Obama's "North Star"

On October 6, 2010, I wrote:

the Dems have been far more consistent - read, extreme - in cleaving to their collectivist “ideological purity”. Socialism has had a loud voice in the Democratic Party, but capitalism has yet to find its political voice. The two ideological extremes are the primary combatants. The Left knows it. The Right doesn’t. The result: The political "middle" keeps moving Left.

Socialism, not surprisingly, is winning.

This was demonstrated once again in the recent tax deal
between the resurgent Republicans and President Obama.

President Obama’s recent tax compromise with the Republicans – extending all of the Bush tax cuts for two years coupled with a 13 month extension of unemployment benefits, among other things – infuriated his Left/liberal base like Move On.org.

More thoughtful Leftist supporters like Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne did recognize that the deal gained more for Obama than many others believed. But he, too, was disturbed by Obama’s slap at his liberal base (Casting liberal allies aside will hurt Obama in the long run
. Citing the president’s description of liberal critics as “sanctimonious”, Dionne writes:

Obama's comments make you wonder: Whom does he think he can count on when conservatives try to repeal the health-care law, force cuts in programs he supports, investigate his administration down to the last pencil and continue to denounce him as an un-American socialist?

Dionne believes that “In the short term, Obama did get more than most liberals expected.” He goes on to describe those liberal gains in the tax deal and how it “achieves many progressive goals. “But”, he asks:

…in the long run, is Obama capable of winning the battles with the Republicans that this temporary agreement sets up?

Mr. Dionne is skeptical, but he appears to have missed something important. This is surprising to me, since I consider him one of the political scene's most astute observers – albeit from the Leftist side of the ideological divide. The GOP leadership may or may not have won tactically, but Obama presented a philosophical challenge that went unanswered. Simply listen to his “North Star” speech in response to a reporter’s question relating to his “core values”.

In his answer, Obama laid out clearly the nature of the political battle as he sees it. He made clear his belief in abstract ideals as a guiding “North Star” in determining the political direction of a country. He presented several analogies to make the point. This country’s Founding, he said, included a political compromise that would not have permitted him to “go through the front door” – clearly referring to the acceptance of slavery in defiance of the Declaration’s stated ideals – ideals that eventually would eradicate slavery. He also pointed to Social Security and Medicare, which “started out small, and grew”.

Obama’s referral to “the public option debate all over again” seemed like a confusing throw-in to many. But, seen from its proper perspective, which Obama articulated quite clearly, this analogy is not puzzling at all. He makes the pertinent point: The ObamaCare bill, even without the public option, advances the goal toward universal … i.e., socialized … healthcare – a “dream of Democrats for 100 years”. Obama “tacked this way or that”, but never lost his focus on that North Star.

Despite his rhetoric for the need to avoid “purist” abstract arguments in order to “get things done”, Obama clearly understands the value of abstract ideals to making concrete progress toward that North Star. Only one other president in my lifetime matches Obama’s philosophical acumen – Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s North Star was individualism. It served him well, for a time. Obama’s is collectivism. It continues to serve the Left well, even if they can’t see it. Since only the Democrats have cleaved consistently to their North Star in the abstract, the past hundred years has seen a steady drift toward collectivism’s political manifestation, socialism – despite numerous compromises and backing and filling. Obama’s first two years has seen a continuation – indeed an acceleration – of that trend. (For an in depth discussion, see my post of 10/6/10, “Extremists vs. the Moderates: Why the Left Keeps Winning, and the Right has been Powerless to Stop It”.)

Contrast the Republican take on the tax cut deal. They presented no North Star. They made some valid utilitarian arguments, but avoided any reference to core principles like free markets, the moral right to one’s earnings, individual rights. Much to my dismay, though not surprisingly, Obama seized the philosophical high ground for the Left, even though his Left base is too clueless to see it. He seized it, in typical fashion, by default. What this country needs is a knock down, no-holds-barred, polarizing ideological fight between the two extremes – collectivism and individualism. Collectivism has its voice in the White House. Individualism has no political voice (although culturally, it’s manifested implicitly in the Tea Party Movement).

Details of the tax compromise aside, Obama reaffirmed an unwavering commitment to his long-term goals. Sanctimony and purism was clearly on display, if one knows where to look. Obama won round one where it counts the most – on the philosophical battleground. This does not bode well for freedom lovers. But with the Tea Party roiling the waters, there is still hope.

The GOP Grabs a Tiger by the Tail

There were no surprises. The Republicans took the House of Representatives with room to spare. The Senate remained Democratic, but with a much larger GOP minority. The reign of unfettered Obama statism is over. So far, it’s 1966.

Considering today’s political realities, this is the ideal setup. In 1994, the Republicans rampaged to full control of both Senate and House, and President Bill Clinton used the next two years using the GOP congress as a punching bag, and won re-election in 1996. With a divided congress, President Obama will have a hard time employing that kind of strategy, although he will try. A repeat of 1994 would probably have greatly enhanced Obama’s re-election prospects, given the GOP’s philosophical agnosticism.

Speaking of that, the signs are not good. Already, we’re hearing about the Republican’s coming “moderate” approach. Political incrementalism is a workable strategy only when backed up by firm principles. As I’ve noted, the Statists (mostly Democrats) have done just dandy expanding government power in bits and pieces, while cleaving solidly to their collectivist/socialist ideals. America needs desperately for the Republicans to be just as strong in upholding individualism/capitalism ideals. The political battles can be fought with the usual give-and-take, but the philosophical battle is necessarily between the two extremes. This is where the GOP must stand tall.

Will they? Without an explicit statement upholding the individual’s right to live for his own sake, there is no way for the Republicans to effectively advance a free market political agenda. One must know what one stands for. The Democrats do. For the next two years, Obama will talk “compromise” and “cooperation” with the House Republicans while framing the debate in his collectivist terms. The GOP must call him on it, and present the clear philosophical alternative, or he will steamroll them.

The new element in this year’s GOP triumph is, of course, the Tea Party Movement. The Tea Party began, ironically, as a rebellion against the Republicans and their 2008 Tarp bailouts (although the name had not yet been coined). It then swarmed the Democrats in 2009. In late 2009 into 2010, the Tea Party flexed its muscles in elections in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial, and Massachusetts senatorial, races, with Republicans being the prime beneficiaries. The Tea Party continued its emergence into the political arena with the midterms, riding the minority Republican Party as the vehicle for expressing its growing cultural power.

The Republican leadership would like to have us believe that they harnessed the power of the Tea Party by heeding their message. But, the Republicans have harnessed nothing. They have grabbed a tiger by the tail. The unofficial motto of the Tea Party is, “Don’t Tread on Me!”. The Tea Party, that leaderless conglomeration of disparate, often contradictory elements, will not stand patiently by. It is a movement by and for independents. It wants government out of the business of running our lives. If this GOP crop doesn’t battle hard to roll back statism, the Tea Party will turn on them as fast as it turned on the 2008 Republicans and the 2009 Democrats.

The result, if the GOP fails this time, could very well be the emergence of a third major political party in 2012 – a literal Tea Party, this time.

Get ready.

Election 2010: Is it 1966, or a Real Turning of the Statist Tide?

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson scored a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater to become President of the United States. He had long “coattails”, bringing with him huge congressional Democrat majorities. The Old Left rose to power, for a short while. But, it was long enough. Over the next two years, a massive statist lurch to the Left shook the foundations of Americanism. In the brief 1965-66 time span, we got Medicare, Medicaid, the Federal Student Loan program, the War on Poverty, and other Great Society programs.

By 1966, the country had had enough, and Johnson’s socialist momentum broke up in the wreckage of that year’s Republican midterm electoral landslide. But, the damage had been done to individual rights and capitalism.

I reflect back to that period because of the striking similarities between then and the past couple of years. In 2008, Barack Obama won a modest victory over John McCain, but nonetheless carried with him to Washington huge Democrat congressional majorities. This time, it was the New Left – the 1960s “student rebellion” gang – that swept into power. Unlike the Old Left, which (at least superficially) hung on to some respect for what America stood for, the New Left has no such loyalty. It is virulently anti-American in the most fundamental sense – it utterly rejects the concepts of unalienable individual rights protected by a government limited to that responsibility. Led by this nation’s first unabashed, undiluted counter revolutionary president – that is to say, counter American Revolution – the Democrats built upon the statism of the prior Bush Administration to forge a massive bureaucratic buildup of regulatory powers that is about to unleash a perpetual tidal wave of increasing controls over every aspect of our lives.

To call Obama/Democrat policies a major regression towards a totalitarian state would not be an exaggeration.

