The President's Masterpiece

Or "The Affordable Care Act"
With Apologies to Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Original Inspiration

HAVE you heard of the wonderful Affordable Care Act,
That was written with such logical tact
It lasted three years to the day,
And then of a sudden, it--ah, but stay,
I’ll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the media into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,--
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Two-thousand plus five and five.

Robert Byrd was then alive,--
Snuffy old drone from the mountain hive.
That was the year when Dallas-town
Saw the sky open and snow fall down,
And McChrystal’s report was done so brown,
Left without a star to his crown.
It was on that night with Texas snow packed
That the President finished his Affordable Care Act.

Now in writing of laws, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,--
In loophole, kickback, flaw, or omission,
In oversight, fine print, clause, or provision,
In title, chapter, subsection,--lurking still,
Find it somewhere, you must and will,--
Above or below, or within, or without,--
And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,
A law breaks down, but doesn’t wear out.

But the President swore he would persevere,
With a "Yes we can," and a "Let me be clear,"
He would build ObamaCare to beat the town
and the county and all the country round;
It should be so built that it couldn’t break down;
--"For," said the President, "’Tis mighty plain
That the weakest clause must stand the strain;
And the way to fix it, is I maintain
        At the last minute
To pass the bill to find out what’s in it."

So the President inquired of the Congressional staffers
Where he could find the longest chapters,
That couldn’t be read nor written nor spoke,--
That was to provide a veil of smoke;
He sent for lobbyists to whip up the vote;
The amendments were many, with strenuous pleas;
The votes were postponed, so no one could flee,
But stayed in the Capitol for things like these;
The law would dispense with the ancient vellum--
Liberty destroyed,--they kept trying to tell ‘em,
Never had the Constitution been so at grips,
And the arguments flew from between their lips,
Their deaf ears frizzled like celery-tips;
Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker kickbacks,
Pork-barrel needles in regulatory haystacks,
All the Democrats lined up, Yellow Dogs turned blue;
Deem and pass, free abortion a linchpin too;
Stupak’s amendment, Nantucket sleigh-ride,
Found in the hopper when old lion Ted died.
That was the way he "put her through."--
"There!" said the President, "now she’ll do!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Coverage for all, no premiums to pay,
But the Democrats’ majority dropped away,
Free birth control and abortions,--where are they?
But there stood the stout old Affordable Care Act
As fresh as the day the President signed it in fact!

ONE HUNDRED days;--it came and found
The President’s masterpiece strong and sound.
Two hundred days again;--
ObamaCare, they called it then.
Seven-hundred thirty came;--
Running as usual; much the same.
One thousand days at last arrive,
And then came one thousand and NINETY FIVE.

Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its third full year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it.--You're welcome.--No extra charge.)

TWENTY-FIRST OF MARCH,--the emergency rooms are packed.--
There are traces of age in the Affordable Care Act,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local as one may say.
There couldn’t be,--for the President’s art
Had made it so like in every part
That there was not a chance for one to start.
For the employer mandate was just as strong as the insurance exchanges,
And the individual mandate was just as strong as the original pages,
And the Medicaid expansion still gave free pills to the poor,
And the guaranteed coverage was neither less nor more,
And the premium support as strong as before,
And waivers and loopholes, encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past doubt
In another few months it will be worn out!

Twenty-first of March, Twenty-thirteen!
This morning the HHS Secretary can’t be seen.
Now, civil servants, hide from the media, get back!
Here comes the wonderful Affordable Care Act,
Regulatory uncertainty growing by the day.
"No Lung Transplants!" said the HHS Secretary.--Off went they.
The HHS Secretary was working on her fundraising text,--
Had got to the NFL, and stopped perplexed
At what the--Fluke--was coming next.
All at once the presses stood still,
Waiting for word from Capitol Hill.
--First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,--
And the Treasury Secretary was getting ready to fly,
At the end of the day before the fourth of July,--
Just the hour to hide from any media reply!
--What do you think the Treasury Secretary found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old law in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,--
All at once, and nothing first,--
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful Affordable Care Act.
Logic is logic, and that’s a fact.

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The View at the Bottom of the Cliff

Cliffs do not loom

As the old carol goes, "fast away the old year passes." In our frantic and impatient modern world there are never enough hours in the day, but with the shortness of the days in this bleak midwinter the sense of time passing far too quickly is only heightened. Paradoxically, these last fleeting and precious moments of the year are also a time to pause and take stock of where we have been and where we are going. At the end of the two-thousand twelfth year of our Lord, there is much to consider.

The Age of Obama has been extended for another four years and the so-called "fiscal cliff" is no longer merely "looming" [N.B., this should be a top contender for the cliche of the year], but is now a rumbling avalanche sliding down the mountain of debt and red tape to crush and bury us all. At the same time as we stare with horror into this thundering torrent of such immense and unimaginably massive doom it is also a time to consider how much less we have as well.

The liberals tell us that we are too fat, so we must have less food, less salt, less sugar, less trans-fats (whatever those are), and less carbohydrates. We must also have less alcohol, less smoking, and less of anything fun. This dread scourge does not only afflict us as adults though. Our children are too fat as well and there are too many of them. We need smaller children in smaller classrooms. In this respect, the liberals may get their wish, because we already have fewer children in smaller families. There are now fewer families with both parents present than there are children with single mothers or born out of wedlock.

