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Obama: The Image, The Man

Political gifts are rare, and when they appear on the horizon, one always cynically thinks of the Trojan Horse scenario.  But when Reverend Wright began to strut and fret his hour upon the stage, it became clear that this was a gift of lasting value.  The reverend's stellar performance at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday, which confirmed that pastors aren't immune from the base allure of narcissism, reasserted, for the few who might have missed his prior performances, that America is racist, and it effectively invited 9/11.

He also posited the noxious notion that blacks have "different" learning styles than others, that their brains are wired differently, which conjures the arch racism of the late 19th century.  If you saw any of his speech you might have wondered how Senator Obama, his wife, and two young daughters, could have sat through his sermons Sunday after Sunday.

That, of course, is the crux of this bizarre development.  Most of us attend Sunday Mass or church services to deepen our faith, to better understand our obligations to God, and to better serve Him and our fellow man.  We can't help but ask how Obama felt his faith was deepened by these kind of rantings, even if they only happened infrequently.  Indeed, what kind of world view, what brand of morality, would comfortably mesh with Wright's caustic, distorted rantings?

A picture of Obama is emerging, but it's not the one he has so carefully crafted.  On Sunday's Meet the Press, Richard Wolffe of Newsweek, blithely asserted that Mr. Obama can't be an elitist because he was the product of a single parent household, was raised in a foreign country, and just finished paying off his school loans.  The entire panel, including the redoubtable Russert, let that pass without so much as a shrug.

It's stunning that they don't know that the kind of smug elitism that Obama is charged with has nothing to do with such superficialities, but everything to do with values, which is the prism through which we judge others.  For Obama, the small town white man is an intellectually and culturally insular individual, with numbingly parochial concerns and aspirations.  That universe, for the sophisticated urban elite, the black tie chattering classes, is so utterly remote as to be dismissed a priori. 

As evidence, we need only consider the life of William F. Buckley.  With his blue-blood background and intellectual rigor, he had all the trappings of an intellectual smug, yet he was the exact opposite.  Obama seems to have succumbed to the trappings of the elite, perhaps because he's a cultural parvenu, while wanting to reserve the first right of denial, which is arguably the worst of both worlds.

With the slow drip of revelations that's transpiring, the contours of Obama's personality, his values, and principles, is emerging.  Voters, even those in the throes of his charm, might start asking themselves whether this is the man we want in the White House for the next four years?

The Democratic Party: Stealing Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

You might recall the charge of 'stove-pipe thinking' against our intelligence community in the wake of the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  Although it was a legitimate charge, it's often the case that the same level of harsh scrutiny fails to obtain in other political arenas.  Indeed, a combination of subtle political blind spots and disincentives to venture beyond the scope of their comfort zones, effectively ensures that they won't be confronted with the charges of intellectual group-speak they routinely lodge against political enemies.

On Meet the Press, viewers were treated to just such a display.  The discussion turned to Reverend Wight, and Gwen Eiffel, a PBS political analyst and daughter of a preacher, was asked about the political dimensions of the debacle.  She began by noting that racism remains a problem in America, that people probably do make voting decisions based on race.  What was stunning is that at no time in her discussion did she mention that it was Reverend Wright who was racist, and none of the other panel members or moderator Tim Russert grasped the egregiousness of her oversight.

Russert played a snippet of Reverend Wright's response to Bill Moyers concerning Obama's criticisms of some of Wright's historical comments.  Wright said that Obama is a politician, and that he's a pastor.  Well, that's all it took for Eiffel to continue her 'stove-pipe' thinking by asserting, in an obtuse justification for Obama's two-decade association with him, that, yes, he is, indeed a politician.

But, what about Wright's assertions that he argued were taken out of context?  Indeed, what kind of context could justify Wright's statement that American "white people" deliberately introduced the AIDS virus into the black community?  That, of course, the likes of Russert and his cabal of tunnel-vision analysts, never thought about asking.

This is a serious problem for the Obama campaign--and, to a degree, for Clinton as well.  But it's only compounded when it doesn't register with the cream of the Washington editorial crop.  Moreover, it dovetails perfectly with Obama's gaff in San Francisco about rural white Pennsylvania voters "clinging" to "guns and religion" out of "bitterness."

Combined with Howard Dean's comment on the same show that 70 percent of Americans want us to leave Iraq--which is true only if you exclude the second part of the question:  What if it causes genocide in Iraq and a power vacuum in the region which Iran would fill?--then the percent drops to below 50 percent.

All of this is favorably positioning Senator McCain in ways no one thought possible just a few months ago.  His candor on the stump, command of the issues, and three decades of experience at the national level, may well carry the day.  Either way, the Democratic Party has some serious work ahead of itself if it doesn't want to, once again, steel defeat from the jaws of victory.

Obama: Out of The Mainstream

The war between image and substance in American politics has a long, if somewhat checkered history, and the image that surrounded many presidents stood in stark contrast to the truth.  Writing in Newsweek, Howard Fineman argues that Senator Obama's central electoral challenge is his image, which he predictably interchanges with 'brand.'

Politicians are already notorious for being innately disingenuous, by using 'brand' as a proxy for improving image Fineman perpetuates the odious notion that a marketing makeover is all that Obama really needs.

