The import of American liberalism from the New Deal to Obamacare has been the creation, expansion and preservation of the welfare state. It is this state that has put us over $16 trillion in debt and counting. Such GDP-surpassing levels of obligation are unsustainable and will precipitate an economic crisis. Witness Europe.
Liberalism will not be able to respond to this fiscal-based crisis because its entire programs is the creation of the welfare state whose unaffordability is the genesis of said crisis. Liberalism has created this crisis, they have no response to it other than to ignore it altogether. When ignoring it is no longer an option they will be left sputtering.
Witness Europe again. Even as Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and (less directly) France teeter on the edge of economic collapse and the destruction of the entire European project, there are no real efforts at meaningful reform, only feeble requests for perpetual bailouts and debt integration.
When the contagion crosses the pond the Left, unable to respond to a catastrophe of their own making, will meltdown in exact concurrence with the economy.
It will then be to the Right to redress what the Left hath wrought.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
2nd Term Expectations
As President Obama officially begins his second term, it's important for his loyal opposition to have appropriate expectations.
The republic's present debt combined with its unfunded liabilities spell out national ruin. The level of taxation necessary to bridge that gap would bring the same result. Comprehensive reform of the entitlement leviathan -- the conductor of our red ink train -- is the solution, the only solution.
Someday -- probably when both our treasury and credit are depleted -- this conclusion will be inescapable.
That day will not be in the next four years.
If it was not already, the president's thinly-veiled paean to the welfare state on Monday made clear that any notion of reform beyond sophistic lip-service is dead-on-arrival. President Obama views himself as a White Knight of sorts, the figure that will not only consolidate the New Deal and Great Society but transform the American republic into a European-esque social democracy.
That we could become this is possible. That we could remain this for very long is delusional.
As one European state after another teeters on the edge of fiscal abyss, the upshot of emulating the European model is evident, or at least it should be. If facts are "stubborn things", as John Adams once said, then simple math is more stubborn still. It is inescapable: you cannot spend more than you take in forever, especially not at the yawning levels that we've begun to. You can only borrow so much. As a wise Iron Lady once said, "eventually you run out of other people's money."
As the self-regarded heir of FDR, President Obama denies this -- and he always will. Seeking to duplicate the New Deal, he cannot escape from the fact that he doesn't enjoy the post-war (often illusory) surpluses his progressive predecessors did. (Ironically, in vainly trying to recreate what progressives of yesteryear did, the new progressive prince is himself quite reactionary.) The man and the moment are not one and the same.
With the force of a Democratic senate and his own presidential veto, he can and will enjoin the country in this delusion for the next four years.
Republicans cannot change this. For the next quadrennium America will continue full speed ahead towards the cliff and into oblivion.
What they can do is make the argument. Convince a country that needs convincing that there is a better way. The GOP can position themselves so that when the next opportunity comes -- when President Obama has returned to Chicago and is writing about himself again -- the crisis can be averted and the futures of current generations and generations to come can be restored.
The task then Republicans can commend themselves to is not a quixotic quest to reform with Barack Obama, but to try and seize the broom needed to clean the Augean Stables he will leave in his wake.
The republic's present debt combined with its unfunded liabilities spell out national ruin. The level of taxation necessary to bridge that gap would bring the same result. Comprehensive reform of the entitlement leviathan -- the conductor of our red ink train -- is the solution, the only solution.
Someday -- probably when both our treasury and credit are depleted -- this conclusion will be inescapable.
That day will not be in the next four years.
If it was not already, the president's thinly-veiled paean to the welfare state on Monday made clear that any notion of reform beyond sophistic lip-service is dead-on-arrival. President Obama views himself as a White Knight of sorts, the figure that will not only consolidate the New Deal and Great Society but transform the American republic into a European-esque social democracy.
That we could become this is possible. That we could remain this for very long is delusional.
As one European state after another teeters on the edge of fiscal abyss, the upshot of emulating the European model is evident, or at least it should be. If facts are "stubborn things", as John Adams once said, then simple math is more stubborn still. It is inescapable: you cannot spend more than you take in forever, especially not at the yawning levels that we've begun to. You can only borrow so much. As a wise Iron Lady once said, "eventually you run out of other people's money."
As the self-regarded heir of FDR, President Obama denies this -- and he always will. Seeking to duplicate the New Deal, he cannot escape from the fact that he doesn't enjoy the post-war (often illusory) surpluses his progressive predecessors did. (Ironically, in vainly trying to recreate what progressives of yesteryear did, the new progressive prince is himself quite reactionary.) The man and the moment are not one and the same.
With the force of a Democratic senate and his own presidential veto, he can and will enjoin the country in this delusion for the next four years.
Republicans cannot change this. For the next quadrennium America will continue full speed ahead towards the cliff and into oblivion.
What they can do is make the argument. Convince a country that needs convincing that there is a better way. The GOP can position themselves so that when the next opportunity comes -- when President Obama has returned to Chicago and is writing about himself again -- the crisis can be averted and the futures of current generations and generations to come can be restored.
The task then Republicans can commend themselves to is not a quixotic quest to reform with Barack Obama, but to try and seize the broom needed to clean the Augean Stables he will leave in his wake.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Civilization & the State
Civilization is replete with problems. The state can solve very few of them. It can be and is the source of a great deal more.
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