama fit into this category — especially young people.
It is legitimate to ask how such hoodwinked people can accept the portrayal of the government as bumbling or sinister or both — laugh at it if it is the former, be mortified by it if the latter — and why does it not occur to them that it is lunacy to entrust their welfare to the bumblers and evil-doers?
I think the answer is to be found in the attitude teenagers exhibit toward their parents and teachers. The kids often see their elders as at best hopelessly square, out of it and even stupid and at worst as manipulating, tyrannical, and unfair. Most — not all — do not question the fundamental authority of their parents and teachers. The kids expect the adults to remove the obstacles that the youngsters encounter and the kids are willing to put up with the rules laid down by the adults because it is expected of them, because it is the natural order of things, and besides there is no choice. So too does the juvenile mass of brainwashed citizens view the authority of the federal government. They deride and lambaste it for its incompetence; they fear it for its omnipotence; but they accept unquestioningly its ‘legitimate’ authority to control their lives.
The next explanation might be characterized as arrogance. Its practitioners understand that the government doesn’t have a particularly good track record of solving the nation’s problems. They recognize that previous government forays into health care, agriculture, housing, etc. have resulted in mismanagement, excessive waste, deleterious effects on the economy, fraud, and corruption. Nevertheless, they believe that the federal government is the correct mechanism to address the nation’s problems and under their tutelage one (or both) of two things will happen. First, they will do it better. They will bring better design, planning, execution, ands upervision. Or, it won’t work any better, but they will profit personally from the results. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is chock full, from top to bottom, with these types — the naive ones who think they will execute the liberal agenda more perfectly and the corrupt ones who intend to profit from the agenda, however it is implemented.
The third explanation is malevolence. This characterization applies to the hard core leftists who believe the classic American political, economic and cultural systems are rotten and must be overthrown. I am thinking of revolutionaries like Saul Alinsky, George Soros, Michael Moore, and, yes, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. They don’t care that the government to which they wish to assign more and more responsibility is a combination of ineptness and corruption. So much the better; it will bring the system down more quickly. Radicals like these thrive on a crisis atmosphere (as admitted by Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel). They seek to create a perpetual crisis, which leaves the people panic-stricken and easily manipulated by those who, under the guise of addressing the dangerous ills they have identified, will divert more power to the government, and who are in fact at work destroying the system under the false cover of crises like climate change and health care. If they can enact universal, federally-controlled health care and the business-crippling cap and trade bill, their malevolent objective might be attained — America could be so fundamentally changed that there will be no hope of returning to republican principles.
I believe the vast majority of Americans on the left fit into category 1, a substantial number fall under 2 and a small, but dedicated cadre occupies the third position. Into which category does the guy in theWhite House fit?
Like most of America, my acquaintance with President Obama is recent and superficial. That he occupies the White House is a testament to the uncharacteristic recklessness of the American people, who have installed therein a person they know precious little about. Is he the leftist radical his voting record suggests or the relatively moderate politician he seemed to be during the campaign? Everyone who interactswith him insists he is very smart. If so, it is impossible that the rationale for his leftist mentality lies in the first explanation: ignorance.
Throughout the campaign, my impression was that he was a number 2: arrogant. Yes, there was no denying his far-left voting record — but he tacked right during the election and then he appointed a number of relatively moderate cabinet officials (to go along with the hard core leftists he selected as advisors and czars, to be sure).  But since the inauguration, the gloves are off and the trend is clear. President Obama is a leader of the malevolent, revolutionary forces in America who want to overthrow the system and replace it with a Euro-socialist, nanny State that repudiates much of American history, including the Constitution.
What is the evidence? Many of his opponents would cite: his promotion of cap and trade, which surely would cripple our economy; his drive for universal, government-controlled health insurance, which would make virtually all of us wards of the State; his foreign policy of appeasement and repeated apologies for American behavior; or his reckless spending, borrowing and taxing that will bankrupt our children and grandchildren. For me it is as simple as this. I see no evidence that he loves America, that he (or his wife) takes any pride in the achievements of our country, that he subscribes to the idea that America, unlike any other nation, is founded on a political idea and is called to be a beacon of freedom to mankind. That is not Barack Obama’s America. His new America will be a bizarre combination of France, the Soviet Union and Canada.