But looking beneath those superficial observations, he bastardizes the idea of 'mainstream' by arguing that Ronald Reagan's assertion that our urban, academic elites aren't in the mainstream, was a political tactic the left must counter:

But the whole point of America is that there are many mainstreams, and it is un-American to say otherwise.

It has the ring of a credible Madison Avenue marketing campaign, but is it true?  The idea of a mainstream is thoroughly self-defining, which is to say there are a set of precpts, values, and principles that are so fundamental to the issue at hand--in this case America--that if you don't have them, you aren't in it. 

Those include a love of country, support for a strong military presence in the world, economic freedoms, bi-laterally fair trade agreements, and the rule of law.  How do the urban elitists fare against that metric?  Regarding love of country, there were many academic elites after 9/11 that reflexively looked at American foreign policy to justify the attacks, and you'd sooner find an investment banker in rural Kentucky than a flag pin on their lapel.  With respect to our military, it's been a long, if unsavory tradition among our urban liberals that our military is over-funded and an embarrassing intrusion into the affairs of the nations which house them; moreover, the projection of American military power makes them queasy.

Concerning trade, you must have noticed the reanimation of the protectionist instinct the left favored in the past in the presidential debates, not to mention the Democratically controlled Congress, which nixed the agreement with Venezuela, our staunchest ally in South America.

The rule of law covers a vast civic and judicial territory, and suffice it to say that many of urbanites are far more likely to consider perpetrators victims than the real victims.  That's why they decry our incarceration rates, playing the race card at every turn.  As we've argued, there are clear steps we can take to mitigate that rate, but it begins at the spigot:  Pass strong legislation at the federal and local level that disincents single parenthood and that provides strong criminal justice consequences for those who break the law.  Stop stigmatizing guns and go after the criminals. Again, that has the ring of common sense which means it's dismissed as prejudicial.

Indeed, what Fineman is actually arguing for in his 'multi-mainstream' model is recognition of what are really cultural splinter groups.  His goal, along with that of the left generally, is to, if you will, 'mainstream' them through a kind of cultural bracket creep, and, frankly, it's working.  Imagine the shock of those in the mid-50s if they knew we would be arguing about whether a 15 year old should be allowed to have an abortion without notifying her parents.  And, what would they say about the fact that our school teachers and administrators have no authority whatsoever to discipline problem students?

To immunize himself against a counter-argument, he instructs us that it's "un-American" to suggest there is, in fact, a single 'mainstream.'  That's called making up the rules as you go.

The list is as endless as it is counter to the traditions that made our Republic great.  If image--or 'brand'--were all that's necessary for Obama to remake himself, there would be more people on the eligibility list for high office, not to mention at the highest levels of corporate business.

But, American voters expect more and they can smell a phony a football field away, and that's Obama's real problem.  The old saw about 'You never get a second chance to make a first impression' is doubly true for presidential candidates, and he's had his chance.  If he's the nominee, you can be sure the McCain campaign will run commercials across America, and they will simply tell the truth about this man, a man who is completely out of the mainstream.

Of Guns, Morality, & Culture

One of the sacred myths of liberals is that guns are responsible for our murder rate.  Pass confiscatory gun control laws and you'll solve the problem.  If that doesn't work, be even more draconian, because that must be the problem, it can't have anything to do with culture or values.

Using Chicago as his example, Steve Chapman, writing in today's Chicago Tribune, cogently argues that stringent gun laws have no meaningful impact on murder rates.  We can cite statistics from John Lott ("More Guns, Less Crime") and Gary Kleck, whom Chapman mentions, but unlike questionable second hand smoke studies which the left lionize, it has no impact on their thinking.

We can also make the observation that the per capita rate of gun ownership hasn't materially changed in America, that guns have always been a part of our nation's civic fabric, but that too makes no difference whatsoever.  If you're looking for an explanation, look no further than the left's twin sins--the incapacity to judge and its love of victimhood.

You see, by stigmatizing guns themselves, or their alleged prevalence or 'easy access,' liberals can shut down the engine of inquiry and so keep the 'values' argument off the table.  But, if we can agree that the prevalence of guns has remained essentially unchanged--and that's a fact--what did change in the past 45 years?

Well, like so many modern banes, from abortion to welfare, it can be traced to the post-modern, iconoclastic 60s, which began our nation's ignoble march into moral relativism.  That's when a new generation made the case that marriage is merely a quaint--read dispensable--social convention, that recreational sex among kids is harmless, and that authority is meant to be challenged.

The result is much in evidence.  Since 1965 the percent of single parents has exploded--70 percent of all minority, inner-city births--high school graduation rates have plummeted, although crime has fluctuated, the frequency of gun violence in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., increased significantly, much of which is gang related. 

The most glaring solution is the one that liberals such as those who run the city of Chicago, willfully overlook:  To wit, draft policies and laws that stigmatize single parenthood, that encourage intact, two-parent families, that are painfully tough on crime across the spectrum, and that encourage work.  But, it's those policies they seem disinclined to support, because, as noted, that requires making judgments and eliminating the excuse that those people are merely victims of 'the system.'

It would be a sign that the wave of cultural and moral ignorance has passed if cities like Chicago would adopt policies that worked.  But, based on their current thinking, it appears that more people must die before they realize the real cause of gun violence.