The liberals tell us that the earth is getting warmer (or colder depending on who you ask and when), so we need to use less gasoline and have smaller cars (or no cars at all) and drive slower and not travel as far. We must use less coal, so that means less electricity, less warmth, less energy, and less light. We are told to spend more time outdoors, but there is less of that too. There is less solitude and less wilderness and the little that is left is farther away and harder to get to. There is less quality entertainment. There are fewer movies about heroic men. Perhaps there are fewer heroic men to make movies about, or perhaps it is because the liberals have demonized and deconstructed all the heroes of our past and turned them into villains.

The liberals tell us that we must not offend, so there is less prayer, less faith, less Christmas, less God. There are fewer practicing Christians. Perhaps it falls under entertainment, but there is less Tebow too. Hollywood celebrities with broken lives tell us how to live so it should not astonish us that there is less virtue, less fidelity, and less modesty. Dishonest politicians tell us they have all the answers and yet there are fewer principles, less integrity, less responsibility, less humility, less cooperation, and less trust in our public institutions. Despite having less freedom (or maybe because of it) there is less security and less peace. There is less pride in America, less dreaming, less exploration, and less hope for the future.

The liberal solution always seems to be less of something. There is too much violence, so we need fewer guns. There is too much inequality, so we need less prosperity. There is too much suffering, so we need less comfort. There is too much death, so we need less life. In the end, that last point encapsulates the rest. There seems to just be less for us to give and less of anything at all. People are tired and worn and holding on desperately for something to change, but they are less and less sure what that something even is. People are yearning for more. We want more freedom. We want more hope. We want more heroes. We want more LIFE. Let us pray that in the new year we may find some.

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An Appeal to Heaven

The Pine Tree Flag

The day of the election is at hand. The Prolix Patriot has written before in these pages of the attacks on religious freedom by the Obama Administration. If the President is re-elected tomorrow, these attacks will doubtlessly continue with renewed hostility and vigor. Furthermore, regardless of which candidate wins tomorrow (or in the following weeks if it's very close) people of all religions will still have great difficulty living according to their faith in our decadent society.

Whether in the abuses heaped upon celebrities like Tim Tebow or a formerly anonymous elderly bus monitor in New York, we live in a culture that despises virtue. In the 22nd Psalm, we find a description of the persecutions that have always faced people of faith and conviction. Whether in the jeers of unruly schoolyard bullies or the hectoring of the liberal media, people of faith seem to always be on the defensive, but as the scripture tells us, this is all to be expected for those who seek the path of righteousness.

Religion tolerates unbelief because we have faith that with time and love we can convert the hard of heart to a fuller understanding. All we ask is to be allowed to practice our faith in the meanwhile. When the government joins in that attack however, the situation becomes more desperate. There are many policies which a religious person might find offensive, but President Obama has crossed an unprecedented line by requiring people of faith to violate their own consciences in the service of those policies.

It is altogether fitting then that an early motto in the fight for independence of this country was "An Appeal to Heaven." The phrase alludes to the works of John Locke, the philosophical forefather of American self-government.

What is my Remedy against a Robber, that so broke into my House? Appeal to the Law for Justice. But perhaps Justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir, robbed and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my Son, when able, may seek the Relief of the Law, which I am denied: He or his Son may renew his Appeal, till he recover his Right. But the Conquered, or their Children, have no Court, no Arbitrator on Earth to appeal to. Then they may Appeal, as Jephtha did, to Heaven, and repeat their Appeal, till they have recovered the native Right of their Ancestors, which was to have such a Legislative over them, as the Majority should approve, and freely acquiesce in.

When the fate of freedom is at its most perilous, we may find our hopes dashed and our faith tested. However, we would all do well to remember the words of the 146th Psalm, "Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation." The Prolix Patriot hopes that this will be the last word he ever needs to write about President Obama, but even if Obama is able to continue his attacks on religious liberty in a second term, there is a saying that God always settles out of court. Our faith may be attacked and even criminalized, but in the end, we shall prevail.

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As Goes Ohio...

As we enter the final two weeks of this election cycle, let us consider the question of whether President Obama or Governor Romney can win without Ohio. Currently, the only two bellwether states with any kind of reputation are Ohio and Nevada. These two states have only voted against the winner three times between them in the last hundred years: Nevada once in 1972 and Ohio twice in 1944 and 1960, and that last was one of the closest elections in history. Ohio especially, which has a population of 11.5 million to Nevada's 2.7 million, has become THE essential state to win for anyone who seeks the Presidency. Thus we have the saying, "As goes Ohio, so goes the Union."

You may be asking yourself, what is a bellwether anyway? The bell is obvious enough, but the wether has nothing to do with meteorology, but rather derives from the German widar or ram and is most often encountered in animal husbandry. The story goes that shepherds would place a bell around the neck of a castrated ram (the wether) to keep track of the whole flock, the thinking being that the ram would stay with his ewes wherever they roamed. This is not the most flattering comparison, but nevertheless, residents of bellwether states typically consider it a point of pride because of the unique role they play as an indicator of broader trends in electoral politics.

Following the etymology then, the chart above classifies states into sheep and bellwethers based on comprehensive election results from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. The sheep (shaded in yellow) are states which have voted with the winner three or more election cycles in a row. Aside from Franklin D. Roosevelt, no president has served more than two full terms--and indeed this is now constitutionally prohibited--so three in a row is more than just happenstance. The bellwethers (shaded in green) are states that have voted with the winner for three decades or more and have begun to acquire a more exceptional historical status.