On the Existential Threat to Israel

I recently read two compelling pieces of work describing what their authors characterize as existential threats to the State of Israel. The first was an article inthe May 2009 issue of Commentary magazine by Michael Oren entitled ‘Seven Existential Threats.’ The second was the book by Aaron Klein published this year with the shocking title The Late Great State of Israel. Michael Oren is a well-known historian who was recently appointed Israeli ambassador to the United States; Aaron Klein is an intrepid journalist who has broken many major stories on the Middle East in the last decade. Two serious men in a position to know. Thus when both, in dead earnest, lay out highly plausible, even probable, scenarios fort he purposeful and imminent destruction of the 61-year-old Jewish State, it is impossible not to be startled.

But before I go any further, dear reader, please stop and contemplate the enormity and barbarity of the deed these authors have forecast — the purposeful and imminent destruction of the State of Israel. There is no other nation on Earth whose existence is so threatened. Not moral monstrosities like North Korea, Burma or Zimbabwe; not intensely dysfunctional countries like Somalia; not the recently invaded Georgia, nor the hopelessly poverty-stricken(Democratic Republic of the) Congo; not even the criminal banana republic that lies 90 miles off our southern shore. Only Israel!

Genocidal maniacs in nearby countries promise that not only will the Jewish State perish at their hands, but its five-plus million Jews will be slaughtered, scattered and/or reduced to vassal status. Moreover, the peoples of the world barely utter a peep in opposition tot his deranged intention. And even worse, there is evidence that a not insignificant portion of the people of Israel do not take the threat all that seriously . . . and too many of their leaders pursue policies that actually aid and abet the madmen who chase their ghoulish goal.

Tiny Israel, comprising a land mass in size no more than 0.0625% of that of the Arab world and 0.005% of the Muslim world, and totaling in population roughly 0.03% of the Arab world and again 0.005% of the world’s Muslims, this tiny Israel represents a cancerous growth to the Arabs and Muslims that must be excised. Israel, whose people have made the desert bloom, revived an ancient language, established world class educational institutions, pioneered breakthroughs in science and engineering, created art, music, theatre and literature that rival per capita the output of any nation in the world, developed agricultural techniques that have inspired mankind, and who have established and maintained a representative democracy under the rule of law unequaled by any Arab or Muslim neighbor — all while under a constant threat of annihilation from its birth; this country and its people, under an obscene death sentence, are not important enough for Western Civilization to come to their defense.

The cowards in Europe are more interested in oil and playing nice with the Muslim world. Israel’s presence in the Middle East interferes with those objectives. And while the Europeans acknowledge that they perpetrated some nasty business on the Jewish people some 65-70 years ago, well, Europe also considers the debt incurred by that business to be paid off and now it is time to move on. Even the new administration in the United States shows signs of ‘having had it with Israeli intransigence’ and is tilting toward policies that play into the hands of those bent on Israel’s destruction.

In this article I will review the evidence presented by Mssrs. Oren and Klein and then I will offer a broader theory that incorporates the thinking of both gentlemen.

Oren’s seven existential threats are, in the order he presents them: The Loss of Jerusalem, The Arab Demographic Threat, Deligitimization, Terrorism, A Nuclear-Armed Iran, The Hemorrhaging of Sovereignty and Corruption. Anyone who is paying even the slightest attention to Israeli affairs in recent years will know immediately what Oren means by the second, third, fourth and fifth threats. So I shan’t elaborate on them. But let us be clear on his meaning for the other three. 

In ‘the Loss of Jerusalem,’ Oren identifies the usurper as the city’s non-Zionist population. He points out that the combination ofArab residents plus Haredim, that is, the so-called ultra-Orthodox, who reside in Jerusalem but arguably are opposed to the existence of a Jewish State in pre-messianic times, now constitutes a majority of the city’s population. The dwindling number of secular Jews in the city has translated into a diminishing tax base, declining industry, fewer professionals and a hollowing out of the city’s cultural life that strips it of any ability to attract the country’s youth to visit, much less live there. Oren asserts that ‘the preservation of Jerusalem as the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish state is vital to Israel’s existence . . . The city represents the raison d’etre of the Jewish state, and without it Israel would be merely another miniature Mediterranean enclave not worth living in, much less defending.’

With the term ‘Hemorrhaging of Sovereignty,’ Oren highlights the fact that Israel is losing effective control over large portions of its land mass and population. Once again, he identifies the growing Arab and Haredi communities, more specifically, the regions in whicht hey live as increasingly outside the normal legal jurisdictions of the Jewish Sate. In a parallel vein, where else in the world would you find a country with a legislature that contains a significant percentage of members devoted to the dissolution of the State?