The Left's 'Art of Nuance'

For those who hadn't yet noticed, the race in Pennsylvania illustrated the absurdity of the Democrats' method of tallying delegate votes, which makes our tax code look positively simple by comparison.  It effectively guarantees that, with the exception of a landslide, any two candidates will be jockying for position right up to the convention, which is giving the superdelegates electoral heartburn.

And, it should, but not for the reasons they think.  There is nothing 'super' about them, unless you mean their unenviable position of being charged with arbitrating this debacle.  But given last night's results, it's unclear exactly where they might land.  That's what the editorial voice of the New York Times meant in its uniquely cryptic assertion that the Pennsylvania contest "produced yet another inconclusive result."  It's difficult to see how Clinton's decisive victory over Obama could be seen as anything other than the proverbial waxing, but the Times is thinking of something else.

Given the delegate math, Clinton would have had to win by 20 points or more, and that's their argument:  She was leading by those margins not long ago, but due to her acerbic campaign tack, that lead was winnowed--at least that's what the editorial wizards at the Times think.  Anyone who confuses being 'negative' with 'contrasting views' is both naive and ignorant.  That is a time-honored way to tweak voters' attention, to get them to notice differences where none appear, and that's how you recast candidate market-share.

But in our culture, where anything approaching a criticism is instantly translated into a slanderous, viscious attack, telling voters that an opponent is less well qualified is the equivalent of accusing him of moral turpitude--you just can't do it with impunity.

Of course an editorial from the elitist Times wouldn't be complete without embracing the left's love of nuance:

After seven years of George W. Bush’s failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate — right now and through the general campaign — about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.

We'll overlook the fact that the six-party talks with North Korea or the recent multilateral effort to site missiles near the Russian border, not to mention the United Nations-approved action against Saddam Hussein, more accurately reflect the Bush Administration's foreign policy than the 'unilaterism' spewed almost daily on the pages of the mainstream media. 

The more intriguing line in the quote is how "all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate...about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq" [emphasis added].  It's incontestible that liberalism has cornered the intellectual market on 'nuance,' in large measure because the universe it inhabits is characterized by infinite gradations of meaning.  Of course, only the liberal sensibility is capable of adroitly weaving them together into an exquisite tapestry of policy perfection.

We've seen this movie before, in former president Bill Clinton's deft handling of the North Koreans, and his deliberate overstepping of the sacrosanct authority of the United Nations in Bosnia, or, playing the tape back some more, of Carter's masterful work with the Iranians.

We'll have to wait until after the final primary in early June to see how the party will resolve this Gordian knot, but voters should be wary of assertions by our mainstream media that 'nuance' is the best antidote for everything from our housing 'crisis' to 'ending' the war in Iraq (not 'winning').

What kind of air do these people breathe?

Redefining Good and Evil

An obvious by-product of modern liberalism is that good and evil are in the eye of the beholder.  Indeed, for the left, moral absolutes have been supplanted by the tyranny of relativism, the kind of absolute that makes no moral demands, only political.

Radio host Dennis Prager makes this case in a well argued piece that criticizes Time magazine's cover story on the environment, which could be more accurately described as an article in slavish service to the political left.  It's all about cultural fashion, which is to say, the ephemera that has the least moral or civic potency in our lives but which provides a numbing perpetuation of cosseting myths that sells magazines.

But, although Mr. Prager raises the issue of the left's avoidance of good and evil, and the deft way in which it has down-graded the threat of radical Islam, the deeper issue is why liberals are so thoroughly convinced of the premise of their argument?  His argument that battling the war against 'global warming' is easier to deal with than the war against evil is certainly plausible, but is it because they don't believe Islamic extremism exists, or, that if it does, it's not the threat others fear it is?

Threat assessment is predicated on a metric of values which assigns potential adverse incidents a place on the continuum, and for the layman the quality and character of information received makes rendering decisions nearly impossible.  Therefore, the politics of assessing threats replaces the more substantive process, which means the left is inclined to reduce the threat, and the right to increase it.

Handicapping for those propensities, it's still mysterious that radical Islam, which has a three decade history of terrorism against the West generally and America specifically, doesn't make the cover of Time.  At the core of this is liberalism's agnosticism on good and evil, its powerful, inbred disinclination to judge, and, when adversity strikes, its proclivity to blame America first.  Which means they argue the threat out of the picture, reserve judgment about the radical Islamists, and, when we're attacked again, will blame American foreign policy, in particular if a Republican is in the White House.

This is hardly an adult-like approach to the problem of good and evil in the world.  Yet it carves out a comfortable moral vacuum, which is where most liberals prefer to live, in effective denial of the heinous forces that would destroy America if only allowed the chance.

Although the economy remains a serious problem, with unemployment at about 5 percent--it was an average of 5.2 percent during the vaunted Clinton years--and the markets slowly regaining their historical stability, national security may well emerge as the issue paramount in the minds of voters.  With arch liberals Clinton and Obama as his opponents, Senator McCain can easily make the case that America will be safer with him at the helm.

You might recall the bumper stickers during the 2004 presidential election:  "10 out of 10 terrorists prefer Kerry."  Just replace Kerry with Clinton or Obama and they'll sell like hot cakes.

Gender & Ethnic Bias on the Left

One of the fascinating aspects of modern liberalism is that it is so thoroughly mired in a miasma of its own design that it routinely breaches its own code without a hint of insight or shame.