In 2008, I abstained from a presidential vote, and stated my reasons. (I did, however, vote Republican in the congressional races in hopes of blunting the Democratic gains and thus Obama’s agenda.) Subsequent events have vindicated that decision. A McCain presidency would have continued the stealth statism of the previous Bush Administration, preventing the rise of the rebellion we now call The Tea Party Movement. At the same time, a McCain Administration would not have prevented the emergence of an Obama. It would only have delayed it. This would have meant an Obama inheriting an even more statist government than the one handed to him by George W. Bush.

The 2009/10 statist assault on America parallels 1965-66, although it is even more virulent and aggressive now than then. And, like then, the country has, once again, had enough after only two years. Also like then, the damage has been done. In 1966, the “swing to the Right” set in motion the momentum that would lead to a conservative revival that would sweep Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980, and Republicans into full or partial control of Congress for most of the next quarter of a century after that.

Today, the fundamental issues confronting America have been brought into the sharpest focus of my lifetime. They are: A rights-protecting government vs. one that rules over a mass of subjects and serfs, capitalism vs. socialism, individual rights vs. group “rights”, individualism vs. collectivism.

The last swing to the Right that launched in 1966 ultimately failed. I explained how and why two years ago. By 2000, despite two decades of conservative political dominance, the Old Left statism of 1965-66 had been preserved – and even gently expanded. The 20th Century’s strongest “swing to the Right” ended by having been nothing more than a Republican caretaker government – of the welfare state. This set the stage for a strong renewal of the assault on our rights under Bush II, followed by the Obama eruption.

Today we face a much more critical choice, because we are so much further down the path to totalitarian socialism now than we were 44 years ago. It’s no longer a matter of stopping the welfare statists. The Old Left gave us more or less specific, delimited programs. The New Left has given us an imperial bureaucracy wielding unlimited, arbitrary powers that can not be contained. Though this situation did not come out of the blue, but is the logical culmination of the trend that began more than a century ago, the fact is that our government has finally broken free of virtually all remaining constitutional and moral constraints on its monopoly power of legalized physical force. A totalitarian Frankenstein is on the loose.

Therefor, it’s long past time to sweep aside conservatism in favor of a radical pro-individual rights, pro-capitalist agenda that logically means rolling back and eventually eliminating the regulatory welfare state. There is no other way to cure an aggressive, malignant cancer except to completely – and I mean totally – cut it out before it kills the patient.

That will require time to build the proper philosophical foundation, a project that has barely, though effectively, begun. To buy that time, Obama, like Lyndon Johnson, must first be stopped. That can be accomplished by electing enough Republicans to congress to shrivel the Democrats’ majorities to the margins or even giving one branch to the GOP. Divided government means little major legislative “progress”, which is about all we can hope for from today’s mushy GOP. Time, again, is what we must buy.

Therefor, this is the time to vote Republican without a second thought.

I am under no illusions that the Republicans are anything but the intellectual weaklings they have almost always been, or that the current crop can reverse the tide. Just check out their lame “Pledge to America”. And, the GOP carries within it a danger of equal magnitude to Left collectivism – the Religious Right. On the other hand, there are hopeful signs that the party can be molded into an effective force for Americanism, over time. For one thing, we have the Tea Party Movement that, despite its own statist baggage, nonetheless has a significant “sense of life” that leans toward individualism. For another, Ayn Rand Objectivism, though still relatively unknown, continues to penetrate the culture (which includes a strong piece of the Tea Party). We desperately need it, and ideas can spread without people being aware of from whom they originated. Good ideas ultimately can, and must, win the day.

The battle for America will be long and hard. Obama charged into power vowing to “fundamentally change America”. By that he meant unwinding its Founding principles, which he believes are “flawed”. We Objectivists will not settle for the same old failed conservative strategy, which amounts to preserving and protecting the statist “gains” of the previous “swing to the Left”. Contrary to conventional wisdom, President Obama knew full well that the aggressive socialist push of his first two years would likely cost him his Democrat congress. He didn’t and doesn’t really care. His fundamental change has been achieved, and now he can sit back and watch the “moderate” Republicans preserve and consolidate those gains, as they percolate through America.

It’s 1966, again. Or, maybe not. Perhaps things will turn out different, this time.

The Democrat collapse follows closely on the heels of the Republican collapse of the past two-four years. Both major parties are bankrupt intellectually and politically. Both are at rock bottom in public esteem. Both liberalism and conservatism are discredited. The country is swinging wildly between the lesser of two evils, with the GOP being the current winner-by-default. As a consequence, the country is ready for new ideas and a truly new direction. Therein lies the opportunity.

Ayn Rand’s influence has grown substantially since 1980. The 1960s New Left is at peak political power under Obama/Pelosi/Reid. Objectivism is growing towards becoming the leading secular philosophy in America. Collectivism/socialism is the echo from a dead past. Individualism/capitalism is the future. Objectivists aim to fundamentally change America in the opposite direction, reclaiming America’s Founding principles and going further: fully and consistently implementing them for the first time, on the solid philosophical foundation provided by America’s Last Founding Father – Ayn Rand.

To advance toward that ambitious goal, the first step is to vote Republican on November 2, 2010.

The GOP "Pledge": Business as Usual

Indications continue to multiply that this could be a big electoral year for the Republicans. The Democrats are in disarray. The rise of the Tea Party has added a strong tail wind behind the Republicans. A large segment of the country is confused, cynical, and frightened of a government that has seemingly broken completely free of all constitutional and moral constraints. I believe the time is right for a strong defense of individual rights and Capitalism to counter the Left’s collectivist/socialist juggernaut. An unprecedented opportunity has arisen for the GOP to offer an historic “choice, not an echo”. The question I posed in my post of 10/6/10 was: “Is the GOP up to the ideological task”? We now have an answer. It is not a promising one. It’s business as usual. It’s called the GOP’s “Pledge to America”.

In the introduction, the Pledge recites the words of the Declaration of Independence, without explicitly defining the principle of individual rights that it upholds. Defending individualism, the foundation of America and of Capitalism, begins with a complete understanding of individual rights. The Pledge offers no beginning, middle, or end.

The Pledge is vague and inconsistent, and sprinkled with what in today’s usage are collectivist terms. The “common good” and the “will of the people” are common refrains used to justify statism. They meant something different to the Founding Fathers, who understood that the individual’s sovereign right to freedom of action in pursuit of his own life’s goals and happiness was outside of the scope of power of any electoral majority. The ballot box can not trump the individual’s rights, and promoting the common good meant protecting those rights.

As proof of my claim that the Republicans desperately need a clear and principled statement – a Philosophical Contract with America - I cite this:

“An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many.”

Does this mean that the government can make any decisions, issue any mandates, and enact any law it pleases as long as it gets the input, and approval, of “the many”? It sounds a lot like unlimited majority rule, or democracy. Does that statement mean socialism is OK, as long as a majority – “the will of the people” – approves? How does that square with “the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? We’ll never know, because a view of the proper relationship between the individual and the state is never defined. How does democracy square with the idea of America as a constitutionally limited republic? Are rights unalienable, or are they gifts dependent upon “the input of the many” … i.e., “the will of the people”? Which is it? We are promised that “American values” will be restored. But what are they: a hodgepodge that mixes vague undefined references to “liberty” with explicitly collectivist catchphrases?

The Pledge is laced with this kind of philosophical contradiction and confusion. How does one build “a new governing agenda for America” out of that? History provides the answer: It doesn’t. What it does do is to paralyze the opponents of statism, and embolden the statists.

Citing just one concrete proposal listed in this document highlights its dangerous vagueness. Under healthcare, the GOP promises to "repeal and replace the government takeover of health care". In the same breath, it promises to “ensure that those with pre-existing conditions gain access to the coverage they need”. How? It doesn’t say. The implication is that government will mandate that coverage, in one way or another. It sounds like ObamaCare light. A government that respects and protects individual rights would never be granted the power to issue mandates to insurers. The “pre-existing conditions” plague is a government-created problem, and can be eliminated by ending the government-imposed employer-based, or third-party-payer, system of health insurance. But, among the free market solutions offered up, this big kahuna is avoided. Pre-existing conditions is one of the main justifications for ObamaCare, is prime fodder for free market champions as a failure of statism, and should be front and center of the ongoing healthcare debate. Yet, the Republicans punt, and simply adopt the Democrats’ premises, instead of removing the cause.

Worse, the Pledge embraces some of the Religious Right’s statist agenda:

“We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values.”

Where does the individual fit into this litany? The holding of the family as the foundation of society hearkens back to Middle Age Feudalism, or to modern Islamic culture, where the individual is subordinate to the Clan. The family institution obviously has a vital and valuable function, but only within the context of a rights-based, secular legal structure. Bans on gay marriage and abortion are blatant violations of individual rights, properly understood. The separation of church and state is the bulwark against religious tyranny: It leaves everyone free to hold and practice his or her private religious or non-religious beliefs without interference from the state. But the Pledge seems to challenge that bulwark. President George W. Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiatives”, continued and supported by President Barrack Obama, violates that separation doctrine through government support of private religious organizations – in direct defiance of the First Amendment’s “establishment” clause, and of individual rights.