Returning to our original question then, let us assume that Romney will win Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, and Virginia. It is possible then that Romney could win Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire and go on to win the Presidency without Ohio. Meanwhile, Obama could theoretically win those same four states while losing Ohio to Romney and still win the election. However, both scenarios are quite unlikely. According to the RealClearPolitics polling averages, Colorado and New Hampshire are to the right of Ohio while Iowa and Nevada are to the left. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that whoever wins Ohio will win the election.

It is worth noting that bellwethers are fundamentally a backwards-looking indicator of broader trends. As the old adage goes, "Every streak is good until it isn't." For example, as recently as 2004, Missouri and Tennessee were considered reliable bellwethers of the electorate, but both went to McCain in 2008 by a large margin. However, as the graph below illustrates, it is also true that if either Ohio or Nevada loses its bellwether status, there would be fewer such states than at any time since the end of Reconstruction--and that was with fewer states in the Union overall. Therefore, we can still make a few predictions about this election in the larger context of history.

If Ohio and Nevada lose their bellwether status and the election is decided on the barest of margins, it would signal that we have entered a new era of extreme hyper-partisanship similar to the antebellum period. In this scenario, Obama would certainly have lived up to his apparent goal of emulating the last President to come from Illinois, although not in a very good way. It would be a tragedy if after everything we have suffered through in the last four years that Obama's greatest similarity to Abraham Lincoln ends up being a legacy of bitter division and distrust.

There is also the possibility that Obama wins re-election with a broad mandate. In this case, Obama would be able to consolidate the disastrously extreme liberal policies of his first term and it seems likely that the Democrats' dream of a permanent majority would finally come true. Fortunately for conservatives, this seems more and more unlikely with each new poll. If Obama does win, it will almost certainly be by the narrowest of margins.

Finally, if Romney wins a solid victory it would signal a continuing realignment in American politics that started during the 1990's with the elderly and socially-conservative minorities continuing to assert ever greater importance in the electorate. The sheep today could become bellwethers of tomorrow. In the continuing realignment scenario, states like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and especially Florida--all of which are leaning towards Romney in the most recent polls--may eventually overtake Ohio in electoral importance in future years. However, in this election, it’s still up to Ohio.

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"Check the Transcript"

On the record is forever

When Obama said, "Check the transcript," during last night’s presidential debate, it could have been the big line of the evening, but that will depend on whether Romney or his surrogates use it to advantage. The consensus is that Obama got the better of Romney last night, if only because he actually showed up this time, which was viewed as an infinite improvement over his previous performance. Nevertheless, Obama's imperative to "check the transcript" viz. the Libya 9/11 attack and subsequent cover-up is a potential opening that may make Obama's victory last night a Pyrrhic one.

When you check old transcripts, sometimes you come up with inconvenient quotes. For example, the Weekly Standard notes that Hillary Clinton once said, "The buck stops in the Oval Office" which conflicts with her statement yesterday that responsibility for the security lapses in Benghazi is hers alone. Another example, in the VP debate there was this exchange:

MS. RADDATZ: What were you first told about the attack? Why were people talking about protests? When people in the consulate first saw armed men attacking with guns, there were no protesters. Why did that go on for weeks?
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Because that's exactly what we were told —
MS. RADDATZ: By who?
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: — by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that. As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment.

If Biden was being truthful, then Obama didn't know on September 12 that the Libya attack was an act of terrorism and yet Obama claimed last night that he did know and that in his Rose Garden remarks, he said as much. Well, Mr. President, let's follow your advice to check the transcript on that (emphasis added):

As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe.

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.

But we also know that the lives these Americans led stand in stark contrast to those of their attackers. These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity. They should give every American great pride in the country that they served, and the hope that our flag represents to people around the globe who also yearn to live in freedom and with dignity.

The only mention of terror was a banal generality in his closing statement. Worse still, the statement is false. In the very same speech he criticized an American citizen for exercising his freedom and the right to free speech which is one of the "values that we stand for." That citizen is now in jail on trumped-up charges of violating probation for an entirely unrelated matter. So in fact, an act of terror did alter the character of this great nation. We now put citizens in jail for purely political reasons. That's something they do in Venezuela or Cuba or Iran before an "election." Not in America.

Furthermore, the quote that was reported at the time was when the President said, "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." That was the storyline that the Obama Administration was pushing with their liberal media allies, not the terror angle.

Ironically, Candy Crowley speaking to the CNN post-debate panel said that the moderator was incorrect when she supported the President's "check the transcript" line. Unfortunately the moderator happened to be herself. More puzzlingly still, Crowley also made statements on the record that directly rebut Obama's and her own assertion that the administration immediately recognized that Libya was a terror attack. At the time she said, “There's a back and forth now about why didn't this administration -- why did it take them until Friday after a [Tuesday] September 11th attack in Libya to come to the conclusion that it was premeditated and that there was terrorists involved."