Enter a faithful example of the left's corrosive exploitation of the very cultural precepts it so meticulously devised:  A piece in today's Huffington Post, in which Nora Ephron argues that "white men" will be critical in the election:

...the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain.  A lot of them will:  white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them.

Beyond the supercilious jab, this is an unsubtle breach of two of the left's hallowed laws:  First, stereotyping Caucasians as unreliable, and second, male-bashing, the blood sport of the left that's protected under their curious set of cultural laws.  Imagine substituting 'black' or 'Jewish,' or perhaps stating that women vote according to their emotions.

This is yet another version of that scurrilous racial double-standard which features a person excoriating his own ethnicity, something that's permitted under the left's bizarre rules of racial engagement.  Indeed, the left has drafted a code of political correctness that's as draconian as anything in North Korea but is immunized when it brazenly breaches it:

...these last primaries will show which of the two Democratic candidates is better at overcoming the bias of a vast chunk of the population that has never in its history had to vote for anyone but a candidate who could have been their father or their brother or their son, and who has never had to think of the president of the United States as anyone other than someone they might have been had circumstances been just slightly different...Hillary's case is not an attractive one, because what she'll essentially be saying (and has been saying, although very carefully) is that she can attract more racist white male voters than Obama can.

Beyond the civic arrogance and summary condescension this exhibits, to stipulate that people in this demographic group are inherently racist or have a gender bias reflects the left's deeply ingrained ignorance.  It dovetails perfectly with Obama's faux pas about rural white voters clinging to guns and religion because it illustrates how thoroughly isolated from mainstream  Americans many liberals are.

The universe of liberalism must be a vexing place to live, because when race and gender are substantive proxies for values and principles, it fosters expectations and consequences bred from an artificial intellectual and cultural pool.  That's how tyrants justify their actions, because by imposing its own cultural and civic template on the world, the left justifies a whole host of noxious policies, from racial quotas to partial birth abortion.

But, it's good entertainment to watch the liberal sideshow as the war between Obama and Clinton begins reaching epic political proportions.  If you think the verbal barbs to date have been shocking, this is child's play in comparison to what's in store after the primaries are completed.

Then the gloves will come off because the Democratic Party will demand a candidate and we all know that Clinton will never concede.  In a year that Democrats were expected to sweep into power by taking the White House, McCain's prospects are looking better by the day.

For the Love of Despots

For reasons that defy both common sense and reason, modern liberals are drawn to despots and tyrants.  The most notable, read egregious, example is former president Jimmy Carter, who this week met with Nasser Shaer, a senior leader of the Hamas terrorist organization. 

Carter's history of this kind of madness dates to more than thirty years ago.  Recall that during some of the most tense years of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear missiles trained on the United States, Carter dismissed those who demanded that America take the threat seriously, calling them alarmists.  He also had a hand in propping up the Pahlevi dictatorship in Iran, and, of course, left office with U.S. hostages in Iran--a shameful legacy.

We could also provide the gloss for his inimitable work with the North Koreans which led to the staggeringly naive Agreed Framework during the Clinton years, but it's painfully embarrassing, so we'll skip to the core of this issue:  The Carter doctrine is predicated on the profoundly misinformed notion that good and evil are obsolete in the modern world, and that belligerents are always produced by economic and geopolitical inequalities.

The corollary to this is that by meeting with terrorists, someone of Carter's standing in the world provides them with a wholly undeserved legitimacy, which effectively mainstreams them in the eyes of those ignorantly susceptible to arguments of moral equivalence.

Probing more deeply, the idea that no individual or group is beyond moral resuscitation, that 'evil' is a political convention rather than an innate, immutable force, are concomitants to the left's contorted reasoning.   Indeed, the proposition that there are groups or nations bent upon our destruction elicits disbelief and the liberal's instinctive propensity to downgrade evil to a petty misdemeanor, while chastising those who argue it should be taken at its word.

That's why the left naively believes that peace is a naturally occurring phenomenon in the world, that pacificism, and it's close kin, non-aggression and non-proliferation, are the best guarantors of maintaining peace.  It's also why they wince at phrases such as 'peace through strength,' or, one of our favorite bumper stickers which features a B-52 creating a 'peace sign,' with the phrase, "Peace Through Superior Firepower."

A final curiosity is that despite centuries of history dating to the Punic and Peloponnesian Wars, all of which demonstrate the timelessness of aggressors, liberals act as though they alone are capable of 'moving beyond' it all.  It's at the core of Senator Obama's theme of transitional politics,' which reflects his desire to sit down with the world's despots, convinced as he is, that there is common ground.

It's a shame Carter is so old, Obama could draft him for Secretary of State.

The Obama Meltdown Begins

It was only a matter of time before the pieces of the Obama puzzle began being assembled by the media, which allowed a picture to emerge.  Last evening's debate in Philadelphia may have been the awkward unveiling because the questioning became hard-edged and unforgiving, the political equivalent of a cardiac stress test.