In what could be the most disastrous clause in a generally disastrous manifesto, the Pledge contains this plank:

“We will adhere to the Constitution and require every bill to cite its specific Constitutional Authority.”

Why disastrous? It’s a double-edged sword, with the sharpest edge aimed not at statism, but at freedom. As originally formulated, the Constitution was designed to protect the individual rights of the nation’s citizens, and to establish a government whose sole purpose is to protect those rights. On the face of it, one might think that tying legislation to the Constitution would stop the statist trend in its tracks. That would be true, if there existed a real champion of those principles in the political arena. A full ideological battle over the Constitution is desperately needed if America is ever to reestablish its Founding ideals.

But, the Constitution has been thoroughly shredded, both legally and especially philosophically. Its meaning has been destroyed by the “living constitution” doctrine, which holds that its tenets must be adaptable and ever changing. It must be “relevant” to the times. It is, as a living document, empty … empty of any principles or absolute, universal truths. Thus, to cite just a couple of examples, the “general welfare clause” has morphed from a mandate for government to establish the social conditions necessary for all people to exercise their liberty to live their lives, to a justification for the destruction of property rights (wealth redistribution). Similarly, the “commerce clause” has morphed from a ban on trade restrictions between states (protecting the right of free commerce nationally), to a license for the federal government to regulate and control nearly every economic aspect of our lives.

In his must-read Objective Standard article, Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution, Thomas A. Bowden tells us how and why our Founding principles have been abandoned even by our judiciary. Importantly, that abandonment has been embraced not only by liberal, but by conservative intellectuals as well. As Bowden writes:

"[T]he emasculated Supreme Court now spurns virtually every opportunity to search the Constitution for underlying principles that place limits on state power."

Under the “empty” and “living” Constitutional premises accepted today, there is no piece of legislation that can not conceivably find “specific Constitutional Authority” to justify it. The Constitution, after all, contains no absolute or universal truths. The words of a document whose essential principles have been abandoned or evaded even by its alleged defenders can not be anything but a ball of putty moldable into any shape-of-the-political-moment.

As the Pledge to America clearly reveals, the Republican Party is ill-prepared to do theoretical Constitutional battle with the Left. It has no understanding, lacks the courage to uphold, or outright opposes the ideas that made the Constitution possible. Furthermore, the Constitutional pledge would require the Republicans’ to break with the conservatives’ strict adherence to “tradition”, and acknowledge that the original document, as great as it was, had flaws that served as poison pills that led to its undoing. It is obviously not prepared to do that. Lacking any explicit, uncompromising, and coherent defense of individual rights, the GOP is opening the door to an insidious inversion: Rather than stymie the statists, they could be handing them a gift. The Left, assuming they’re smart enough to grasp it, are being granted the opportunity of a lifetime to cloak their collectivist legislation in a Constitutional sanction, based upon the emptiness of the living document premise.

In my previous post, I wrote:

“It’s not that the Republican Party embraces bad ideas, in the sense of consistent principles. The truth is much worse. It stands for nothing: except moderation, bi-partisanship, and compromise as the only absolutes. Not only do they evade any principled stand on any issue, they often openly embrace the Left’s basic premises.”

The Pledge to America is a monumental blown political opportunity. The criticisms presented here do not exhaust the flaws in the Republican Pledge. There is no coherent message to rival the Democrats’ unabashed collectivism. There is no coherent message at all, except for a pledge to bear “true faith and allegiance to the people we represent”. What’s needed is true faith and allegiance to principles, not public opinion polls. Give the Democrats their due. They stayed true to their principles, despite “the will of the people”. That may cost them quite a few seats in the short term, but look what they’ve accomplished. If only the defenders of capitalism had such guts.

Should the Republicans sweep congress, the Pledge to America will stand as a self-imposed set of shackles that will hinder them. Worse, because of its vagueness, the Republicans will have ridden to power on an anti-Democrat, anti-incumbent wave only. This does not necessarily preclude them from developing into an effective force for pro-individual rights political governance. Once in power, if they gain power, they can still be steered in the right direction. But this will be hard - in fact nearly impossible - because they have once again shown that they stand for nothing.

This is true of the current Republican leadership. But, a lot of freshman blood will be swept into congress, and therein lies reason for guarded optimism. As an example of why there is hope, I refer you to this interview with Stephen Bailey, a young and promising House candidate challenging an incumbent in a strong liberal enclave. Mr. Bailey won the Republican nomination with 70% of the vote, by offering a good concrete model for what a generally consistent pro-individual rights political agenda looks like. Notice, as you listen to the interview, how his positions on a wide range of specific issues are anchored to a common principle. If he wins – and it appears to be a long shot, although this year one can never tell - he can be a force for philosophical “extremism in defense of liberty” within the GOP.

I don’t know how many other GOP upstarts share his views, but if Stephen Bailey represents the vanguard of a new Republican Party, then the future is considerably brighter than it now appears. The Pledge could be a last gasp for the me-too Republican old guard. The Tea Party has its intellectual firepower, and it will continue to roil the waters. It will not sit still for any kind of business-as-usual GOP majority, as we have seen in the primary season. We may yet see “extremism” on the Right.

Extremists vs. the Moderates: Why the Left Keeps Winning, and the Right has been Powerless to Stop It

There is no question that the Tea Party Movement has been and is a non-partisan phenomenon. And as I’ve said before – and this still holds true – it is leaderless ideologically. It is wracked with mixed premises, but with perhaps a common denominator embodied in the Revolutionary War-era Gadsden Flag demand: “Don’t Tread on Me” – a blow against authoritarian government. The Movement is almost as vehement in its opposition to the Republican Party as it is against the Democrats’ rampaging statism, especially the policies of the previous Bush Administration.

Despite its non-partisan nature, the Republican Party is becoming the political outlet of the Tea Party. This is not a paradox. A cultural movement must eventually find its political voice. In a two-party system, that means one of the major parties. The GOP is becoming it. But it is not in harmony with, but in spite of the established Republican leadership that the Tea Party is expressing its political voice. The GOP leaders and their neoconservative mouthpieces have been rebuffed time and again by primary defeats of their favorite candidates by Tea Party upstarts.

The tension between the Tea Party and the leadership has prompted an emerging Left/Democrat electoral strategy: paint the GOP as Tea Party “extremists”. Then, hold the Dems up as the “moderate” political middle. Here are a few examples:

In a recent article, Mike Castle's defeat -- and the end of moderate Republicanism, EJ Dionne laments the past “two decades in which moderates fled a [Republican] party increasingly dominated by its right wing.”

“[Rep. Mike] Castle's [Delaware GOP primary] defeat at the hands of Christine O'Donnell … does indeed mark the collapse of the Republican Party not only of Nelson Rockefeller and Tom Dewey but also of Bob Dole and Howard Baker.

“But the larger question is whether the country is ready to deliver a majority to a Republican Party that now holds problem-solvers like Castle in contempt.”

In a snippy little piece, Republicans Under a Spell, Richard Cohen ties the Tea Party to “witchcraft”, and declares the GOP under its “spell”. After a sprinkling of context-dropping insults against Christine O’Donnell and Newt Gingrich, he adds this:

"Similarly, only a spell can explain why much of the Republican Party insists on calling Obama a socialist. To apply this label to the very man who saved Big Finance, who rescued Goldman Sachs and the rest of the boys, who gave a Heimlich to the barely breathing banks, can only be explained by witchcraft or voodoo or something like that. It has caused the GOP to lose its mind. Obama did something similar to the American auto industry, saving it from itself. He did not let it fail or nationalize it, as a socialist would have done, but pumped cash into it so that -- this is me speaking -- it can fail later on."

Cohen goes on to attack the constitution and the Founding Fathers, and that deserves serious scrutiny. But, that is a subject for another day.

The Left-leaning NJ Star-Ledger says:

The tea party-anointed winner in Alaska wants to do away with Social Security and Medicare and the one in Nevada talks of the possible need for an armed revolt against the federal government. Much of the same ideological excess is evident, in varying degrees, among tea party winners in other GOP races.

The tea party [supplies] much of the energy in the GOP revival. Trouble is, they risk driving away moderate Republicans in November and bringing independents back to the Democrats. (Editorial, 9/16/10)

And when boiled down to sound bites, tea party ideas make sense to many Americans: limited government, reduced spending (and, in turn, lower taxes), balanced budgets, self-reliance and free-market capitalism.

