NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
July 4, 2009
The new America
The Dow has been tanking again, and new figures show the U.S. economy shedding jobs at an accelerating rate. One might criticize the U.S. government for the first trillion or two of “stimulus” spending, by observing that it hasn’t worked. But that would be too easy.Yes, it was crazy, in the middle of a crisis created by debt, to see how far they could run up debt. It was crazy to shore up nearly worthless assets, in the face of irresistible market forces. At a time when the entire investment system desperately needs to be de-leveraged, it was crazy to oil the gears. But it gets crazier. In the middle of this economic mess, the U.S. politicians are debating not one, but two new programs of unprecedented size, without the slightest understanding of the economic consequences. One is a vast new “health care” plan, to be sold almost entirely on emotion, with President Obama’s snake-oil skills. The only thing clear about it, is the intention of the people behind it: to effectively nationalize the U.S. medical system, by making every part of it report to government bureaucracies. This is what we did in Canada in the 1960s, and we’ve spent the decades since trying to persuade ourselves that waiting rooms are natural. The other is the “cap and trade” legislation. At a time when it has become all but obvious that the “global warming” scare was an imposture, the U.S. government is going to war against carbon fuels, through a program that can only kill jobs, both directly and through outsourcing of American economic activity to places with lower environmental standards; while igniting protectionist trade wars over the latter. The scheme will cause gas and electricity prices to skyrocket — to the immediate benefit of the big private energy conglomerates (thus setting them up for further demonization, and the next round of nationalization). By triggering a massive inflation of energy prices, it will do most harm to those on fixed incomes — to the poor and the elderly most of all. Like all such gargantuan schemes, it will create a circus of fraud and corruption. And yet, at the end of the day, it will have no significant impact on the environment. But still crazier things are happening. Consider: In the time since the current economic problems began to show, around the autumn of 2007, several million U.S. jobs have been erased, most of them in construction and manufacturing — overwhelmingly, jobs done by men. But the government jobs being created to replace them through the “stimulus” spending — jobs that net absorb taxes, rather than generating them — are largely in sectors dominated by women. And this is being done at a time when male unemployment is already higher than female unemployment. In short, another feminist social revolution is being tossed on the top of “health care” and “cap and trade.” How can Americans fight this? I don’t think they can. For not only has the Democrat party — committed in the main to the “second American revolution” I began to sketch above — control of the White House and both Houses. The Republican party is pulling itself apart. Only half of it is willing to fight: the other half thinks the only way back to power is to accommodate this revolution. The United States has now caught up with where Canada was about 1982, when Pierre Trudeau completed the “reforms” that would make any return to our pre-Trudeau political and economic arrangements quite impracticable. It would no longer matter who won each election, the choice would now be only between the “fast lane” party and the “slow lane” party. For the Republicans who would rather have catfights among themselves than challenge a supposedly impregnable Obama, the attraction is the path of least resistance. Once the other side in the “culture wars” has established control of the bureaucracies, the courts, the universities, and the media, standing up against them just isn’t “cool.” The Democrats needn’t worry much about catfights, because, to use an awkward baseball metaphor, there is no longer a left-field fence. But the right-field fence has moved so far inside first base that you can bunt home runs over it. Or to vary that metaphor, all a Democrat has to do is scream: “I smell an authentic conservative!” — Sarah Palin, for example — and the victim’s own party colleagues will immediately rub her out. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top