Suffice it to say that despite Obama's composure, the chinks in his political armor are undeniable and they reveal a vulnerability that both Clinton and McCain will quickly exploit.  For starters, his explanation of why he decided to disinvite Reverend Wright to his campaign kick off, fell flat:

This was (because of) a set of remarks that had been quoted in Rolling Stone Magazine and we looked at them and I thought that they would be a distraction since he had just put them forward...They were not of the sort that we saw that offended so many Americans.  And that's why I specifically said that these comments were objectionable; they're not comments that I believe in."

For a linguistic tap-dancer, this was an embarrassing moment.  His attempt to justify his original response and then provide political distance, was an act of transparent desperation. 

Demonstrating that poor judgment has a long half-life, Obama bungled the issue of guns and religion, which is another fault line that exposed his cultural blind spot for small-town Pennsylvanians, of which there are millions across America.  He had the perfect opportunity to use his deft oratory skills to make a candid and credible connection to them, but he was clearly stuck in the parlance of the limousine liberal for whom guns and traditional religion are symptoms of cultural dysfunction.

Then he fumbled the question of his association with William Ayres, a violent 60s activist by comparing it with his association with fellow senator Tom Colburn (R-OK), whom he called a friend, but whose belief that abortion doctors should be criminally prosecuted, he doesn't share.  So, he's making a comparison between a United States senator and an activist who planned to bomb the capital?

Throughout the lengthy debate the political contours of a man fundamentally out of sync with mainstream Americans became apparent, and it may echo well beyond his probable loss in Pennsylvania. 

That leaves our baggage-laden former first lady in a much stronger position.  But, all that's clear at this moment is that the Democratic nomination process will bleed on, which will allow McCain to make his case with the American people.  Advantage, Republicans.

The Politics of Taxation

Apropos of yesterday's post, a common justification for higher taxes from our brethren on the left is that the 'rich' aren't paying their fair share and the middle class is being cruelly squeezed.  Although we support some version of the 'fair tax,' the notion that our current marginal rate system is unfair can easily be dispelled.

The following statistics from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrate that liberals who make this argument are being disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, or both:

The top 1 percent of income earners ($1.3 million or higher) currently pay 38.8 percent of all income tax;

The top 20 percent ($215K or higher) pay 86.3 percent;

The top 40 percent ($85K or higher) pay 99.4 percent;

The bottom 60 percent ($58K or below) pay 0.6 percent;

The bottom 40 percent ($37K or below) pay 0 percent, and actually receive money back from the government--that is, other tax payers.

With respect to the relative progressivity of the tax code, the left can--and does--argue that it's a goal we'll never reach, at least until we mirror the part of Europe that confiscates 60 or 70 percent of all income.  So, despite the fact that the top 40 percent of income earners effectively pay all taxes, when it comes to those who've achieved monetary success, we can see the liberals shaking their heads and uttering some of their favorite catchphrases, such as "obscene."

However, the more ironclad argument that Senator McCain should make is that the middle class, which we can broadly define as those earning an average of $58K, pays just six tenths of a percent of all federal taxes.  If they concede that, they'll fall back on the pain of payroll taxes, which opens the argument into Social Security and Medicare, which is territory neither party is willing to enter.

But, if we examine their motivation behind eliminating the Bush tax cuts in light of the above statistics, the only conclusion is that they so thoroughly loathe success, they take glee in punishing it.  If you question why, it's because they incorrectly believe that most financially successfully people were just lucky.  That recalls the book The Millionaire Next Door, which debunked the myth that rich people are country club types who drive luxury cars.  Indeed, the most common vehicle of those with a million dollars net worth is an F-150, that is, Ford's low-end pick-up truck.

The curious thing about the modern liberal is that facts don't seem to matter.  Whether it's in foreign affairs, where they fervently defend despots or the domestic front where they vilify guns, champion unfettered access to abortion, swoon over victimhood, reflexively play the race card, or become incandescent over talk of eliminating the Bush tax cuts, the counterproductive outcomes of their policies, or their outright amorality, are air-brushed out of the picture.

McCain can and should make the case that those are archaic, threadbare approaches to public policy.  If he does so in a credible way, mainstream Americans will support him, which includes large swaths of Independents.

The Bane of Taxes, The Virtues of Freedom

People's views on taxation are a kind of political litmus test which provides a window into their civic souls.  For liberals, they're the product of what they see as a healthy collectivism and a testimony to the resilience of the argument that more is always better.  For conservatives, they're an unwarranted encroachment on individual freedoms, and since they lack the mantle of being representative--one of the Founding Fathers' demands--they utterly fail to persuade all but the addicted that they're justified.

We turn to liberal Richard Conniff writing in today's New York Times, who works hard to make the case that by calling taxes 'dues' we can provide them with a new lease on our wallets, if you will.  In his view, words don't matter, because supplanting 'dues' for 'taxes' is one of the left's many differences without a distinction.  His justification for taxes is textbook liberalism and he trots out language to bolster it:

...we need language to remind us that this is our government, and that we thrive because of the schools and transit systems and 10,000 other services that exist only because we have joined together.  Instead of denouncing taxes, politicians would do better to appeal to the patriotic corners of our hearts that warm to phrases like “we the people.”

It may come as a surprise to you that "we thrive because of the schools and transit systems," but that's the left's vision:  Mediocre public schools and heavily subsidized mass transit equals happiness.  And, in a rare divergence from liberal orthodoxy, Conniff has the temerity to use the word 'patriotic,' but only as a marketing tool to perform yet another wallet biopsy.