But beyond those phrases are policy positions that, in normal times, would scare most voters: privatizing Social Security, dismantling big parts of the federal government, trashing the health care and Wall Street reforms, reconsidering civil rights laws and outlawing abortion even in the case of rape.

That may be emerging as the Democratic strategy for this fall’s congressional elections: Label tea party candidates as loonies, then link, by association, the rest of the Republicans… (Editorial, 9/21/10)

The Star-Ledger doesn’t say how “outlawing abortion even in the case of rape” – which means government violating a woman’s individual rights - jives with “limited government, self-reliance and free-market capitalism”, the system based upon the recognition and protection of individual rights. Though that is somewhat beside the point of this essay, it does highlight the Tea Party’s mixed premises I alluded to early on.

The common thread running through these examples – Dionne’s “extremism”, Cohen’s “spell”, the Star-Ledger’s “craziness” – is the fear that what may win in November is the emergence of an “extreme” set of ideas – a consistent ideological agenda that at this time is still lacking in the GOP.

The Left loves moderate, bi-partisan Republicans, and it is important to understand why. They provide an ideological vacuum through which to advance its agenda.

Though both parties talk about the political “middle” as the great electoral prize, the fundamental battle in America is between two extremes – collectivism vs. individualism, and their respective political manifestations, socialist statism vs. free market capitalism. The first holds that the individual, his life, and his property belong to the state, while the second holds that the individual owns his life, and the state is limited to protecting his unalienable right to live it.

The Left has always been fully consistent – i.e., extreme – in pursuing its agenda. For the past century, it has relentlessly upheld its collectivist ideology, as is evident in all of its rhetoric. Notice how the Left frames the issues. The “public interest”, the “common good”, the “good of society”, etc., are standard rationalizations for all manner of statist policies. They are collectivist terms, implying the superiority of the group or collective over its individual components. Tax issues are framed on the premise of whether or not “we” – meaning the state - can “afford” cuts or not. Earnings are implicitly presumed to be the property of the state, which determines how much of it private citizens who worked for it are allowed to keep. Their calls for personal self-sacrifice are manifest. To what end?: for the sake of some “public good” like a stronger economy, as if the economy is a separate entity apart from the economic activities of individuals, and which can thrive on private sacrifice rather than achievement. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”, implored JFK in one of the most famous collectivist political statements in American history. The “country” is held to be an entity onto itself - you must sacrifice for the group, not the other way around, obliterating completely the individualist concept of doing for yourself. Collectivist fundamentals are everywhere and at all times embedded in the Left’s rhetoric. And they mean it.

The Left will certainly compromise legislatively, such as Obama giving up on the “public option”, so long as the ball is moved toward its ultimate totalitarian socialist goal, as with ObamaCare. The Left will gladly forego the political first down on the first play, knowing that the GOP’s “problem-solvers like Castle” will compromise on a three or four-yard gain. But the first downs will keep coming on four-yard gain after four-yard gain, as the drive toward the collectivist goal line continues. The Democratic Left represents one extreme, collectivism, and proudly and openly stands on those principles. It has never been “moderate” in regard to its ideological essentials.

The GOP, with rare exceptions, has abandoned the other extreme, individualism (if it ever really embraced it). It has no principles, no ideals, no understanding of the capitalism it is supposed to stand for. It’s not that the Republican Party embraces bad ideas. The truth is much worse. It stands for nothing: except moderation, bi-partisanship, and compromise as the only absolute. Not only do they evade any principled stand on any issue, they often openly accept the Left’s basic premises - or embrace them by default.

The Left knows, or at least seems to sense, that the only thing that can reverse its century-long statist march down field is the emergence of a principled defender of individual rights, government’s proper role as a protector of rights, and a moral defense of both – which means, capitalism. This is why, as we approach Election Day, the Left strives desperately to protect its best secret weapon – those ever-dependable moderate Republicans.

Never mind that “the center of the political spectrum” is where most Americans “live”. The center, or middle, is only a mixture of the two main contradictory premises – some collectivist, some individualist. But the American people, by and large, have always leaned to the Right, toward individualism – the fundamental premise of capitalism. Yet, the past 75-100 years has been a steady drift toward totalitarian socialism. So far toward collectivism has America traveled that challenging the socialist sacred cows - “privatizing Social Security, dismantling big parts of the federal government, trashing the health care and Wall Street reforms” - is considered “crazy”: and “limited government, reduced spending, balanced budgets, self-reliance and free-market capitalism” are mere “sound bites”.

How could this be? The reason: the Dems have been far more consistent - read, extreme - in cleaving to their collectivist “ideological purity”. Socialism has had a loud voice in the Democratic Party, but capitalism has yet to find its political voice. The two ideological extremes are the primary combatants. The Left knows it. The Right doesn’t. The result: The political "middle" keeps moving Left.

Socialism, not surprisingly, is winning. I’ve included that bite by Cohen above, partly as evidence for the Democrats’ reigning socialist underpinnings. Cohen’s denials notwithstanding, what exactly does it mean for a government to have “saved Big Finance…Goldman Sachs and…the barely breathing banks [and doing] something similar to the American auto industry”? “He did not let it fail or nationalize it,” Cohen continues, “as a socialist would have done”. Really? Those actions are precisely the kinds that a socialist would have taken. “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings,” declared Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist Workers (Nazi) Party, in 1933 (Page 231-232). Socialism comes in many guises, ranging from communism to fascism to Nazism to welfare state mixed economies, but its essential nature is always the same. Obama is no Hitler, but he is a socialist. Socializing human beings is Obama’s vision, and only a clear understanding of the collectivism/individualism divide can dramatize that fact. A moderate, middle-of-the-road opposition will always keep that truth safely obscured for the Left.

The Tea Party Movement - though still a fractious, ideologically leaderless phenomenon which contains its own statist baggage such as the social authoritarianism of the Religious Right – has the potential to evolve into the kind of powerful movement that the Left fears: a principled defender of the opposing extreme. I should note at this point that I don’t regard "extremism" to be a vice, as it is popularly regarded today. In the philosophical sense – that is to say, in the field of abstract ideas – extremism means a consistent, uncompromising adherence to a coherent set of principles. Barry Goldwater’s famous line in his 1964 GOP presidential nominating speech, in which he defiantly stood up against the same Democrat smears, makes the point:

And let our Republicanism so focused and so dedicated not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

Today’s Democratic tactics are once again designed to keep the Republicans’ firmly in the “fuzzy and futile” mode. The Dems have been successful, over time, in implementing their statist agenda because that strategy has almost always worked. Right or wrong, good or bad, the philosophical extremist is a thinker – and a driver of human events.

But, America is ripe for a turning point, and the Left seems to sense it. The Tea Party phenomenon, despite some bad ideas such as outlawing abortion, carries a strong underlying cultural theme – a realization that we are losing control of our lives to a central planning elite, and a readiness to roll that power back. But it has yet to find its explicit ideological voice. It has not yet coalesced around a consistent philosophical framework, like the collectivist Left. Without it, the movement will ultimately fail. But, the massive lurch toward authoritarianism over the past decade, capped by Obama statism, has been a wakeup call for most Americans, I believe. The individualist element of “the center of the political spectrum” is the ascendant force in American politics today, and I believe that the time is right for a principled, pro-individual rights, pro-capitalist challenge to the Left’s collectivist ideological monopoly. I also believe that the Left knows it, and fears it. Smear tactics are an admission of desperation to avoid an intellectual challenge.

In today’s Tea Party environment, the Dems emerging strategy could backfire big time – if the expected Republican rout is backed up with some ideological backbone. The consequences of welfare statism are now too obvious to ignore: It is hampering the productive economy, bankrupting the country, and destroying our freedom. The reactionary Democrats are on the ropes, and their welfare statism is vulnerable as never before. The question is: Is the GOP up to the ideological task? Or, will the coming Republican dominance be just another meaningless interlude to be followed by another Democrat first down.

The Republican Party needs to become what the Left is claiming it is, what it fears, but which it still isn’t – the Party of the capitalist “extreme” Right. It must do some serious soul searching, to discover why it has been retreating steadily in the face of the collectivist onslaught. It must stand up for individualism, with all that that implies. The strategy will be risky, and could cost them many seats. But one election cycle is not the big prize. Turning the country around is, and a principled electoral stand today is a philosophical investment in future elections. A delayed win on principle trumps the big immediate sweep based upon the fog of moderation. A moderate GOP majority will only serve to consolidate the big recent Democrat legislative gains, and pave the way for their next big statist assault. This has been the recurring pattern of the past century or more.

Now, more than ever, is the time for a meaningful political fight over fundamental ideas. The Democratic/collectivist Left has moved the ball past midfield, and the socialist goal line looms not far downfield. Our time continues to run out.