Finally, there is the matter of corruption. Certainly in recent times, Israel has been afflicted by an unusually large outbreak of corruption among its leaders — a former President, a former Prime Minister and too many others. Oren claims that this is the most severe threat that Israel faces. Here I do not agree with him. Sadly, pervasive corruption at high levels is endemic around the world. Unlike its other threats, there is nothing singular to Israel about this one.

Klein does not compile in his book a list of threats like Oren does. Rather he presents a sweeping portrait, in much greater depth than Oren’s magazine piece, of a country that is losing (or has already lost) its soul. Building around a description of approximately a dozen calamities that have befallen Israel (almost all self-inflicted), he paints a picture of a weak and vacillating leadership, a naive and borderline subversive media, a population too fixated on its own material well-being to focus clearly on the external and internal threats to the State, friends (US and Europe) who do more harm thangood and a host of hostile neighbors who are determined to bring an end to the Jewish State — soon!

The calamities are well-known to any follower of the Israeli scene; they include: the ill-advised unilateral retreat from south Lebanon, which has only led to rocket attacks on Israeli territory and an ineffective Israeli incursion that failed to achieve any meaningful objective; the equally ill-advised retreat from Gaza, with the same consequences; the unnecessary abandonment of the Temple Mount to Arab authority; the surrender and ultimate destruction of Joseph’s Tomb; foolish attempts to engage the Syrians in negotiations, including offers to abandon the Golan Heights — a military mistake of such enormous import that only suicide can be the conscious motive; allowing the illegal construction of tens of thousands of Arab domiciles while severely restricting the development of Jewish neighborhoods on the so-called West Bank; a reluctance to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, which could haunt Israel not just by giving Iran a capability to strike Israel with nuclear-armed missiles, but could also put WMD inthe hands of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza; not dismantling the UN-administered ‘refugee camps’ in areas under Israel’s control; toying with the idea of retreat from (areas of) the West Bank, ignoring the fact that Hamas will take over those areas exactly as they did in Gaza and whence rockets will rain down on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; and finally, dancing with the duplicitous Palestinian Authority, which is just as determined to bring about Israel’s destruction as is Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.

One striking feature that is common to both works: while the fact that many threats to Israel originate externally is not minimized, both authors raise the notion that much of the danger is due to cowardice and stupidity on the part of Israel’s political and cultural leaders. Klein drives the point home forcefully, Oren more obliquely.

I concur with these distinguished gentlemen that the threats to Israel are multiple, real, profoundly serious and if not confronted and dealt with, they could signal the death knell of the Jewish State. But I also believe that most if not all of the threats can be subsumed under three mega-trends that encompass them, and which pose a mortal danger to more than just tiny, beleaguered Israel. Those trends are:

1. A worldwide resurgence of Islam, much of it in a radical and deadly mode;

2. A worldwide resurgence of virulent Anti-Semitism, much of it cloaked as anti-Zionism, but in reality nothing more thanold-fashioned Jew hatred;

3. The steep decline within Western Civilization of self-esteem.

It is easy to fit many of the threats to Israel outlined by Oren and Klein under the umbrella provided by the first two trends. It is perhaps less clear in the case of the third. By that trend I of course mean the declining belief by the peoples of Europe and North America that the fundamental political, cultural, religious and social principles, which undergird the advanced civilization they constructed and maintained during the last half millennium, have any validity any longer. No civilization, lacking faith in its own bedrock principles, legends, stories, religions and history can long endure. Witness the demise of the late, unlamented Soviet Union, occasioned by precisely such a loss of self-esteem. The West appears headed down the same road with Europe in the lead — but with Obama in the saddle, the US is rushing to catch up. And Israel, which is surely an outpost of Western Civilization, has moved to the head of the pack.

Much of the cowardice and stupidity identified by Oren and Klein are merely manifestations of said loss of self-esteem. Of course Israel is in the cross-hairs of all three trends, but the West is not far behind. That is, the forces that are poised at Israel’s throat today will be at the throats of the nations in the West very soon — in some instances, they already are.

The malignant form of Islam that infects significant parts of the Muslim world is intent on conquering and subjugating not only Israel, but also the West, indeed the entire world. That goal might sound preposterous to Americans, who are far removed from the call of the muezzin. But that does not mean that it is not a professed goal —one that is vocalized and acted upon every day by its adherents. We ignore it at our peril.