When the conservative heart swells with patriotic pride it's because of the virtues of limited government, low taxation (which allows the people, not the government to decide how to spend their money), a robust defense, and a love of country--all of which are largely foreign to the liberal heart.

But that's the crux of the matter:  The liberal mind views taxes as a kind of mortal virtue that elevates their civic souls, which is why they're so enamored of them.  Moreover, they're convinced that there's no problem America faces that can't be solved by higher taxes--on the 'rich,' of course.  Conservatives want to create affluence by rewarding hard work, talent, and sacrifice, grooming middle income earners to assume their places on the lower tiers of economic success.

That's why the left hasn't outgrown its affinity for economic class warfare--by creating animosities they stigmatize those who've achieved a measure of success, whereas the right wants to create opportunities for everyone--across the entire spectrum--to be successful.

That leads us to the most profound and illustrative difference between the parties:  the left's politics are predicated on cynicism and envy; the right's on individual freedom and the virtues of hard work and sacrifice.  That's a harder case to make in our culture, but one worth fighting for, the Conniffs of the world notwithstanding.

Obama: On the Fringe of American Politics

It's a specious truism of the modern sensibility that intelligence is man's greatest asset, that values and principles are second-tier attributes.  Our most notable contemporary example of that misappraisal is former president Bill Clinton, but with his astounding remarks in San Francisco last week, it's becoming clear that Senator Barack Obama is vying for that ignoble crown.

Here we have a man of obvious intelligence and a remarkable gift for oratory, but who has repeatedly stumbled when dealing with America's cultural complexities, which higlights the kind of blind spot that matters most in presidential contests.  Moreover, his recovery efforts were equally revealing for their lack of candor and love of the art of nuance.

In a series of gaffs--which, as one astute political observer noted, are merely inadvertent windows of truth into a candidate's soul--whose highlights include his two decade association with Reverend Wright, an anti-America racist, Mr. Obama used a speech to express his frustration in his search for votes in rural Pennsylvania:

“It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Since then, the talk radio air waves and editorial pages have been abuzz with charges of elitism and some less euphemistic epithets.  But beyond the obvious class warfare aspects of his comments which faithfully echo our rarefied academics and liberal intellectuals who so thoroughly loathe fly-over country, it demonstrates the truth of the adage the left loves to hate, that is, character matters.

Character, as we know from a study of history, is an amalgamation of judgment, values, and principles, and the degree to which they're aligned, and where they fall on the continuum, defines the kind of people we are.  In the realm of presidential politics, we look for leaders who meld candor with principle, and whose values are transparent and consistent, because regardless of whether or not we agree with them, we crave predictability and reliability.

In that regard, Mr. Obama has provided the electorate a practical service by demonstrating his disdain of small-town America, where guns and religion are curiosities that urban elites view as pathologies.  As we all know, the former are inherently dangerous which leads the Obamas of the world to support outlawing all handguns, and the latter is merely an extension of politics, not a fervently held belief which, we pray, might allow us the chance for eternal salvation.

If you saw Fox News Sunday yesterday, you were entertained by former senator Tom Daschle, who responded to Chris Wallace's question about this with his predictable line about "If you choose to misinterpret Senator Obama's comments...", and noted that Obama is "solid on guns and religion."  Once again we're given a gift, a kind of political gem that confirms precisely how far adrift the modern liberal is from mainstream America.

And, therein lies the lesson of this delightful debacle:  Senator McCain will be telling Americans that Obama is out of step with them, that he's a product of prep and Ivy league schools, and of activist social programs to redress every 'ism' in the liberal lexicon, all of which places him on the fringe of our political system.

Our National Incapacity for War

Although history is replete with examples of war fatigue, but it's clearly a malaise more likely to strike politicians than the fighting man.  We turn to a lucid and thoughtful piece by Michael Goodwin, writing in today's NY Daily News, which argues that regardless of who the next occupant of the White House is, for reasons ranging from honor to national security, America is wedded to Iraq.

Given our contemporary culture where the most persuasive goal is to avoid physical or moral pain, and where a pin-prick is magnified to the level of metastatic lung cancer, it's common to hear pundits and politicians alike refer to Iraq as "disastrously bad," as Goodwin does.  Therefore, it's crucial to culturally handicap our situation there, if only to tamp down the voices of doom and gloom which conveniently fulfill the left's narrative of failure and defeat.

It's also important to recall the countless times over the centuries that human fortitude has been supremely tested during challenging military campaigns that seem uniquely bleak and grim.  We've noted some key examples, but Alexander at Granicus--where he was nearly killed but fought on to prevail--is certainly one we should never forget.  In modern times, we think of Gettysburg, a three-day battle which saw the most casualties of any in the Civil War, and where Gen. Lee began his campaign with lightning strikes against Union calvary with devastating results.  We might also ponder Hitler's last, desperate attempt to extricate himself from defeat in the Battle of the Bulge--which saw 76,000 casualties in three weeks--is another triumph of will over circumstance.

Now we're in a war that is feels profoundly different, yet the core variables are constant:  We must commit to remain in Iraq until we prevail, which means leaving a stable nation to the Iraqi people.  Note the word 'commit,' which means speaking with one voice, because ambiguity of purpose is the enemy's best counter weapon in any war, and they will mercilessly exploit it.