-Mike LaFerrara

Governor Christie Rattles New Jersey's Welfare State

Newly elected Republican Governor Chris Christie presented his first budget proposal, for the 2011 fiscal year, to the NJ legislature and the state’s residents. In this post, my focus will be not so much on the details of his speech, but on a few of the responses.

“Now, finally, New Jersey will have the debate it has avoided for too long...”

So said the New Jersey Star-Ledger in its editorial of 3/17/10. Indeed. Claude Sandroff, declaring that “New Jersey is lucky to have Chris Christie”, had this to say at American Thinker:

“Christie's speech is a gold mine of reasoned arguments defining fiscal conservatism and rationality. It should be required reading for every office-seeker, local or national. Its budget details are New Jersey's, but its broad general conclusions are universal. It is also a highly moral statement of fundamental principles, for Christie completely redefines the notion of economic fairness.

“Fairness has been co-opted by socialists and other proponents of private property redistribution to justify nothing less than legalized theft. America's fairness czar, Barack Obama, is on the record as a true believer in sharing the wealth...for any uneven accumulation of wealth by individuals or nations is ipso facto proof of unfairness. Rich individuals must be brutally taxed so that income can be more justly distributed within a society. And internationally, wealthy nations, through global mechanisms -- carbon credits are the currently favored means -- must be forced to lift up poor ones.”

The Star-Ledger’s Editors, who were mostly critical of the new Republican governor, offered a different take. They write:

“As the debate begins, we offer two thoughts. First, the governor can’t possibly justify deep tax cuts for the state’s wealthiest families while he’s imposing these spending cuts. He even increases taxes on the working poor by scaling back the earned income tax credit. This is not shared sacrifice. It is class warfare.

“On the tax cut, let’s first talk semantics. The surtax on incomes over $400,000 was imposed last year as a one-year fix. It expired at the end of 2009, so some argue that Christie is not really cutting taxes on the wealthy, he is just choosing not to increase them.

“Call it what you want. But under Christie’s budget, these families will pay less in 2010 than they did in 2009. We call that a tax cut.

"The Department of Treasury earlier this year estimated the lost annual revenue at just under $1 billion. For a sense of scale, that would be enough to restore all the education cuts in this budget.”

Tom Moran, a Star-Ledger columnist writing in the same issue, is not your common knee-jerk liberal. He has supported school-choice vouchers and liked a lot of what he heard from the governor. But his socialist roots showed as he had this to say:

“Watching this man in action is a relief after the Jon Corzine years. He is decisive where Corzine waffled. His language is crisp where Corzine’s was convoluted. He is not afraid to take risks. He likes to lead.

“And his speech contained much to like.

“And then he blew it. Because he stuck with his plan to cut taxes for the rich. He asked no real sacrifice from them at a time when the state needs everyone to climb out of the car and help push.

“With this tax cut, he would hand out $1 billion to families who earn more than $400,000, the richest two percent.”

The debate that the NJ Star-Ledger sees commencing is an ethical one. What I like here is not so much the content of Christie’s budget proposals, which are nowhere near the draconian assault on the welfare state that is being portrayed, but that he drew a line in the sand. “Gov. Chris Christie is showing us what New Jersey would really look like with smaller state government”, said the Star Ledger.

Well, not really that much smaller. But he did take an implied though mixed shot at the ethical underpinnings of the welfare statists, prompting the above-mentioned comments by the Ledger and its columnist. “Class warfare”, the Ledger calls it in a bit of an overstatement. The debate, as I see it, comes down to these questions:

* What is the proper role of government? Is wealth owned by those individuals who earned it, or is it owned by the government which, as the representative of the tribal collective (society), can dispose of it at will, based upon who needs it the most?

* On a deeper level, the question is: Are we each morally our brothers’ keeper, or are we each morally autonomous entities possessing inalienable individual rights to our own lives, property, and pursuit of our own goals, welfare and happiness? Do we as individuals have an automatic claim on the wealth and earnings of others, based upon our needs. Or are we responsible for the satisfaction of our own needs based upon our own efforts?

Governor Christie said in his speech that New Jersey faces “As a percentage of the prior fiscal year’s … budget, the largest deficit of any state in America, and the largest in our own history -- by far.” At the same time, he said, “…the sad fact is that we are number one – with more state and local taxes taken as a percentage of income than any other state in America.”

Record taxes, record spending, and record deficits … the fiscal hallmarks of the welfare state. Where does all of this money go? “[M]ore than half of what the State spends every year is sent to local governments, in the form of aid for municipal government and school districts.” In other words, wealth redistribution from “rich” towns to “poor”. What’s the result? “State spending grew 59 percent from 2001 to 2008, [but] local government has exercised even less control. Spending at the local government level has risen 69 percent since 2001.”

The redistribution doesn’t stop with municipal aid, of course. The state has a myriad of spending programs for the healthcare area, for example. It wasn’t always thus.

When I began my working career in 1966, there was no sales or income tax in NJ. You read that right. The sales tax was enacted that year, 1966. The income tax was enacted in 1976. Both started at a low ebb … 2% or less, I believe. Since then, despite some backing and filling, those rates have steadily risen over time. Today they stand at record highs, 7% and 10.75% respectively. Since the main purpose for both taxes was the funding of state social services of some kind, this means that wealth redistribution is at record highs as well. Yet at the same time, the state government is drowning in red ink, as it habitually spends more than it collects. No matter how much is sucked out of our financial hides, it’s never enough. The financial drain is never-ending and growing.

Such is the nature of the collectivist premise that everyone’s needs are a claim on the wallets of everyone else, but no one is responsible for his own.

The entire “debate [NJ] has avoided for too long” is somewhat clouded by the fact that most adults are both contributors (taxpayers) and recipients of the government services that their taxes fund. But make no mistake about the essential, indisputable fact underlying the nature of the issue … the forcible redistribution of wealth. Virtually every taxpaying resident of the Peoples’ State of New Jersey falls into one of two categories – those who pay more than they receive in benefits, and those who pay less. This is in the nature of all forms of socialism. The funding of government services, from schools to colleges to municipal aid to health insurance to welfare to roads and infrastructure to business subsidies, is inherently unjust. Beneath the surface rhetoric about each resident paying his “fair share”, some people receive unearned benefits paid for by money taken by force from the earnings others.

The Star-Ledger demands that we “share the sacrifice”. By this, it means raise taxes on the “wealthy” (the most productive) to match any budget cuts. But make no mistake. There is no “shared sacrifice”. When you peal back the concrete complexities of taxation and spending, you will uncover a simple fact. There are sacrificial victims, and there are profiteers on sacrifice. Most people probably cannot know on which side of the sacrificial fence they sit. It would take a super-computer and an army of accountants to figure it out. But the facts remain. To the extent that one contributes more in taxes than he collects on government “services”, is the extent to which he is being sacrificed. If his taxes are cut, his sacrifice is reduced but still real. To the extent that one collects state “services” in excess of what he pays in taxes is the extent of his profiteering. If his take is reduced, he is not sacrificing. One can not logically sacrifice that which is not rightfully his to begin with. When the profiteer’s state “aid” are cut, he is simply cashing in less on the financial blood of the sacrificial victims.

I’m sorry, Mr. Moran, but receiving a bit less of the loot does not constitute climbing out of the car and helping to push. And a cut in the tax rate on money you earned from 10.75%, which was promised to be a one year temporary surcharge, back to the previous and slightly less confiscatory 9%, is not a "handout" of $1 billion dollars. But such is the perverse “logic” that springs from the sinister “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” mindset that rules this state. Only when everyone is individually responsible for paying his own way on education, healthcare, funding his own town’s cops and firemen, etc., can anyone say that everyone is helping to push. But, of course, that would mean everyone is the driver of his own car, paid for by his own work. Which would mean, of course, a free market in education (no government-run schools), healthcare (no government-provided medical care), and a government that performs only its proper function – protection of individual rights.

The debate is under way, not just here in NJ, but in the nation as well. It is a moral debate. This is as it should be. The Obama agenda is accelerating the nation toward the collectivist state, explicitly driven by the president’s shrewd employment of the altruist morality card. Governor Christie has opened the morality debate here in NJ, in a diluted form. But open it he did, whether intentionally or not, and that’s what counts most in his budget proposal. However mixed his bag of political convictions, he has courageously taken the debate to the proper level. He has riled the Left, and they are getting nervous. Tom Moran refers to Chris Christie as “Governor Wrecking Ball”, not entirely meant as derogatory. His proposals are rather timid, despite the hand-wringing. His municipal and education aid cuts are at least partially need-based. He has not proposed the elimination of any state departments or programs, to my knowledge, just funding cuts. But however inconsistently, Christie’s wrecking ball has taken its first swing at New Jersey’s redistributive establishment.