As for the loss of self-esteem by Western Civilization, that is an increasingly explored topic in America today, especially in the conservative literature. I too have addressed it in previous installments in this blog. The election of Barack Obama and his cohort of ultra-liberal Congressional allies bear vivid testimony to the advancing state of decay in the United States. My point here is that the growing leftist, multicultural, pacifistic, egalitarian, anti-patriotic, anti-religious, corruption-riddled mentality that inhabits the Israeli body politic is, I believe, a manifestation of exactly the same kind of loss of self-esteem that is crippling Europe and increasingly the United States.

Finally, why is resurgent anti-Semitism a problem for the West as it is of course for Israel? Simple. History has shown that the words of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 12:3, ‘Now the Lord said unto Abra[ha]m: .. . And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’) are indeed true. Those nations that have welcomed and nurtured the Jews, like the US, have prospered and succeeded; those that have persecuted the Jews, like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, have been consigned to the ash heap of history. Once upon a time, not that long ago, the disease of anti-Semitism nearly destroyed Europe. The Europeans are apparently foolish enough to give it a second try. Pray that the US is not so foolish.

 

The Nature of Obama’s Liberalism

In a previous posting on this blog (Different Visions), I have explained, as have many others, how a dispassionate evaluation of the performance of governments that operated according to liberal principles — whether of the extreme varieties like Communism, Nazism, Peronism or Italian fascism; or of the more moderate types practiced in the welfare states of Western Europe — must result in the conclusion that they were abject failures. Of course, by liberal I mean in the modern sense, not classic liberalism as it was understood in the eighteenth century. To wit, and in brief: a collectivist philosophy that emphasizes the central government as the controlling force in society; an elevation of equity, fairness and security above liberty, freedom and private property as fundamental goals of the populace; government control, if not outright ownership, of the means of production; a multicultural, non-religious, ‘global family’ cultural outlook that debases the value of Western Civilization, American history and free markets; and a ‘living Constitutional’ system in which ‘change,’ ‘progress’ and the pursuit of ‘social justice’ count for far more than ‘tradition,’ ‘stability’ andthe ‘rule of law.’ (A more thorough explanation of the basic tenets ofmodern liberalism, as opposed to conservative principles, can be foundin my book, Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains).

The human carnage, decline in prosperity, loss of freedom and dependent mentality that have resulted in nations in which liberalism has reigned unchecked are so pervasive and obvious that I wondered in the aforementioned article how liberals could ‘ignore these results andcontinue to have faith in their leftist ideas.’ I offered three possible explanations there. It is my purpose in this article to ascribe one (or more) of these rationales to the underlying motives of our dear President. To be more precise in that article, I said:

Either the liberal is blind to the damage; or he sees it but believes the principles have not been applied correctly and that America is a special case in which liberalism can co-exist with classic American ideals in order to improve our country; or he flagrantly does not care. In the first instance, much of the populace simply does not recognize or does not understand the wreckage of liberalism’s failures. They are so brainwashed by the media, the schools, the librarians, the ad agencies, the lawyers, the foundations and all the other opinion molding organs of society that have been thoroughly captured by the Left, that they believe — among other fairy tales — that Roosevelt’s New Deal pulled the US out of the Great Depression; that Great Society programs have produced a more just society — not one characterized by welfare dependency, out of wedlock births, rampant pornography, a permanent underclass and wanton crime; and that the Income Tax and the alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies allow the Federal Government to assume its rightful place as the most important component of US society, providing vital support for education, energy, transportation, housing and virtually every other facet of American life.

In the second instance, we encounter the ‘well-intentioned liberal.’ The Democratic Party is well-stocked with them. They are confident that they can fine-tune and spruce up American society according to more humane egalitarian principles in order to smooth the rough edges caused by rugged individualism. They do not believe that the fundamental character of the American experiment in freedom will be altered by their policies, rather it will be perfected. We will acknowledge our past flaws like slavery, maltreatment of American Indians and suppression of women’s rights, and by correcting them and other deficiencies in our society, we will create a more enlightened country that remains true to its fundamental creed as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

Finally, in the third case, doctrinaire liberals/socialists do not care about the carnage because they would have you believe that America is an unjust, unfair, bigoted and corrupt nation that must be completely remade. They do not see prosperity and success as the nation’s primary goals; rather equality and fairness should reign supreme. Liberty and freedom are not nearly as important as social justice, multiculturalism and environmental justice — whatever that is. In which of these three categories Obama fits is a topic for a future article.

Well, here is that article.

