Ordinarily I avoid putting an entire article on the blog. However, this is so powerful and pertinent to our abysmal financial state, I felt this article by Roger Kimball was too important to miss. So, here it is:

Theory and Reality in the age of Obama, Or, how what you don’t know can hurt you
August 13, 2010 – by Roger Kimball(Pajamas Media)
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Here, under the rubric “U.S. Economy,” are some headlines posted on RealClearPolitics this morning.

* Jobless Claims Jump to 6-Mo High

* Market Signals Fears on Economy

* Big Trade Gap Sign of Weak Growth

* Analysts Predict Market Malaise

A bit further down the page there is a section headed “President Obama.” Under that rubric we find:

* Obama: Worst of Recession is Over

* Could Meet With Iran President

* Approval Falls to New Danger Zone

* Weary Aides Head for Exit

Which set is right? Yesterday in this space, reflecting on Obama’s enthusiastic commendation of Ramadan and all things Muslim, I wrote that Obama is historically unprecedented as an American President. What I had in mind was his apparent equivocation about the nation he was elected to lead. As many commentators have observed, Obama is a “post-national” or “trans-national” political figure. In this, he mirrors the left-liberal, “progressive” consensus the world over—well, in Europe and the North America, which pretty much defines the habitat of that consensus. Somehow, the soil is quite right for it elsewhere: you might get a hard-edged revolutionary leftism in South America or Southeast Asia, but those are inhospitable climes for the elite, politically correct progressivism that has embraced the post- or trans-national solution to the problems of governance.

The problem (well, one of many problems) with having a post- or trans-national President is that America remains (if I may so put it) a pre-post-national country. Outside the ivy-bowered halls of academia, the newsrooms of the so-called “mainstream media,” and the chambers of left-leaning politicians, people in America are, by and large, national not post-national in their patriotic affiliation. (What would it mean, by the way, to be a “post-national patriot”? “Patriot” derives from patrios, of or relating to one’s fatherland, i.e., a particular place. Here, as elsewhere, there is a deep wisdom in etymology.) In other words, most Americans are proud of their country. They like it that America is rich, powerful, and generous. (Furthermore, I suspect, for most people, pleasure in the contemplation of their country proceeds more or less in that order.)

Barack Obama is not like most Americans, however. He eschews — he positively frowns upon — talk of national “exceptionalism,” American or any other variety (but especially American or British pretensions to exceptional status). He never misses an opportunity to apologize for America, most recently, I believe, on August 6 when he dispatched a delegation to Japan to “apologize” for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In other words, he apologized for saving a few million Japanese lives, hundreds of thousands of American lives, and ending the war in August 1945 instead of many months later.

But the larger issue is not Obama’s position on America’s behavior in World War II. It is, rather, his feelings about America tout court. In many ways, he acts more like a British colonial administrator circa 1850 than a citizen who was democratically elected by his own people. Obama and his extended entourage — the politicians, professor, and pundits who share his progressive outlook — treat most Americans as unenlightened charges who require a paternalistic guiding hand. This is not a new current among Democratic elites. Nor is it new for Obama. Remember how he almost sank his campaign when he patronized those small-town folks who “cling to guns and religion” because they have nothing better occupy their lives.

The problem is, most Americans don’t see themselves as children or semi-savages in need of a paternalistic hand-up or hand-out. They see the humor in Ronald Reagan’s observation that the nine most frightening words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” They like the story of Calvin Coolidge (at least, I think it was Calvin Coolidge) saying to some government busybody: “Don;t just do something, stand there!” They basically want they government to stay out of their lives, their businesses, their pocketbooks.

This basic discrepancy highlights another way in which Obama’s tenure in the White House is historically unprecedented. We’ve had plenty of Presidents who have been out of touch with the people. But has any President whose liberal self-infatuation made him so ostentatiously out of touch, not just with the people but with implacable exigencies of economic and political life?