Even then, Crowley was being very generous. Even on September 25th, terrorism in reference to Libya was still that-which-must-not-be-named for the President. The Prolix Patriot wrote in these pages several weeks ago about the President’s UN speech:

Just as with the Tucson massacre, the motives of the killers in Libya are very clear. This was not a "protest" against an amateur video. This was an act of pure slaughter in violation of every precept of international law and diplomacy. Despite this, and even though leaders in the intelligence community, the Secretary of State, and his own Press Secretary have all admitted that it was a premeditated and overt act of terror aimed directly at the United States, the President only mentioned the word "terrorism" once in his address—and not even in reference to the violence in Libya.

The most memorable line from that speech was, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." Even weeks after the attack, the President was still hanging--nay clinging--to the video protest story, even when it was thoroughly discredited by everyone around him.

There are also other clips out there, for example the President equivocating about the nature of the Libya attack while being interviewed on "The View." [N.B., it's a sad state of affairs in journalism today when the pack of liberal harpies on "The View" are tougher on the President than the moderator of a nationally-televised debate.]

Out of all of this, we have two potential explanations. Either the President knew it was a terrorist attack and deliberately mislead the American people for weeks until the lie started to unravel, or he genuinely did not know even when everyone around him had already admitted it. Both are disturbing prospects. Worse still, given Obama's aloofness from foreign affairs, both are entirely plausible.

Unfortunately, most people in this country are not following the Libya story--which is a shame, because it has very real consequences for the security of our country. Nevertheless, the economy is still the number one issue of this election, and in that area, Romney completely dominated the President last night.

Regardless of whether Romney made an unforced error or cleverly flushed Obama out into the open, it may not even matter. The real question is whether Romney sees this as a potential opening and decides to capitalize on it, or decides to just stay focused on the economy and jobs and let the Libya story fester inside the beltway until it starts to really stink.

That said, foreign policy really should be more of an issue in this election. As a friend observed during the debate, the President has many powers, but he is not able to repeal the laws of supply and demand. Even though the economy stinks, the President can only do so much about it, whereas on foreign policy, the President literally has a sworn obligation to protect the American people.

We live in an increasingly dangerous world. Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and others are up to no good. Al Qaeda is rebuilding across the Muslim world. Piracy is still a threat to our shipping off the Horn of Africa and in the Straits of Malacca. The Drug Wars in Mexico continue to spill over into border towns and even deep into the country to places as far north as Denver and Detroit.

The President's handling of the Libya attack can best be described as a fiasco. Instead of just admitting that we were unprepared, this whole cover-up demonstrates that politics no longer stops at the water’s edge, especially when foreign events are inconvenient to the President's political fortunes and aspirations. The last four years under this President have been dark and perilous times. We should recoil in sheer horror when we even begin to imagine what another four years would look like.

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What Goes Around Comes Around

Fighting Fire With Gasoline Doesn't Work.

President Obama claims to stand on the side of police, firefighters, paramedics, teachers, librarians, and other public-sector employees. This is perhaps true insofar as he has committed the federal government, and thus the American taxpayer, to spend inconceivable amounts of money to win the affections of these groups. However, the new contract that will be voted on today by the Chicago Teachers Union and an internet video being circulated by the International Association of Fire Fighters both make clear that in the long run, Obama's policies will do more harm than good for public-sector employees.

While most private sector employers and even the federal government have transitioned to defined-contribution plans like the 401(k), most municipal governments continue to use defined-benefit pension plans. Unfortunately, defined-benefit plans are going bankrupt because the money that was supposed to be set aside for future pension payments was spent frivolously by local governments during the boom times under the flawed assumption that the economy would always be good. Unlike the federal government, state and local governments can't just print money to pay their pensioners when expenses exceed revenues. They have to issue new debt which usually has to be approved by voters in a referendum.

The biggest reason for funding shortfalls in the great recession is the decline in home prices and thus property tax revenues on which local governments depend. The crisis is real. Because of their profligacy, cities like Stockton, California and Camden, New Jersey are now unable to pay for even basic services like police. Eventually home prices and tax revenues will recover, but consider that sometime in the next 20-30 years there will be another major recession and tax revenues will collapse again, except that if we don't have pension and entitlement reform, next time the burden of payments on state and local governments will be many times worse than what we have seen in the last few years.

Of course, senior employees who have dedicated their whole lives to serving public health, safety, and education are right to be upset that their retirement is now in jeopardy. Any plan to address the public sector pension crisis must ensure that people do not lose the retirement that they have worked for. However, opposition to reform from public-sector unions like the IAFF and the CTU will ultimately result in less money to fund salaries, benefits, training, and equipment for their current and future employees as state and local governments are forced to spend more and more on pension payments. Moreover, just throwing more money at the problem now is like fighting fire with gasoline.

Winston Churchill probably never said that, "Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and is not a conservative has no brains," which is just as well, because it is false. As the slow-motion train wreck of the pension and entitlement crisis makes clear, people under 30 years of age have the most at stake in this election. If Obama is re-elected, his liberal policies of pandering and procrastination will continue and we will see more bailouts, more "stimulus" plans to pay for bankrupt public sector pension plans, and ever higher deficits and taxes to fund it all.

Who will pay these taxes? Obama has been traveling the country promising adoring college students that if he is elected they will not have to worry about the cost of federally-subsidized student loans going up. What he isn't telling them is that his own ObamaCare law eliminated subsidies for student loans issued by private banks, and that because of his policies, when their parents retire, current students will inherit a debt so shockingly enormous that a 3.4% increase in student loan interest will seem like a very small price to pay indeed. The old saying that "what goes around comes around" has never been more true.