Now of course I do not know Barack Obama personally and so anymotives I ascribe to him will represent conclusions based on my observations of his public persona. But the President of the United States is the most closely scrutinized person in the world. Over the course of his campaign for the Presidency and especially in his actions during the first half year of that Presidency, there is more than ample evidence to formulate what I see as highly probable motivations.

So let us start with the first rationale. This would explain Obama’s extreme left-wing policies as follows. Namely, he believes in his heart that he is doing what is best for America, that his actions and their consequences are fully consistent with American history and Constitutional Law and that they will result in a better country economically, socially and especially morally. I have no doubt that many of his followers, thoroughly brainwashed by the media, the educational establishment and the other opinion molding organs of American society that are firmly in the grip of the Left, fit this description perfectly. They are not cognizant or will not accept that socialism/fascism/liberalism or whatever you want to call Obama’s political orientation has been a colossal failure wherever it has been tried. They do not know or will not recognize that: cap and trade will impoverish the United States, nationalized health insurance will result in the rationing of health care, coddling of the mullahs will endanger our security, pumping up the money supply and out of control governments pending will result in stagflation, and increasing taxes on the ‘wealthy’ will hurt the middle class. Their disbelief or ignorance is breathtaking because these consequences are exactly what has happened when loony liberalism has prevailed — see, e.g., England, prior to the arrival of Margaret Thatcher on the scene.

But I seriously doubt that Obama is that ignorant. Yes, he is brainwashed — after all, his political associations in his young adult life were almost exclusively with those on the hard Left. His entire worldview, from law school student to Community-Organizer-in-Chief, has been fashioned out of the clay molded by extreme left sculptors of American society — Alinsky, Wright, Ayers and the like. Moreover, the disdain that is evident in his manner when he pays lip service to conservative alternatives to his beliefs suggests that he gives absolutely no credence to the possibility that his collectivist views are misguided and potentially lethal to the country. If this is not brainwashed, it is certainly closed-minded.

But my liberal friends keep assuring me that he is a very smart man. I choose to believe them. It is impossible, if he is so smart, that he does not know exactly what he is doing and what the consequences will be. So I am ruling out ignorance. That leaves only naivete or malevolence. If it is the former, then, in spite of its track record, he believes that liberalism is still the best course for America. Yes ,it has failed in other venues, but only because it wasn’t conceptualized well or its implementation was flawed. He doesn’t accept that Nazism or Communism is in any way related to liberalism. And he doesn’t see Western Europe as a failure. Yes, their economic growth and productivity doesn’t match ours, but they have fairer, more equitable societies. Besides, with our Yankee ingenuity and initiative, we’ll do it better than they have. And yes, their militaries are weaker than ours, but if we play our cards carefully in foreign policy, we won’t need such a strong military. Okay, the country will be overall a little poorer, but only because there won’t be so many billionaires. On the other hand, our wealth will be more evenly distributed, resulting in a more just society. Yes, we ignore or circumvent the original meaning of the Constitution on occasion; but Obama would have only been 3/5 of a person under its aegis — thus it is a flawed document. Besides, it is not a biblical tract that demands absolute obedience. It’s only meant as a guide. And I believe, says Mr. Obama, that the path I am taking America down is not inconsistent with that Guide Book.

To me this is naivete par excellence. It is a design for the future based on a faulty reading of the past. Is it a faithful representation of Obama’s core philosophy? Maybe! What about the third possibility?

In fact it is painful to write the following words. To entertain the thought that the freely elected President of the United States is not a patriot, that he despises what our country has stood for and seeks a radical recasting of the fundamental character of the nation, to think thus is to contemplate the possibility that the last election was a suicidal act by the people of the United States. And yet it is possible, many would say plausible, and a not insignificant number would claim that it is self-evident.

The evidence is strong. He promised and he is delivering, together with the left-wing radicals he has appointed, an ultra-liberal government. Of course in this he is greatly aided by the mob of Leftists who now control the Congress. But it is his advocacy of: cap and trade; nationalized, uniform, mandatory and government controlled health insurance; higher taxes (on everyone, not just the ‘rich’); card check; nationalization of critical segments of private industry; massive government spending and debt; a multilateral and WEAK foreign policy that coddles our adversaries and pressures only Israel; evisceration of the armed forces, curtailment of missile defense and abolition of don’t-ask-don’t tell; a marginal place for religion in American life (which church has he joined? Oh, Rev. Wright is not preaching in DC); federal command of public (and private) education; a weakening of the public’s right to bear arms, and on and on . . .. It is his advocacy of all of this (and more) that is the embodiment of an extreme left-wing program that will radically alter the fundamental and historic nature of American society. Moreover, he never speaks of liberty and freedom, or the rights of Americans to their businesses or property. He goes abroad and paints a wretched portrait of an America that has betrayed the ideals of the American Revolution. (Actually I think he has our revolution and that of the French confused.) He seems oblivious to America’s lead role in the fight to eliminate Nazism, Communism and even colonialism from the world. Perhaps these are not worthy accomplishments in his eyes.