Look again at those headlines I began with: On the one hand, you have the voice of the market: “Jobless Claims Jump to 6-Mo High,” “Market Signals Fears on Economy,” “Big Trade Gap Sign of Weak Growth,” “Analysts Predict Market Malaise.” On the other hand you have Obama assuring us (and maybe himself) the “Worst of Recession is Over.” It’s the difference between theory, according to which massive government spending “stimulates” the economy, and reality, in which massive government spending stimulates massive government debt. In the world according to Keynes, a “fiscal multiplier” takes over from all those government-directed dollars lifting the economy on a tide of new investment and higher employment. In the real world, unsustainable debt drags down the economy because the market sees that, after all, what is unsustainable cannot go on. Its the difference between fiction, between what we would like to happen because it accords with our wishes about they world should be, and fact, which accords with the way the world actually is is.

It’s not only that Barack Obama deep down doesn’t like America. There’s also the fact that he doesn’t understand it, or us. Odd, isn’t it, that an American would say “us” in such a way as to exclude the people elected to represent them?

The fact that more and more people are doing just that has yet to penetrate the corridors of power. I have every confidence, however, that come November those rarefied purlieus will be brought face to face with the awful truth that most Americans have wearied of the malodorous fairytale that cast them as perpetual, semi-helpless dependents and the country they love as an insufficiently enlightened atavism.

In the midst of spending most of my time completing my new novel, and reading as much as possible about the present political shenanigans in the U.S.A. ––– in order to remain sane, I also finished a 520 page science-fiction tome, “Hunters of Dune” by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. It is a Tor Book, Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue. New York, NY10010, 2006. For those of us, decades ago, who read the original Dune novels, this book is a pale family member. The tale of the struggle between the Bene Gesserit, Honored Matres, and the “Outside Enemy” lacks the “punch” of the original great Dune novels. The story moves slowly up to a climax,  but leaves us nowhere ––– perhaps readying us for a follow-up novel. The writing is plodding and misses the elegance of Frank Herbert’s style. Nevertheless, it serves to give us some clues about the origin of the “scattering” and the events after. And the novel serves to bring back to our memories many exciting details of the original Dune novels including some of our favorite characters –––– Duncan Idaho, Bashar Miles Teg, the hideous Baron Harkonnen, and the noble Paul Atreides. At the end of the novel there is a fascinating “ Brief Timeline of the Dune Universe,” which really should have been placed at the beginning in order to better follow the narrative. I can only recommend this book to those who wish to have a new infusion of “Dune” and the adventures of mankind after the “scattering.”

Dorothy Rabinowitz, a member of the Wall Street Editorial Board has written a most insightful opinion piece on June 9th, in the Wall Street Journal which describes the deep division that exists between the American people and President Obama and his Administration. He is indeed an “alien” in the White House. Unlike most of us, President Obama dismisses the notion that America is better or even luckier than other nations. He loathes the idea that Americans tend to think of themselves as special among the peoples of the Earth, considering this as ignorance and ethnocentrism. President Obama considers himself a multiculturalist –– a citizen of the world, first, and only secondarily President of the United States. He looks upon cosmopolitanism as morally and intellectually superior to patriotism, and apologizes for America’s supposed depredations, despite the enormous blood, treasure, political and cultural gifts America has given to the world since its founding. Obama is seriously disconnected from this country, which is a looming tragedy for us as well as him.

I’m providing a link to the full article.

THE GREEK MODEL

We received science and democracy from the ancient Greeks. But, it’s a bad idea to get fiscal policy from modern Greeks.  However, David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute believes that’s the way we’re headed. Why?
Note the similarities :

1. Greece has a budget deficit of 13.6 percent;  ours is already 10.6 percent, the highest level since 1945.

2. Greece has a public debt of 113 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Although, we are not there yet, the 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports indicates the combined unfunded liability of these two programs is almost $107 trillion.

Under the Obama’s budget:

1. Debt held by the public will grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020.

2. And  if  nothing is done rein in Obama’s agenda, it could rise to 215 percent of GDP in 30 years, according to Boaz.

Thus, debt as a share of the economy, is rising.  Whether current law continues or Obama’s budget is passed, the debt will be more than two-thirds of annual GDP in 10 years. Then, Boaz thinks the government will turn to inflation as a solution.

Source: David Boaz, “The Greek Model,” Cato Institute, April 26, 2010.