Morality is the final battleground. The future of America will be decided here. The signs are increasing that the underlying struggle between collectivism and individualism is moving toward the center of that battlefield. It’s about time. We desperately need it.

The "Violence" of the Dems' Health Care Reform

A recent phenomenon has served to concretize and clarify a fundamental issue at work in our culture. David Lightman and William Douglas of McClatchy Newspapers write:

"Law enforcement officials are investigating a series of threats against Democrats in the House of Representatives who backed the recent health care legislation, threats that have lawmakers on edge about potential violence against them both in Washington and back home."

The name of that article is "Words, and now bricks thrown at lawmakers over health care vote".

This behavior has been roundly condemned, including by the Democrats. And the Dems are right to condemn physical violence. But their angst rings hollow in the face of the passage of their health care "reform" bill. That is because ObamaCare and the violence, their words and the bricks, spring from the same root. What is that root?

In Force and Violence: How the Left Blurs Terms, Amit Ghate answers by exposing a common fallacy:

"The fallacy is the equation of violence with force. The error and its consequences are manifest in what the left condemns and condones.

"...under the left’s influence and urging, government now exerts force against its own citizens in myriad and ubiquitous ways. It forcibly takes our tax dollars to fund public schools — leaving us with little choice or means to give our children the education we consider best. It decides which drugs can and can’t be tested; how approved drugs are to be marketed; and which patients, no matter how willing they are to take a risk, qualify for experimental drugs, etc. It regulates commerce and trade in issues ranging from trivial to critical. Just ask any businessman how many arbitrary rules he must heed every single day — under punishment of fine, closure or even jail. Everything from the placement of signs, to interview questions, to campaign contribution limits — even pricing! — is dictated to businessmen.

"So while leftists may recognize the evil of a thug shooting an innocent victim dead, they simultaneously champion laws that prevent a person from buying the life-saving medicine she needs. The pain and suffering leftists cause by unleashing governmental force leaves them unfazed. As long as their victims remain nameless, and the proceedings are carried out behind closed doors (preferably by some bureaucracy or committee to give them 'legitimacy'), the left is happy to use force to advance its agenda.

"Yes it is proper to condemn the initiators of violence. In fact it is morally mandatory because such action represents a tremendous evil. But violence is wrong precisely because it is a species of force. For the left to oppose open violence while promoting every other form of force is more than hypocritical — it’s an unconscionable intellectual crime.

"Whatever its form or specific target, force is evil because it impedes or defeats man’s use of his mind and its products."

The common root shared by ObamaCare and the violence aimed at lawmakers is that they both represent the exercise of force. The equivocation of force solely with its physical manifestation - violence - allows statism to grow unchecked. But you can have force without violence, though not the other way around. The threat of physical violence lies behind the entire edifice of the welfare state and is its hallmark. But the statists don't acknowledge the threat as equivalent to the actual. But the threat of force entails its logical end result - actual physical force. Ultimately, those who break the law will face the physical confiscation of their property and/or physical arrest and incarceration.

The use of force is right and proper in regards to criminals who initiate force against their fellow citizens - either directly as in the case of rape or armed robbery, or indirectly as in the case of financial fraud. The retaliatory use of force is what government's are for, and it is right that the government must have a legal monopoly on the use of such force. It is, in fact, the only reason to have a government.

But what about the case of government-initiated force? That is why we need a constitution: to limit the government from initiating physical force in any of its manifestations. When it does, it is stepping outside of its proper bounds. It is no longer protecting individual rights, but violating them, just as any common criminal does. The difference is, the citizen can fight back against the common criminal, in the form of a government that will arrest and prosecute the perpetrator, and force him to pay restitution to the victim.

But when the citizen's protector, the government, becomes the criminal, the citizen is left legally disarmed. Ultimately, this leaves him no choice but to step outside of the law to seek restitution. Of course, today the citizen is not totally disarmed ... yet. In America, we still have the powerful weapon of free speech, coupled with the right to elect our political leaders. Violence, or rebellion against the government, is not yet the answer.

But never forget that our Founding philosophical document, the Declaration of Independence, sanctions rebellion as a fundamental human right and as a last resort:

"That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." (Emphasis added)

The welfare statists want to pretend that they are somehow different from the perpetrators of violence. But they are not different, in the essential respect. Their violence is hidden, but nonetheless real. The physical violence should be condemned, for the same reason that ObamaCare should be condemned: Both entail the violation of individual rights. The difference is, the legislative victims of threats have the law to protect them, while the victims of ObamaCare are themselves victims of the law. They are legally disarmed, with no one to protect their rights.

The actions of anti-ObamaCare thugs is a precursor and a glimpse at what the ultimate end of America's current statist direction will look like - violent rebellion. It doesn't have to happen, and it's way too soon to justify this kind of behavior against our politicians. I join in in condemning the violence. But one must be consistent. One must condemn all forms of the initiation of physical force. The Democrats do not, and that is their weakness and their hypocrisy.

Amit Ghate calls for the right approach to the problem cited in the McClatchy article:

"It’s time to reject the notion that only 'violence' is objectionable. Instead, let’s focus on eliminating the initiation of force, whatever its manifestation. Since the principle of individual rights is the principle which banishes force from human relations — let’s reestablish it. In so doing we’ll undo decades of leftist malfeasance."

A Monument to Power-Lust

The passage of ObamaCare by the House of Representatives has all but assured that it will become law. It establishes not only the theoretical framework for totalitarian control of American medicine, but also for federal control of higher education through a last minute amendment nationalizing the government’s student loan program. It is a massive violation of individual rights, including property rights. As a bonus, an attack on academic freedom is thrown in. It has been justified on the altruistic-collectivistic grounds that, as the Star-Ledger puts it, “all Americans have a right to decent health care [because] a great nation cannot leave 47 million of its people out in the cold”.

A “right” to a manmade product such as healthcare means that someone must be forced to pay for it and/or forced to provide it. It establishes the principle of the master/slave relationship enforced by government. The slave is anyone who has achieved financial self-sufficiency or who has acquired the skills and ability to deliver healthcare services. The master is anyone who claims a “need’ for healthcare that he can not or will not pay for. A “right” to healthcare means legalized plunder, enforced at the point of a governmental gun. This is the nature of socialism in all of its incarnations. The historical record on this is unequivocal. Socialism means slavery and the totalitarian state. The degree of a nation’s enslavement is equal to the degree of its socialization. ObamaCare has slid the dial a long way toward totalitarian socialism on America’s steady slide down the slavery meter.

This is what ObamaCare’s supportors are endorsing. Whatever their motives, and in view of socialism’s barbaric historical record, compassion is not one of them.

But under the philosophical nihilism of the Left’s Postmodernism, such concerns as history, facts, cause-and-effect, and logical consequences don’t matter. Reason is impotent and logic is unnecessary. Reality is whatever we wish it to be. What matters is “compassion” for the people left “out in the cold”. But though they may believe their altruistic rhetoric, there's more than meets the eye for the architects of ObamaCare. Altruism, the ethical doctrine that holds that virtue consists of living for others, is window dressing to cover up the deeper motives of those who preach the sacrifice of all to the needs of all. What are the underlying motives? A 1962 essay by America’s philosopher and moral defender, Ayn Rand, offers an answer. In a piece called The Monument Builders published in The Virtue of Selfishness, she writes that power-lust is the motive and is manifested [largely] in “the desire for the unearned”. But, she writes:

“The desire for the unearned has two aspects: the unearned in matter and the unearned in spirit. The desire for the unearned in spirit is the more destructive of the two and the more corrupt. It is a desire for unearned greatness; it is expressed by the foggy murk of the term ‘prestige’.

“The seekers of unearned material benefits are merely financial parasites, moochers, looters or criminals, who are too limited in number and in mind to be a threat to civilization, until and unless they are released and legalized by the seekers of unearned greatness.

“ ‘The public’, ‘the public interest’, ‘service to the public’ are the means, the tools, the swinging pendulums of the power-luster’s self-hypnosis. Since the concept [of ‘the public’] is so conveniently undefinable, its use rests only on any given gang’s ability to proclaim that ‘The public, c’est moi’, and to maintain the claim at the point of a gun.

“There are two ways of claiming that ‘The public, c’est moi’: one is practiced by the crude material parasite who clamors for government handouts in the name of a ‘public’ need and pockets what he has not earned; the other is practiced by his leader, the spiritual parasite, who derives his illusion of ‘greatness’ – like a fence receiving stolen goods – from the power to dispose of that which he has not earned and from the mystic view of himself as the embodied voice of ‘the public’ ”.