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From Tucson to Turtle Bay

Don't Shoot the Messenger

On January 12, 2011, President Obama delivered perhaps the finest speech of his presidency eulogizing the death of six innocent Americans at the hands of a deranged gunman in Tucson, Arizona just a few days earlier. Now, in the year of an election, four Americans--including an ambassador--were murdered in a barbaric and savage attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi. For all the differences between these two events, they both have one thing in common: neither had anything to do with the exercise of free speech.

In his moving oratory at the campus of the University of Arizona, the President silenced a raucous crowd of students and sternly rebuked the politicians and commentators on the left who in the preceding days had tried to lay the blame for the massacre on the vibrancy of political expression and debate in this country. Earlier this week at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, the President once again spoke about the death of innocent Americans, this time at the hands of terrorists, but the emphasis of his speech was very different.

After the rampage in Tucson in which Jared Loughner ended the life of a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl and severely wounded a congresswoman among his victims, liberal commentators pushed a narrative of violent rhetoric and incivility to explain the tragedy. However, as immediately became clear, the perpetrator had no political motives, but was and is very mentally ill. Moreover, despite the calls for more restrained and civil discourse, political debate and the coverage of it in the media quickly resumed the same incendiary and vitriolic tone as before the murders.

Just as with the Tucson massacre, the motives of the killers in Libya are very clear. This was not a "protest" against an amateur video. This was an act of pure slaughter in violation of every precept of international law and diplomacy. Despite this, and even though leaders in the intelligence community, the Secretary of State, and his own Press Secretary have all admitted that it was a premeditated and overt act of terror aimed directly at the United States, the President only mentioned the word "terrorism" once in his address—and not even in reference to the violence in Libya.

Some commentators on the right have observed that instead of unambiguously defending the sacred American right to free speech as he did in Tucson, the President's remarks were more calibrated for an international audience that is openly hostile to American values. Instead of speaking with determination and resolve, it seemed that the President was searching for common ground with people who wish to destroy us. Unsurprisingly, there was not much in common to be found. This is a valid criticism.

However, the focus on free speech misses the point. In Tucson, the murders were the work of a madman. In Benghazi, the amateur video that probably got more views after the attack than before was merely a pretext for a long-planned act of terror by religious fanatics who despise the United States. In both cases, we make the mistake of trying to explain and rationalize evil on our own terms, when in truth, the innocent and the virtuous are always the first casualty when we pretend that pure and incomprehensible evil does not exist in the world.

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Is Barack Obama a Tory?

Lord Protector or Protection Racket?

Last week, a correspondent at Britain’s Spectator (not to be confused with the American Spectator) posed this seemingly nonsensical question. If Toryism--or more broadly, conservatism--has any meaning at all, obviously the answer is no. However, on deeper reflection, this question is a good starting point to explore President Obama's governing philosophy. Clearly Obama is no conservative, but what sort of man is he? Using British history as our point of comparison, it is clear that Barack Obama has much more in common with the Roundheads than the Tories.

The argument advanced in the piece is that "the goal of the Obama Administration has been the preservation of the status quo" and "minimally disturbing existing economic and political arrangements" which is falsely given as the core of "small-c" conservatism. This sounds like Burkean pragmatism, and while Edmund Burke is certainly an intellectual father of modern conservative thought on both sides of the Atlantic, he was a Whig and spent his political career opposing the Tories in pursuit of reform, especially religious and economic freedom for Catholics in Ireland.

Moreover, Burke argued that change is "the most powerful law of nature" and since it cannot be avoided, should be guided "by insensible degrees" to the best possible outcomes. Many modern-day conservatives accept this decidedly Whiggish maxim and are willing to make short-term compromises in order to gradually advance a principled agenda that strengthens individual rights, the family, and the role of faith in society. This is not what Obama has done.

Then-candidate Obama campaigned in 2008 on the now-tired slogan of "Hope and Change," which is to say, he did not merely accept change as inevitable, but actively sought to cause it--and by the most radical means possible. Indeed, Obama has been deeply antagonistic towards long-established businesses and civic institutions in a way which would horrify Burke. While being heckled by Occupy Wall Street protesters last year, he even said as much.

Rather than a Tory or even a Whig, the President's philosophy is frighteningly similar to the Puritan revolution lead by Oliver Cromwell. In particular, Obama and his supporters have engaged in an all-out attack on faithful Catholics and religious conservatives. While preaching "tolerance" and "choice," Obama's policies are in fact quite the opposite. Even the liberal wing of the Supreme Court recognized Obama's attack on freedom of religion went too far in the landmark Hosanna-Tabor case.

At the same time, the mob mentality of Obama's most ardent supporters is becoming more evident. Just this past month, we have seen a rash of vandalism against Chick-fil-A franchises due to the religious beliefs of the restaurant chain's founder. Meanwhile, a gunman attempted to murder the employees of a conservative non-profit while toting a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. It is also worth noting that the Occupy Wall Street movement has repeatedly employed anti-Semitic rhetoric. To be sure, these are isolated actions of deranged individuals—-but for how long?

Insofar as Obama is using his power to attack the rights of religious people and to delegitimize freedom of worship and expression in the public square, he bears some of the responsibility for this disturbing trend towards unruly mobs and hateful violence. His radical governing philosophy of intolerance and coercion has been adopted by his supporters with increasingly disconcerting results. America is generally a peaceful and democratic society, but even we are not immune to outbreaks of political violence.