So is he a naive waif seeking to rescue an imperfect America in whose fundamental principles he believes, or is he a malevolent soul intent on remaking a corrupt, bigoted and violent America that he reviles? I wish I knew! But it has to be one of these two. Although, perhaps it does not matter. What difference does it make if he is purposefully leading us to hell or if he is accidentally diverting us there? We shall be lost either way.

Obama certainly seems to admire the welfare states of Western Europe and seeks to have the US emulate them. He would appear to be blissfully unaware of the political and social cancers that afflict those societies. Cancers that are largely self-inflicted. For not unlike in the Soviet Union as it decayed into non-existence, the leaders and people of Europe have lost faith in their own guiding principles and legends. How else to explain a continent in which:

  • you cannot speak of Christ, Christianity or Christmas on the soil that used to be known as Christendom;
  • the people that produced the art, science and literature of the Renaissance now produce . . . little, because no one is working very hard;
  • the countries that invented and perfected the idea of the nation-state are falling all over themselves to surrender their sovereignty to a supra-national European Union;
  • some of the strongest armies in world history were created, yet today has virtually no military capability;
  • the defeat of an invading Islamic army was repeated several times, but today lies prostrate before a horde of invading Muslim civilians that are subverting the culture from within;
  • few are getting married, fewer are having babies, and the resulting, quickly aging population is oblivious to the mortal dangers these pose.

My final thought: are we there yet? Does Obama’s election signal the end of the great American experiment in individual liberty, limited government and unbounded opportunity? Will he lead us down the path that Europe has already trod? Americans still describe themselves overwhelmingly as more conservative than liberal. How can that be squared with their political choices in 2008? Are so many of us so thoroughly brainwashed that we don’t realize that we are not really conservative? Or were we just so disappointed in Bush and the fake conservative Republicans that we decided to give the real liberals a chance? Will we regret it as we did with Jimmy Carter and come to our senses? I DON’T KNOW. The stakes are very high. Obama’s liberalism, whatever its true nature, is a lethal dart aimed at the heart of America. Will we duck or will we not even notice that it has struck its mark?

 

 

 

Our New President’s Three Top Priorities: Government Cures for Problems Caused by Government

President Obama repeatedly emphasized as a candidate that his three top priorities as President would be health care, energy and education. He has continued to stress those themes since his inauguration, both in proposed legislation and on the bully pulpit. To his way of thinking — and to that of the liberal elite who believe they are running the nation, which in fact they seem to be — these three issues are the most critical facing our nation at the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century. This would seem to relegate to secondary importance such ‘minor’ issues as: Islamic fundamentalism and its assault on Western Civilization; runaway entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt the nation; a bloated federal government, massive deficits, a rapidly expanding money supply that portends severe inflation and a crippled economy, all of which threaten to do likewise; out of control illegal immigration, augmented by tens of millions of poorly assimilated minorities that weaken the cultural fabric of our society; and a profound ignorance among our citizens of the founding principles upon which our country was established.

Now while I think that the President’s priorities might be misaligned, I do not mean to suggest that Barack’s big three are not vitally important. They are. But what strikes me is that the three top problems that he has identified are perhaps the three that most clearly illustrate a principle that characterizes the behavior of our federal government. Namely, it is intent on solving problems that it created in the first place. Moreover, its preferred method of solution bears amazing resemblance to the methods it deployed that created the original problem. That assertion is true of some of the other issues I specified above. But it is particularly true of Obama’s big three. My purpose here is to elaborate on that observation.

I will take them in reverse chronological order. That means energy is first as the original sins of the government occurred less than a half-century ago. America’s need for and use of vast quantities of energy originate in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Prior to that we got by with energy gleaned from ‘natural’ sources like water, solar, wind and of course human and animal strength. But the new engines of economic growth in the 19th century required more robust sources of energy — initially coal, and then later oil. These sustained us for more than a century, although they had certain disadvantages — primarily environmental and the fact that, at least in the case of oil, the sources were to be found increasingly in foreign lands.