“Of the two, the material parasite is psychologically healthier and closer to reality: at least, he eats or wears his loot. But the only source of satisfaction open to the spiritual parasite, his only means to gain ‘prestige’ (apart from giving orders and spreading terror), is … the building of public monuments.”

ObamaCare is the public monument of the spiritual parasites of the Democratic Party.

President Obama and his ObamaCare political sponsors have no material desires. They are the latest batch of a breed that has been the bane of mankind: They are seekers of unearned greatness. They will trample over anyone’s rights and lives, as they proclaim themselves the champions of “the people”.

In the coming months, the Democrats will viciously defend their monument by declaring anyone calling for repeal as a callous enemy of the sick. They will say that a return to the failed “free market” system will mean a return to the days of “discrimination against the sick”, without even defining what that means. They will beat their chests as champions of the helpless little people, who will never again be victimized by insurance industry “abuses” that, whatever its sins, is nonetheless a creature of government.

The shameless exploitation of people with medical problems used as props for the plunder of the wealth of Americans and the enslavement of the medical profession in the run-up to passage will increase exponentially as Democrats seek to defend their monument.

But ObamaCare is not about the sick who can’t afford treatment or the uninsured or insurance industry abuses or the runaway costs or “compassion” or any of the rationalizations of the day offered by the Democrats. It never was.

ObamaCare is about the power and the prestige of Obama and Pelosi and Reid, et-al. If ObamaCare is not repealed and replaced with free market … which means individual rights … reforms, our healthcare freedom will erode at an accelerating pace. But, as Ayn Rand observes, our freedom will be sacrificed “not for ‘the good of mankind’ nor for any ‘noble ideal,’ but for the festering vanity of some sacred brute or some pretentious mediocrity who craved a mantle of unearned ‘greatness’ ”.

ObamaCare is a monument to power-lust.

Remember that as you try to stomach the rhetoric of the Democrats’ defense of their “noble ideal”.

Another Anti-Democrat "Revolt"

The Massachusetts GOP Senate upset, following the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections, signaled a possible Republican electoral tsunami in November. More evidence that the anti-Democrat trend is nationwide and accelerating comes from Pennsylvania, where another Democratic incumbent is in serious trouble. In her NY Post op-ed entitled Rising revolt in Pennsylvania, Abby Wisse Schachter reports:

“Pat Toomey, the presumptive GOP nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania…now leads Sen. Arlen Specter 45 percent to 31 percent among likely voters in the latest Frank & Marshall College poll.

“Specter, who switched parties last year for fear of losing a Republican primary to Toomey, still has to finish off a challenger from the left, Rep. Joe Sestak, in the May 18 Democratic primary. Meanwhile, as the nation turns sour on the Obama agenda that Specter has helped enact, Toomey's been charging up -- six months ago, he was down eight points.”

Significantly, despite former Senator Rick Santorum’s advice to “emphasize jobs first and foremost”, “the economy and jobs actually comes in a close second behind health care as the top issue for voters in the F&M poll -- which is just fine with Toomey, because he's been railing against the Democratic approach for months.” Obama, whose approval rating in Pennsylvania has plummeted from 55% to 38% in just one year, has made healthcare his number one domestic priority. That priority is now a millstone around the necks of Democrats nationwide, where even their “safe” seats are under assault.

This piece of good GOP news must be tempered by continuing signs that the Republicans still don’t get it:

“[Toomey’s] “been railing against the Democratic approach for months.

“One of his regular lines is a question: "Why is it you can buy car insurance from a little green lizard, but you can't buy health insurance from a guy in Ohio?" He wants to see health insurers compete across state lines, along with other modest reforms to give people more options than under the current system.”
“Modest reforms” – read “unprincipled” – is exactly the wrong prescription. This is not to say that interstate competition in health insurance would not be a major step in the right direction. But the current system is riddled with government interference, which is the cause of all of the problems that the Democrats use to justify their socialist schemes. The GOP needs a comprehensive plan that explicitly proclaims the right (and personal responsibility) of each individual to take control of his healthcare needs and dollars, and rejects the notion of a government role in guaranteeing “access” to health insurance and/or healthcare to everyone.

Promoting “free market” reforms as a path to universal coverage is a socialist premise that is doomed to fail, and keep the country on the incremental path to government control of medicine. The problems cited by the Democrats are real. Soaring medical costs, the “pre-existing condition” problem, lack of competition among health insurers, and other problems can all be traced back to government policy. They can only be attacked through comprehensive reform that features a roll-back of government intervention and essentializes the principle of personal responsibility and control, the exact opposite of ObamaCare.

The 1994 Republican Revolution crashed and burned in the mountains of George W. Bush’s statist “compassionate conservatism”. The result was expanded welfare state government. Another such debacle is certain if the Republicans don’t have the courage to take a firm ideological stand for individual rights.

Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

In my Introduction to this blog, I wrote:

“[T]he only real guide to understanding human events, their relationships to one another, and where they may lead us, is to discover the fundamental philosophical and moral principles that drive them: hence, the title of my blog. Discovering them is not always an easy task, but with Objectivism as my frame of reference, that is what I aim to do as I analyze and opine on today's events.”

Ayn Rand wrote: “Abstractions as such do not exist: they are merely man’s epistemological method of perceiving that which exists—and that which exists is concrete.” Since abstractions as such do not exist but are merely mental tools for understanding reality, they must be logically relative to concrete events and facts. Otherwise, they are merely “floating” … disconnected from reality and thus useless. Since my blog is based on the premise that abstract ideas drive human events, my task is to validate my principles with reference to today’s issues.

Put another way, my blog is about the concretization of abstractions. The number one abstract principle that is my driving passion is the concept of individual rights. That abstract reference point is the focus of this post’s analysis of a very controversial subject. It is also a good demonstration of why we need to make full use of our uniquely human conceptual faculty (i.e., our powers of abstraction), and why without abstractions we are essentially “flying blind”.

On January 6, 2010, the Same-Sex Marriage bill went down to a resounding defeat in my rather liberal state of New Jersey. This result should not have happened, and is a case study on the wrong way to advocate for anyone’s rights. On the same day, the New Jersey Star-Ledger foresaw the defeat, pinning the blame on “political missteps”.

For a change, I agree with the Star-Ledger. The gay marriage ban should have been lifted in New Jersey. I agree with the Editors’ stand, but not their murky logic … the source of the cause of the defeat.

The failure was not political, but philosophical. A look at the Editors’ logic exposes the cause of the inability of so many politicians to take a firm stand – the “soft supporters [who] may run for cover”. The Editors lament this spectacle and ask: “How did this bill become such a long-shot in a state where most polls show solid support, and where the Democratic governor and leaders of both houses supported it?” It was indeed a long shot. The bill was defeated by a heavily Democratic State senate by a decisive 20-14 margin (with three abstentions). Why? We need to take a look at the Star-Ledger’s own reasoning.

I am sometimes asked a question such as: “Do you support or oppose gay marriage?” This question misses the point. The question is, does anyone have the right to employ the government’s power of legalized physical force to prohibit two people of the same sex to forge a marriage contract? I firmly and unequivocally believe the answer is no. My personal opinions are irrelevant here. Upholding the right to same-sex marriage no more indicates my support for gay marriage than my defense of a woman’s right to her own body indicates support for abortion; or my defense of the First Amendment indicates support for pornography among consenting adults; or my opposition to Affirmative Action indicates support for racial discrimination.

The basic issue is individual rights, the inalienable sanction to take the actions necessary to achieve one’s long-term goals, well-being, and happiness – so long as those actions don’t involve the violation of the same rights of others. Since rights are held equally and at all times by all people, the state’s legal sanction of a marriage contract between any two consenting adults must necessarily include same-sex couples, if the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause means anything. Of course, a private institution like the Catholic Church has every right to refuse to sanction gay marriage. But it has no right to trample the rights of others who disagree.

My opinions aside, it’s hard to see how a marriage between two gay people violates or presents a threat to the rights of anyone else, as would be the case between, say, the parties in a Mafia hit “contract” or the perpetrators of a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Since the freedom of contract is derived from the right to life and liberty, the burden of proof is on the anti-gay marriage side to validate its stand. It hasn’t and, in fact, cannot do so.

Yet, it won the day in New Jersey.

When the issue is defined properly, there are no “soft supporters”. Broad abstract principles leave out personal judgements on how one feels about the concrete issue involved. When one declares his allegiance or opposition to an abstract principle, he offers a yardstick by which others can judge his stand on a virtually unlimited number of concrete issues. The principle of individual rights, properly understood, leaves no room for “flirting with both sides”, “winks and nods”, or “hiding”. The Editors demand to “learn where each senator stands on gay marriage”. The proper question is: “Where do you stand on the principle of individual rights?” Each legislator’s answer to that question leads logically to a specific vote on the gay marriage bill, since it is essentially a vote on individual rights. But modern politicians on both sides of the ideological divide recoil against principled stands on any issue.