Burke himself bitterly opposed the French Revolution and watched with horror as the chaos quickly devolved into what we now call totalitarianism. As a community organizer from the mean streets of South Chicago, Obama may have fooled himself that he can control the mob to do his bidding, but this is a dangerous course. If he were really a conservative and a student of history, he would know that, as with Cromwell, it's easy to stir up a mob into an agitated frenzy, but it's impossible to stop the mob when heads begin to roll.

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Roberts Rules

St. Thomas More practiced civil disobedience before it was cool.

It is altogether fitting that the ruling in the ObamaCare case comes during the Fortnight for Freedom, which started on the Feast of St. Thomas More and ends on Independence Day. More gave his life for his faith in the ultimate act of civil disobedience. In our own time, Chief Justice Roberts quietly points to a fatal flaw of ObamaCare which may yet render the law unenforceable and impractical through sustained and widespread civil disobedience of a less violent nature.

In his discussion of the Congress' taxing power, Roberts was careful to note that the penalty for not purchasing insurance is weak enough that it does not actually amount to compulsion. According to that test, if the tax was severe enough to amount to punishment or was enforceable by criminal penalties, it would run afoul of the Commerce Clause, but in this case the court judges that it does not fail the test. If a subsequent Congress increases the amount of the tax or attaches criminal penalties for failure to pay, ObamaCare could potentially fail that constitutional test and thus become open for re-litigation.

In particular, Roberts notes twice in his opinion that 26 U. S. C. §5000A(g)--which concerns the penalty for not complying with the individual mandate--specifically states that the IRS may not enforce the penalty through criminal prosecution, additional penalties, or any lien or levy on personal property. In the event that the law is not repealed before 2014, the last resort is to simply disobey the law and refuse to pay the penalty. The Prolix Patriot is not a lawyer, but it seems plain enough that a law which cannot be enforced does not have any power.

Thus, in a ruling which superficially appears to uphold the most onerous provisions of ObamaCare, Chief Justice Roberts actually reduces the individual mandate “tax” to a nullity while at the same time drawing a bright line limiting the power of Congress under the commerce clause and the spending power as applied to the several states. Rather than viewing this as a defeat, opponents of ObamaCare should celebrate that Roberts’ ruling has opened many new avenues for subsequent legislation and litigation to eliminate ObamaCare’s abuses and also to restrain Congress’ seemingly limitless ambitions.

Moreover, as Roberts noted in his opinion, "It is not [the court’s] job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." Instead of blaming Roberts for some imagined betrayal, opponents of ObamaCare should place the full blame for the law’s many shortcomings squarely at the feet of the laws namesake--President Obama himself. As presidential contender Mitt Romney said today, "If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we're going to have to replace President Obama."

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Discourse vs. Deception

Liberal role-model?

It seems like an eternity has passed since then-prospective presidential candidate Governor Mitch Daniels was calling for a “truce” on social issues so that conservatives and liberals could unite to focus on much-needed economic and entitlement reforms. Even the last faint dying glimmers of hope for such a truce are now gone. In recent weeks, the Obama Administration and its allies have launched an all-out attack on religious freedom and especially the Catholic Church. Worse still, liberals are employing shockingly dishonest tactics to advance their radical agenda.

Sandra Fluke has emerged as the standard-bearer of the Obama Administration’s push for “free” (i.e., government-mandated and employer-funded) birth control, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs. Initial media reports identified her as a 23-year-old law student at Georgetown University, but a look at her online profile at LinkedIn reveals that she is actually a 30-something agitator for something called “reproductive justice” and has a lengthy résumé of feminist organizations.

Furthermore, when Ms. Fluke decided to attend Georgetown University, she did so precisely because she knew that, as a Catholic institution, they would not cover the cost of her contraceptives and thus she could use her opposition to the Church’s teachings and longstanding university policy as a means to advance her personal political agenda and her career. According to a friendly biographical piece at the Washington Post, she has been lobbying the school to sacrifice its beliefs in favor of her own from the moment of her matriculation, even before the HHS contraceptive mandate was a twinkle in Obama’s eye.

In another instance, the New York Daily News reported that Barbara Johnson was denied communion at her mother’s funeral because she happens to be a lesbian. The mainstream media did not report that she approached the priest before the Mass and introduced him to her lesbian lover which prompted the priest to tell her that he could not in good conscience give her the Eucharist. Nevertheless, she insisted on approaching the altar anyway and then later complained to the press about her supposed “ill-treatment” when the priest again refused. Predictably, the liberal response was outrage that the priest could be so insensitive.



However, a quick glance at the Facebook and Twitter pages of her art school (for children!) reveals a series of pro-abortion and pro-homosexual links which are clearly and explicitly at odds with the teachings of the Catholic Church. A small sampling is reproduced nearby. Ms. Johnson is entitled to her beliefs, but instead of also respecting the beliefs of her dead mother and the congregation at her mother’s parish, Ms. Johnson crassly used the occasion of her mother’s death to advance her personal political agenda. Just as in the case of Ms. Fluke, the timing of this incident is suspicious, as Maryland passed a gay marriage bill the same day the story broke.