Then, at almost exactly the same point in time, three critical events occurred: (i) the environmental impact of our heavy reliance on coal and oil worked its way into the consciousness of the American public’s mind; (ii) it became clear that the ‘finite nature’ of those resources would cause them, if not to disappear altogether, then at least to become dramatically more expensive and harder to obtain; and (iii) an amazing new resource became practical. At that point, the federal government initiated policies that recognized (i) but totally ignored (ii) and (iii). In short, beginning approximately 45 years ago and continuing to this day, the government implemented steps that: (a) restricted the use of coal and limited the deployment of more environmentally friendly coal technologies; (b) severely limited drilling and exploration for new domestic sources of oil, shale and other ‘dirty’ sources of energy; (c) began to emphasize and favor inefficient and expensive biofuels that has had the unanticipated consequence of distorting food prices (because of the diversion of certain grains from food production to biofuel production); (d) made the construction of new oil refineries virtually impossible; (e) pursued the chimera of reviving the use of ‘natural’ sources (water, solar, wind) in a major way, expecting beyond common sense that they would provide a substantial portion of our total energy needs; and (f) most importantly, essentially suspended the development and deploymentof nuclear technologies that would in fact have supplied huge proportions of our energy needs. Not surprisingly, these steps have caused scarcity in energy supplies, driven energy costs sky high and placed our industry and our lifestyle at grave risk. Stated in this fashion, and I believe it is an accurate summary of the idiotic government-driven energy policies our country has pursued over the last 45 years, it is natural to wonder how our government, with our concurrence, could institute these incredibly moronic policies. Why would any government do such things?

The answer: For exactly the same reasons that motivate the Obama administration, whose members seem to be convinced that to fix our energy problems we have to pursue precisely the policies that put us in this predicament — although they don’t see it that way. The Obamaniacs are motivated by the beliefs that:

  • The US is no more entitled to access to energy supplies than any other nation, that therefore our consumption of more energy per capita than anyone else is unfair, indeed morally wrong, and that it must cease;
  • Mankind is a threat to the Earth and living with less, cleaner energy is an appropriate check on our human tendency to ‘rape the Earth’;
  • It is the job of the federal government to control our energy appetite and referee the equitable distribution of energy, not only among the peoples of the nation, but also among the peoples of the world; and
  • Unregulated exploitation of the world’s energy sources is a reflection of the corporate greed that is so characteristic of an unfettered capitalistic system, a system that must be reigned in.

It is a radical, anti-free market, redistributionist philosophy that too many of our people have bought into because of the brainwashing they have succumbed to in our schools and at the hands of a biased media. It is a program that will lead us to economic ruin.

Having caused the problem, the government announces that we are in crisis and then sets out to resolve it by rededicating itself to the efforts that created it in the first pace. And the people buy it. But when there will be insufficient energy to heat their homes, power their vehicles and drive the engines of their businesses, then perhaps the good people of America will realize, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, that Barack Obama and the liberals calling the shots are the problem, not the solution.

Proceeding backward in time, the next issue is health care. The basic problem is the explosive nature of the cost of health care. It is universally acknowledged that American health care is the finest in the world — why else would foreigners flock here to access it? Unfortunately, its cost is exceedingly high and seemingly out ofcontrol. Why is that? I maintain the root cause is that the vast majority of American health care is paid for by so-called ‘third party’ insurers. That is, party one (the individual or family) seeks medical assistance from party two (doctors and hospitals), but the bill is paid by party three (either an insurance company or the government).

This abnormal situation came about because of two fundamental blunders by the federal government. The first was the wage and price controls it imposed during World War II. This caused business, when it sought to attract employees, to offer subsidized health care benefits to potential employees; the subsidies were not subject to federal income tax or wage controls. With the federal government’s acquiescence in this dodge around wage controls, thus was born employer-based health insurance that inaugurated the era of the third party payer system. It looked like a win-win for everyone, but the impression created in the public’s mind was that, while health care was not totally free, its costs were capped (by the premiums they paid through their employer) and so they felt no compulsion not to enjoy as much of it as they pleased. A simple case of supply and demand. The insatiable demand by third party-insured health care consumers drives the price for health care higher and higher.