For the text, go to: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/26/the-greek-model/

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has indicated he is resigning effective before the next Supreme Court term in October. Thus, President Obama will nominate Steven’s successor. Since Obama is far to the left politically, he is likely to nominate someone who thinks the same way, i.e. that the Constitution is a ” living document,” and therefore fair game for judicial activism.
I was struck by a clear and concise article by Stephen J. Markman, Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court in Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College, Vol. 39, Number 4, April, 2010. The article was adopted from a speech Justice Markman gave on February 25, 2010 sponsored by Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship. In his article he outlines the controversies that are certain to emerge as the process of naming a new justice moves forward.
I am posting a few excerpts from the article, The Coming Constitutional Debate, and will link to the entire article. This is reprinted in part by permission from Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College. The following are these excerpts:

“Proponents of a “21st century constitution” or “living constitution” aim to transform our nation’s supreme law beyond recognition—and with a minimum of public attention and debate. Indeed, if there is an overarching theme to what they wish to achieve, it is the diminishment of the democratic and representative processes of American government. It is the replacement of a system of republican government, in which the constitution is largely focused upon the architecture of government in order to minimize the likelihood of abuse of power, with a system of judicial government, in which substantive policy outcomes are increasingly determined by federal judges. Rather than merely defining broad rules of the game for the legislative and executive branches of government, the new constitution would compel specific outcomes.
“Yes, the forms of the Founders’ Constitution would remain—a bicameral legislature, periodic elections, state governments—but the important decisions would increasingly be undertaken by courts, especially by federal courts. It will be the California referendum process writ national, a process by which the decisions of millions of voters on matters such as racial quotas, social services funding, and immigration policy have been routinely overturned by single judges acting in the name of the Constitution—not the Framers’ Constitution, but a “constitution for our times,” a “living constitution,” resembling, sadly, the constitutions of failed and despotic nations across the globe.”

“For the 21st century constitutionalist, perhaps the greatest virtue of redefining the privileges or immunities clause is the prospect of transforming the Constitution from a guarantor of “negative liberties” into a charter of “affirmative government,” guaranteeing an array of “positive” rights. As President Obama has observed in a radio interview in criticism of the legacy of the Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s, “[It] never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and . . . more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. . . . [T]he Warren Court . . . wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution. . . that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”
“President Obama is correct. The Framers’ Constitution defines individual rights in terms of what the government cannot do to you. For example, the government cannot inflict cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore the individual has a constitutional right not to be subject to such punishment; the government cannot engage in unreasonable searches and seizures, and therefore the individual has a constitutional right not to be subject to such searches and seizures, and so forth. By contrast, the Framers’ Constitution does not guarantee rights to material goods such as housing, education, food, clothing, jobs, or health care—rights that place a related obligation upon the state to obtain the resources from other citizens to pay for them.
“Proponents of a 21st century constitution have many grievances with the individual rights premises of our Constitution as written—such as the largely procedural focus of the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, with its old-fashioned conception of such rights as those to “life, liberty, and property”; the negative cast of the specifically-defined rights in the Bill of Rights; and the limited application of the equal rights clause to things that have been enacted by legislatures (as opposed to things that they should have been required to enact). Each of these “limitations” poses significant barriers to what 21st century constitutionalists hope to achieve in reconfiguring America. This explains their interest in employing the privileges or immunities clause, which seems to them open-ended and susceptible to definition by judges at their own discretion.
“As various advocates of a 21st century constitution have urged, a privilege or immunity might be interpreted to allow the invention of a host of new “rights,” and thus be construed to guarantee social or economic equality. However pleasing this might sound to some people, there should be no mistake: adopting this interpretation will supplant representative decision-making with the decision-making of unelected, unaccountable, and life-tenured judges. Should the privileges or immunities clause be used in this way, as a charter of positive rights, ours will become an America in which citizens are constitutionally entitled to their neighbors’ possessions; in which economic redistribution has become as ingrained a principle as federalism and the separation of powers; in which the great constitutional issues of the day will focus on whether porridge should be subsidized and housing allowances reimbursed at 89 or 94 percent of the last fiscal year level; and in which a succession of new “rights” will be parceled out as people are deemed worthy of them by berobed lawyers in the judiciary.”

“It is with the intention of generating debate, and of providing a roadmap to help us better navigate the constitutional forks-in-the-road that will soon be facing our nation, that I offer these thoughts. While there has never been a time in our history in which there was not serious constitutional debate among our people, I would submit that there have been few times in which this debate was more fundamental in defining the American experiment.”