There was a grain of truth when Osama bin Laden wrote that America is a 'paper tiger,' because a significant portion of our citizens have no stomach for war.  Opponents of the war argue that this one has gone on 'too long,' but using a metric better suited to a bout of influenza for something as difficult to calibrate as a war is just another symptom of the plague of adolescence that seems to have us in its grip. 

Indeed, it's simply unadultlike behavior to stomp your foot and say you want us to leave Iraq--we all want to leave Iraq, and it's only when you examine the likely consequences that reality asserts itself and we glimpse that dour look that Goodwin reports McCain presented at Gen. David Petraeus' hearing--the look of maturity that knows the pain will continue.

And that's the difference between the Democrats and Republicans today--the former seem to be a faithful reflection of their liberal base which willfully demands a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, while the latter takes the mature view that candidly recognizes that the challenges of war must be confronted, our anxieties notwithstanding. 

They also understand that the advance of freedom and the rule of law have never been without sacrifice, and, that, as Bill Bennett wrote, in the book by the same title, America has been and remains the last best hope of mankind to safeguard those precious gifts for future generations.

The Left's Love of Government

An analog of FDR's famous statement that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself is the one echoing from the left wing of the Democratic Party--which, these days, is the party--and that is from the Cassandra's who are convinced that our economic woes will devolve into the worst disaster since the Depression.

Joseph Stiglitz, former president Bill Clinton's chief economist and current Bush gadfly, is the most noteworthy example.  His editorial in today's U.K. Guardian clarifies that the modern Democrat remains mired in the Keynesian world of government solutions to economic problems.  Although we concede that a measure of regulation and framework of laws to govern financial markets creates the confidence necessary for orderly transactions and a respect of contracts, in the left's view, more is better. 

With respect to remedies for our market woes, again, a robust infusion of federal money--that is, tax payers' hard-earned cash--is their reflexive response.  There have been ten recessions since 1947, each lasting an average of ten months, and the although the current blend of problems is somewhat different, market fundamentals don't change.  That is to say, our capitalist system, which is grounded in the rhythms and cadences of economic motivations, incentives, and disincentives, has a self-correcting mechanism that cures imprudent behavior by punishing it, while rewarding those with prudence, patience, or both.

Therein lies the crux of the left's urgency to intervene, because the notion of winners and losers, whether in our public school system, on the sports field, or, on the battlefield of business, is simply unacceptable.  You see, in the land of liberalism, we're all winners, quite apart from individual effort, sacrifice, or talent.

That's why you can read Mr. Stiglitz' learned piece, get a feel for all the nuances of economic micromanagement that he calls for, and still believe that the simplest solution has nothing to do with government intervention.  Rather, the most potent response to our ills would be to reduce corporate tax rates, which would spark a hiring spree, investment in new equipment, and begin a slow correction. 

The collateral part of that equation is government spending, which is best measured as the percent of GDP it swallows.  Below nineteen percent is ideal, but we're over twenty now, and the trend isn't favorable.  Stiglitz laments deficits--even though its relationship to long-term interest rates has been overblown--but the problem is that neither party wants to unilaterally disarm by ending its addiction to spending.

Not unlike most of life's vexing problems, the simplest solutions are overlooked because they don't serve political objectives.  So whether it's the housing 'crisis,' or the liquidity problems in our financial markets, regulation should be configured to maximize freedom while inhibiting the propensity to immunize people from the consequences of bad judgment.

In any year that's not likely to happen, but in an election year, we'll probably see the regulatory floodgates open, along with ill-advised 'government investment,' read, taxes, compliments of the Democrats, along with enough Republicans to reach the tipping point where stupidity reigns supreme.

E.J. Dionne's "Liberalism Redux"

Just when we excoriate liberals for running from their moniker which telegraphs everything from amorality to anemic national security, E.J. Dionne makes the case that the movement has much unfinished business.

He begins by regaling us tales of the days when liberalism reigned supreme:

From the death of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963 until the congressional elections of November 1966, liberals were triumphant, and what they did changed the world.  Civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid, clean air and clean water legislation, Head Start, the Job Corps and federal aid to schools had their roots in the liberal wave...

We'll ignore the fact that it was Republicans who dragged the likes of Albert Gore--senior--to the civil rights table (he voted against the 1964 Act), while noting that every facet of their goal of eliminating strife and struggle has had a commensurately negative impact upon individual freedom, and skip right to the heart of it all:  Dionne's paean to Martin Luther King and his subsequent question:

Forty years on, is it possible to recapture the hope and energy of the days and years before that April 4th [King's murder]?  Has liberalism spent enough time in purgatory for the country to revisit how much was accomplished in its name and to acknowledge that the nation is better off for what the liberals did?

For those of us who lived through the 60s and who, like the editor, saw Dr. King speak, the left's current brand of racial politics bears only a glancing resemblance to his dream where people are judged by their character, not by the color of their skin.  Indeed, from quotas to multiculturalism, the modern version of King's view of race is that it's dispositive of character, and that 'diversity' has innate value quite apart of the ideas and values people espouse.