The idea of individual rights is much broader than any single concrete issue, and it is sometimes not readily apparent how to apply it to some particular concrete issue. Disagreements concerning practical application can and do arise among people who hold, and understand, a given principle. But first, the principle must be clearly identified. By evading it, the debate was focussed narrowly on homosexual marriage. This forced the politicians to declare whether they are for or against “gay marriage” and, by implication, homosexuality as such. But as I stated above, that is not the issue. It should never have come down to that. The senators should have been obliged to take a firm, either/or stand on the paramount question – Do you support or oppose the number one Founding principle of America, unalienable individual rights?

The debate wasn’t properly framed, so it went down to resounding defeat. The supporters such as the “gay rights” group Garden State Equality are partly to blame here. By basing their argument on the premise that they are fighting for “gay rights” rather than the broader principle of individual rights, they undercut their own case by, in effect, fighting for what one correspondent called “SPECIAL rights”. Fromexperience wrote:

“Marriage is not a right -- civil or otherwise.
In five state and DC, homosexuals have been legislatively "awarded" SPECIAL rights through SSM. Those civil unions and domestic partnerships available ONLY to ss couples are ALSO special rights.”

Marriage is a right, but it’s true that marriage is not a fundamental right. It is a derivative of the foundation of all rights – the right to life. As long as the issue is gay rights, the supporters are vulnerable to this line of attack. Fromexperience is correct that rights are not “special” or “legislatively awarded” or applicable only to gays. But he evades the fact that they are unalienable … i.e., based upon the provable metaphysical facts of reality and, thus, inseparable from man qua man, and possessed equally by each and every individual. That includes the right of free association, which includes contractual freedom, including marriage contracts. The government’s role is to enforce those contracts, equally. Defending the SSM bill on this proper basis explodes fromexperience’s argument, because to deny an unalienable right to anyone is to deny the same right to everyone … including the contractual right to heterosexual marriage.

It’s obvious why not only liberals but also conservatives ignore, evade, and refuse to explicitly endorse the principle of unalienable individual rights. The implications for both would expose each side to a withering critique of their entire agenda. Adherence to principle cuts through the fog of pragmatism, and obliterates any chance of having one’s cake and eating it too.

For the liberal, it becomes necessary to explain why gays should have the right to freely contract with each other in marriage but not with their health insurance company. If abortion is a medical procedure that should be decided solely between a woman and her doctor, the basic logic behind Roe v. Wade, then why shouldn’t that same line of reasoning (non-interference by government) apply to all issues regarding healthcare? If the government has no right to force a woman to bear a child or deny gays the right to marry, then why should that woman or that gay person be forced into any government-run “insurance” scheme like Medicare, or forced to buy a policy full of state-mandated coverages or submit to an “individual mandate”, or be denied the right to refuse to pay for emergency room visits by uninsured people?

Likewise, for conservatives, it becomes necessary to explain why international free trade is good with regard to material goods, but not to people (immigration). Why is it wrong to force people to fund the latest liberal welfare scheme, but OK to force them to fund Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives? And why is it wrong to restrict freedom of speech, except to demand that the FCC crack down on “obscene” material in the media?

The inconsistencies are manifest on both sides, if the principle of individual rights is the yardstick to measure the validity of one’s stand on concrete issues. But the Star-Ledger wants to have it both ways. Thus, the Editors defend the gay marriage bill with vague references to “civil” rights or “gay rights”, as if rights are privileges bestowed by society or possessions specific to some group. By evading the exact nature of rights, the advocates of this bill can uphold gay rights but not medical rights. I offer into evidence the Star-Ledger’s support for the totalitarian "Affordable Health Care for America Act", or HR3962 (and the Senate’s incarnation of ObamaCare), a massive rights-violating monstrosity that makes a mockery of its support for NJ’s SSM bill. If the Editors were to base their call for passage of the Gay Marriage Act on the proper grounds, they would logically have to oppose those healthcare “reform” bills. Both issues are tethered to the principle of individual rights. But, since the Editors don’t really support the actual rights of gays (just “gay rights”), there is no need to reconcile those contradictory positions.

“Unprincipled inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, to paraphrase Emerson, who got it exactly backwards. Of course, one must be consistent based on the right principles … i.e., ideas consistent with objective, concrete reality. And it’s not always easy and sometimes hard. Loyalty to principles often means defending or advocating that which runs contrary to one’s personal convictions. Think of Voltaire, who once said in defense of free speech: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” The preservation of freedom demands nothing less than that kind of conviction. That’s what’s been in play in my mind, as I grappled with this issue in recent years. I have always thought of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That hasn’t really changed. But, over the years, I’ve had to rethink my stand on certain political issues in order to bring them into line with my passionate belief in the rights of the individual. Gay marriage is one. I was against its legalization, but eventually came to support NJ’s 2002 domestic partnership law and 2006 civil union legalization.

But as fromexperience notes, those laws represent “special rights” and are thus untenable. This has led me to full support of the legalization of same-sex marriage. It is the only stand consistent with the principle of individual rights and of our constitution.

Regardless of what one personally believes about it, the overriding principle relating to gay marriage points unequivocally to only one conclusion – same-sex couples have the same unalienable rights to contractual freedom as heterosexual couples. The law should recognize that fact.

It’s not always easy acting on principle. It often puts one’s political opinions at odds with one’s personal values and morals. Announcing one’s fundamental beliefs … wearing one’s moral principles on one’s sleeves, so to speak, as I do on this blog … exposes one to the judgement of others by one’s own standards. This is as it should be. One way to avoid that personal responsibility as well as the inevitable (and proper) judgements of others is to simply run from abstract principles, and declare that anything goes on the whim of any moment or issue. That’s the tactic employed by both sides in this debate, including the Star-Ledger Editors. This “pragmatic” approach enables political factions and pressure groups to battle in a domestic civil war, each vowing to grab some political or economic advantage at the expense of others based upon some newly minted group “right.”

But it should be remembered that we owe the very existence of our United States of America to a revolutionary group of intellectual activists who pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” on a radical set of political principles to forge history’s greatest and most moral country ever. Principles are crucial. That is why the principle of individual rights must be placed at the political center stage. It is the means of stemming the aggression of rights violators who seek to impose their own moral judgements on others. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. Put another way, the abstraction “individual rights” is the means of stopping anyone from taking the concrete actions of physically preventing a survivor from inheriting the pension benefits of his same-sex deceased partner or another from visiting his same-sex partner in a hospital … i.e., from signing a concrete marriage contract.

Thomas Jefferson, my favorite Founding Father, the author of our Declaration of Independence, and one of history's leading voices for individual rights, had a gift for condensing a complex issue into a few powerful words. As he explained: 

Of liberty then I would say, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. 

My emphasis. Can anyone explain to me how two gays getting married exceeds the limits drawn around them by the equal rights of others? I can't. And so I declare my unequivocal support for legal gay marriage. But, sadly, Thomas Jefferson was missing from the NJ Legislature. And so the gay marriage bill went down to defeat.

The ObamaCare Nightmare - Finally Over?

The New York Times is reporting that:

"With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama’s top domestic priority on Tuesday, saying that they no longer felt pressure to move quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing them."

The Democrats' last-ditch effort to save ObamaCare by ramming it through using parliamentary gimmicks has collapsed, prompting Harry Reid to say "“We’re not on health care now... There is no rush".

I'm no political pundit, but I read the Dems' sudden go-slow approach as meaning there will be no health care legislation until after the election ... if at all.

This is an incredible turn of events.

The danger now is the Republicans. Will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Despite being vastly outnumbered in congress, they are in the driver's seat. This is more by accident than by design. The defeat of ObamaCare was entirely a grassroots, Tea Party affair. Still, they have the incredibly powerful tailwind of overwhelming public opposition to the Democrats and their attempted hostile government takeover of American medicine behind them. What will they do with it?

The danger is that they will compromise with the Democrats in the "spirit of bipartisonship", giving us ObamaCare light. This is the failed approach that will continue the decades-long trend of incremental socialism. If this happens, the Democrats will have won.

My hope is that somewhere within the GOP, leadership will emerge with the guts to lead the party into the 2010 midterm elections not by catering to the so-called "middle", but by laying out a true pro-capitalist, pro-individual alternative to ObamaCare. Most Americans have no real idea what that means. But the Tea Party Movement, though fractured philosophically, has the undercurrent suited to that approach. That undercurrent can best be summed up with the phrase: "Don't tread on me!"

In short, the political raw material is there. Will the Republicans seize the moment?