The liberal narrative is that the Catholic Church is oppressing women, but the truth is that radical liberals who do not believe in the Church’s teachings are manufacturing controversy with the help of manipulative media elites. The freedom of religion is inextricably linked to the freedoms of speech, expression, and even thought itself. More importantly, for people who disagree with the Catholic Church’s teachings, the freedom of religion gives each of us the right to not believe. Nobody is compelling anyone to ascribe or adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church—or any church.

These small deceptions are part of a bigger lie. Whenever conservatives oppose government mandates and taxpayer funding for policies which violate their consciences, it is a liberal cliché that conservatives are trying to ban those things outright. The freedom of religion gives us the right to believe or to not believe, but the freedom of religion also gives us the right to do what we believe or to not do what we do not believe. In these two cases especially, one doesn’t have to agree with the Catholic Church on contraception and homosexuality to respect faithful Catholics who do not want to engage in or support these behaviors.

Winston Churchill once said that, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” President Obama’s liberal allies in the media and elsewhere have taken that maxim and stood it on its head. The American people are not at war with their government. We deserve a basic level of honesty in public discourse. Especially when it comes to something as fundamental as the freedom of religion, the truth should be able to stand on its own. If liberals have to resort to deception to make their case before the public, it only underscores the weakness of their cause.

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The Contraceptive Mandate, Occupy Wall Street, and Anti-Semitism

They were the 99 percent too.

In his remarks this past Friday, President Obama repeated the bogus statistic that "99 percent of all women have relied on contraception at some point in their lives." We will examine the provenance of the 99% figure presently, but first, we must understand what is really at stake. Liberals are trying to frame the debate over the HHS contraceptive mandate as an attempt by conservatives to ban or limit access to birth control, but that is not even at issue. This is a debate about the fundamental meaning and structure of the Constitution.

Think of it this way: more than 99% of Americans will drink tap water at some point in their lives. But water is not free. Even in the bluest-of-blue states, you (or your landlord) get a bill for fresh drinking water supplied to your home. Perhaps low-income households get some help to pay this bill, but according to the President’s logic, because 99% of Americans drink water, the federal government should not only require every American to purchase public water (as opposed to say bottled water or rain water collected in a cistern) and furthermore, that employers should be required pay everyone’s water bill.

Likewise, the real debate today is about the ObamaCare individual mandate which requires every American to purchase insurance which covers birth control and the HHS employer mandate which requires every employer to provide insurance which covers birth control. Regardless of one’s opinion about birth control, this is an unprecedented exercise of government power in the private lives of every American. As the Prolix Patriot tweeted the other day, "Even if the socialist HHS mandate did not target religious freedom, it would still be socialist."

That said, perhaps it is true that most Catholics have used birth control at some point in their lives, but Lydia McGrew at the blog “What’s Wrong with the World” has examined the 98% number and basically, all you can really say is that 98% of Catholic women who have used contraception have used artificial contraception. That’s not saying much. The statistic does not include women who are either celibate or actively trying to get pregnant—which is far more than 1-2% of Catholic women. As a corollary, there are probably also many Catholics who are have used birth control in opposition to Church teaching, but who nevertheless oppose government intervention in this area.

But for argument’s sake, let’s take the 99% argument at face value. It is an actual fact (as opposed to a bogus statistic) that 98-99% of Americans are not Jewish. Of the 1-2% that are, only about half attend synagogues regularly and then only half of those are Conservative or Orthodox Jews. That leaves perhaps 0.25-0.5% of the total American population. According to the 99% argument, does that mean the First Amendment does not protect the religious expression of the very small minority of Jews who still conform to the Law of Moses and the Talmud?

Jews have historically been oppressed in their religious expression for centuries, so it is not a coincidence that Meir Soloveichik, a prominent Orthodox rabbi, joined with an the leader of an evangelical non-profit and a Catholic cardinal in a letter to the Wall Street Journal opposing the HHS contraceptive mandate. Furthermore, the 99% argument sounds suspiciously like it was borrowed from the Occupy movement which has been a well-documented hotbed of anti-Semitism. Indeed, there are liberal voices which make an explicit connection between the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate and the Occupy movement.

The First Amendment was created precisely to defend the rights of a small minority against the tyranny of the majority. Any time you hear the 99% argument as justification for Obama's policies, remember that Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein routinely won 99% of the vote in their sham elections. Whether in the anti-Semitic ranting of Occupy Wall Street or the anti-Catholic vitriol of liberal journalists and bloggers, the 99% argument is in essence an appeal to mob rule no less disturbing than Robespierre’s reign of terror or the Bolshevik purges. It is easy to stand with the 99%. It takes real courage to stand for the rights of the weak and the oppressed—especially when the heads start to roll.

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The Devil is in the Details

In an election that was supposed to be about jobs and the economy, President Obama now finds himself in a battle over the signature accomplishment of his presidency--namely, ObamaCare. Democrats made a huge miscalculation by rushing the law to passage with a nakedly partisan majority, but now the Obama Administration is compounding the error by pushing ObamaCare through the courts and using its regulations to attack religious freedom in the midst of an election year. This chain of errors stands a good chance of costing Obama re-election.

More than half the states and numerous other parties have joined together to challenge the individual mandate provision which would require every American to purchase health insurance or face a penalty. Meanwhile, although the Catholic Bishops initially supported some form of healthcare reform, they are now united in opposing the implementation of the law by the Secretary of Health and Human Services which will require religious institutions to provide contraceptives that can also be used for do-it-yourself abortions.