But beyond the credible argument that the left is mired in its own toxic politics of racial division--e.g., Obama's Rev. Wright debacle--the rest of the liberal agenda, which includes Keynesian economics and a studied diffidence on national security, have long been discredited.  Eastern Europe recently led the way for its Western neighbors by cutting taxes across the board and instituting free market economics, and the result is that even France, Great Britain, and Germany are following their lead, because they know the higher the percent of government's take of GDP the less fruitful are its citizens.

Conversely, there has never been a tax cut, from Jack Kennedy's to Ronald Reagan's to George W. Bush's, that hasnt resulted in a net increase in federal receipts (27 percent in 2006 and 2007 combined).  Yet the modern liberal, including both presidential nominees, are undeniably enamored of tax increases, and not just on the wealthy--which itself is perverse since they're the ones who create jobs.  Along with a potent genetic regulatory marker with aspirations to hobble businesses for the allegedly greater goal of protecting consumers from their own stupidity, it's difficult to understand why Dionne thinks the nation can sustain another bout of liberalism.

He closes his editorial with a call to "put an end to our contempt for liberalism," apparently able to keep a straight face as the legacy of The Great Society--$6 trillion dollars and the bane of intergenerational transfer of poverty for inner-city minorities--looms in the background.  With its baleful offspring, single parenthood--70 percent for blacks of African descent--which effectively guarantees a higher risk of everything from criminal behavior to drug use to academic failure, the nation will be living under liberalism's long and dark shadow for many years to come.

Against the backdrop of a willful cultural iconoclasm, which championed free sex and a life sans consequences, liberalism has been the most pernicious influence on modern America, bar none.  So, when Dionne and his brethren trumpet its virtues and argue for a return to its vision of a Leviathan government and oppressive taxation and regulation, we should remind them of liberalism's myriad corrosive downstream effects, which are, unfortunately, still much in evidence.

Obama: Beyond 'Liberal'?

One of the telling symptoms of modern liberals is their discomfort with their being called 'liberal.'  The textbook example is Senator Obama, who fancies himself a post-ideological candidate, a trans-racial politician, just the man to take us to that locus of apolitical nirvana we all yearn for. 

The problem, of course, is that he's the antithesis of what he purports to be.  Name a policy or subject and, his protests notwithstanding, he hues closely to the liberal platform.  That's his prerogative, of course, but he must be aware that no one in modern times has won the White House running as a liberal.  Even Messrs. Carter and Clinton were sufficiently astute to run as a moderate and a 'new' Democrat, respectively.

Senator McCain's charge will be to illustrate specific positions Mr. Obama has taken and flesh out the implications for voters: 

Health care:  it would be a sea of mandates and price controls, with reduced choice and access;

Education:  it would be the status quo of a competition-free zone, and the continued hegemony of the teachers unions;

Taxation: he would repeal the Bush tax cuts, increasing marginal rates, capital gains, and ensuring the death tax lasts an eternity;

Judges:  he would be a champion of activist-liberal judges;

Guns:  he supports a complete ban on the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns;

Immigration:  he supports drivers licenses for illegals;

Abortion:  he's in favor of partial-birth abortion;

Enemy combatants:  he would be a staunch supporter of full legal rights for enemy combatants;

Telecom companies:  and, finally, he would hold companies that cooperated with the government after 9/11 legally accountable.

So, as Obama adroitly threads the policy needle, claiming to be post-political, McCain should remind him of the actual positions he's taken, which are unambiguously liberal.  It may be the case that some of the independents McCain needs to win will be voting as much against Obama as they are in favor of him, but that's just a reflection of the hybrid nature of the independent political psyche.

The avoidance of political labels must be in the genetic make-up of liberals and for obvious reasons:  They correctly recognize that most Americans are slightly right-of-center, a place most of them fear to tread. 

Calling Obama's positions out of the mainstream is a charitable appraisal.  We trust McCain won't use kid gloves when he makes that point with the American people.

Obama: Changing the Rhetoric of Politics in America

You may have heard Senator Barack Obama speaking in Johnstown Pennsylvania recently, where he continued his theme of changing the rhetoric in American politics.  His remarks ran the gamut, from health care to national security, but in reading the press accounts you won't find a particularly illuminating part, which focused on abortion.

He began by talking about how he and his wife, Michelle, are raising their two girls, and in a moment of stunning self- revelation he stated:

Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” he said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby [emphasis added]. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”

We've written about "the tyranny of the unaborted," which is liberalism's savage denial of innocent life in the womb, or, to paraphrase it, the left's soulless tribute to post-modern amorality.  But when a presidential candidate, a purported Christian no less, calls a child a punishment, it's a window into the darker reaches of the human heart.

One of the incongruent legacies of modern liberalism is the blinkered irony of its excoriation of guns as evil because criminals use them to kill innocents, juxtaposed with the slaughter of 1.2 million annually in the womb.  They argue that if just one person could be saved by draconian gun control wouldn't it be worth it, apparently unaware of another comparison--that the number of human abortions in a day is the more than the current death count of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

But these comparisons, through the eyes of Obama and his ilk, are argued into oblivion because they inconveniently remind them of the twisted way in which they apply their unique brand of ethics to the world. 

However, since both Obama and Senator Clinton voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion--a procedure that Democratic Senator Patrick Moynihan called infanticide--no one should be surprised that he would rather his daughter murder her innocent unborn child than let it have the same luxury of life that he enjoys.

So that's how he'll change the rhetoric of politics in America?