The problem was compounded by the introduction of Medicare in the mid-60s. The target was America’s elderly instead of its workers and young families, and the third party insurer became the government instead of private insurance companies — a horrible eventuality for other reasons. But the third party payer principle was the same and so costs were driven even higher. Americans buy their car, life, home and disability insurance in the open market. Costs for these escalate in line with standard cost of living indicators as people pay directly for what they receive. But the federally-inspired, third party payer health care insurance industry interferes with the natural laws of supply and demand and drives prices to the stratosphere.

So how is the government going to fix this? Why of course by instituting universal health care — controlled, managed and financed by the government, which, whether purposefully or inadvertently, will drive private health insurers out of business. Nationalized health care! Oh swell, the government completely controlling the supply and demand for health care. Of course the demand will not decrease, so the only way to control costs will be by restricting supply. Yup, rationing of health care! Precisely what has happened in other countries that have nationalized health care (see, e.g., Great Britain and Canada)!

Having seen the disaster that nationalized health care has been in other countries, why would the US government implement it here and why would we the people vote for it and support it? Obama made no secret of his intentions. How could we have given him the power to do it? The answer to the second question lies in the brainwashing we have endured in the last few generations; the answer to the first looks suspiciously like the reasons for our misbegotten energy policies:

  • Access to health care is a basic human right (actually, where in the Constitution or Federalist Papers that might be found is a mystery to me — but Barack sees it clearly); all should have the same access — even if at a lower level for everyone.
  • The federal government has the obligation to guarantee that right.
  • Private insurers are motivated purely by the profit motive (damned corporate greed again), not by the desire to fulfill this human right — only the government can provide uniform and fair coverage.

Once again, a radical, redistributionist ideology at work that our brainwashed populace might conceivably not endorse, but certainly acquiesces in. And again, having caused the problem, the government proposes to fix it by redoubling its misguided efforts. When, like in Britain, it takes months (if ever) to see a specialist, we might have second thoughts on the wisdom of this fix.

This brings me to the third priority — education. In this case the original sin lies long in the past — namely, more than a century ago when radicals like John Dewey (and Horace Mann even earlier) convinced the American people that the education of their children was a task best left to the government. It need not have developed that way. True, the governments involved were local, or occasionally county or State, not federal. That would come later. But at the end of the nineteenth century the people of the United States relied on local, State and the national government for precious few services outside of those prescribed in the Constitution. Mail, transportation, some communications come to mind. All in the realm of interstate commerce. Today every activity falls under the rubric of interstate commerce — even education. But exactly where is it ordained that government-run schools are the preferred — and if some had their way, only — method of delivering an elementary school education to the youth of America? It is a choice made by the American people that has led to:

  • Inefficiency, waste and corruption in the administration of America’s school systems;
  • A level of performance by the average student that borders on the abominable;
  • A curriculum that is often at odds with the desires of the students’ parents;
  • A dangerous physical environment rife with drugs, promiscuity and violence;
  • A failure to transmit to America’s youth the fundamentals of our Constitutional Republic and the essentials of our American culture;
  • A total failure to teach our youth about free market capitalism, the fundamental economic system that is responsible for our unprecedented prosperity;
  • A cadre of teachers beholden to the most radical and powerful union in America — the National Educational Association; and
  • A homogeneity of thought on the part of the teachers and staff who run the system that has resulted in the brainwashing of America’s youth who are inculcated with a ‘progressive agenda,’ which is nothing more than the statist philosophy of the liberal elite.

Here Barack would disagree. He likely would think me daft and would instead cite the following as the fundamental problems with our schoolsystems:

  • Inadequate resources available to minorities compared to those for white males;
  • Too much emphasis on American history and culture and not nearly enough attention paid to the people of the world;
  • Insufficient study of the effect of mankind on the environment and not enough indoctrination — er, that is, information about being green;
  • Inadequate teacher salaries; and
  • Too much local control as it is clear that education is far too important to the future of America to be left to anyone but the federal government.

Well, how will he fix these problems? By nationalizing the schools of course and reinforcing the regimen implemented over the last century, which as I have pointed out, is responsible for the failures I have cited — as opposed to his phony problems. The schools will only get worse. But they will produce little Obama clones.

In summary, our esteemed President has identified three critical areas of concern for our nation, but failed to notice that they are areas of concern precisely because of past policies practiced by the government. He proposes to fix them by implementing ‘new’ policies that constitute nothing more than the ratcheting up of the methods that caused the concerns originally. Can you say ‘Prescription for disaster!’ Hopefully the American people will wake up before it is too late.