As the battle for ObamaCare reached a climax in the spring of 2010, all of the maneuvering and political posturing was exhausted and the final sticking point was an amendment to the bill to ban the taxpayer funding of abortions. The Democratic majority had succeeded in quashing any objections over the enormous cost of the bill and the weakness of many of its policies, but a small cohort of pro-life Democrats led by Bart Stupak of Michigan had managed to hold out. By folding on this issue, Bart Stupak committed political suicide, but he may ultimately end up taking President Obama with him.

Conservatives are hopeful that the Supreme Court will strike down ObamaCare either wholly or in part on the basis of the individual mandate, but if the Court does not strike down the law, this will open up an even more horrifying possibility. If the individual mandate and HHS regulations are upheld, it will mean that there is effectively no limit on what the federal government can compel citizens to do. Indeed, because of Stupak’s cowardice, there is nothing in the law to stop the government from requiring abortions in difficult pregnancies if a bureaucrat decides that saving both mother and child is too costly.

It is ironic that as the debate over ObamaCare is being reignited the Gospel reading yesterday tells of a battle between Jesus and the Devil:

The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit: he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!"

Jesus rebuked him and said, "Quiet! Come out of him!"

The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him. All were amazed and asked one another, "What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him."

Like the possessed man of scripture, ObamaCare suffers from a Devil inside. As the old proverb states, “the Devil is in the details,” and in the rush to win passage of the law, Democrats failed to consider the full implications of its various provisions. Indeed, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously said, “…we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.” By failing to scrutinize the law and allow deliberate consideration of its many provisions, the Democrats have unleashed a terrifying power that is already being turned to evil designs.

America is a nation of laws and although our laws sometimes seem contradictory and inefficient, they are the only protection we have for our most basic freedoms. In the dramatization of Thomas More’s final days, the film “A Man for All Seasons” spells out what is truly at stake in the fight for religious freedom today:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake

We would do well to remember this and to consider the full implications of every new law before we consent to it. Unless ObamaCare is overturned and repealed, we are only witnessing the beginning of a descent into a tyranny that resembles the forced eugenics of Nazi Germany or the population control policies of Communist China. It may seem unthinkable that this could happen in America, but when the law is perverted and its safeguards removed, we are truly at the mercy of the Devil—such as it is—and our destruction is all but certain.

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To Your Health

The Doctor Will See You Now

The Supreme Court has granted certiorari to one of the challenges to ObamaCare which means that a decision one way or the other on the constitutionality of the individual mandate will be issued by the Court in June of next year. Conveniently, the Republican presidential primaries will be wrapping up at the same time and President Obama will begin debating the presumptive Republican nominee. While Obama is wishing he could talk about something else, next year's debate will be centered on Obama's obsession with heath care reform amidst a failing economy and rising unemployment.

All of this is bad news for President Obama. While he may have the bully pulpit, the President has no authority in the deliberations of the Supreme Court or in the process of amending the Constitution. The only influence the President has in the former is the appointment of justices. In this, his nomination of former Solicitor General Elena Kagan may come back to haunt him during the general election as her position on ObamaCare prior to its enactment is re-examined by the public after the Court's decision in June.

We cannot know how the Court will decide the case, but in some respects, it doesn't even matter which way the Court rules. The magnitude of public opinion against the ObamaCare individual mandate is overwhelming. In addition to the 28 states that have sought to challenge the law in the courts, 18 states--including, most recently, the key presidential battleground of Ohio--have enacted laws which oppose some element of ObamaCare, and no less than 45 states have proposed similar legislation.

The only states which have not mounted any challenge whatsoever to ObamaCare are the coastal liberal strongholds of California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Predictably, the District of Columbia also has no objections to the individual mandate. With numbers like these, the states are in a position to amend the Constitution regardless of how the Supreme Court rules. History has shown that even the threat of an Article V convention has usually been sufficient to pressure Congress to respond to the will of the people.

President Obama entered office with no real leadership experience and an ideological obsession with reshaping the very essence of American life. Ironically, Obama's allies in Congress and the media who proclaimed the "historic" achievement of health care reform will be proven correct, although not in the way they had hoped. The combination of incompetence and hubris that came together in the failed ObamaCare legislation will be remembered forever as the centerpiece of Obama's failed presidency.

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Render unto Caesar

As Americans, we hold religious freedom and the freedom of conscience as the most essential of all rights. The First Amendment protects the freedoms of speech, assembly, press, and protest all in their own right, but at their heart these rights all depend on the basic right of belief. At Mass this past Sunday, the Gospel reading centered on Jesus' command to the Pharisees and the Herodians to, "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." Almost two thousand years later, this is an important insight into the debate over separation of church and state in our country.

Whether by requiring taxpayer funded abortions in the healthcare law and by executive order, allowing military chaplains to perform same-sex marriages, or by providing taxpayer funding to openly political groups like Planned Parenthood, the Obama Administration has waged an all-out assault on traditional Christian--and especially Catholic--belief. Indeed, while many of President Obama's initiatives have met with failure, his attack on religious freedom has been devastatingly successful.

Meanwhile, the persecution of Christians by liberals has reached a new low as the Occupy Wall Street protests have spread to Europe with a new decidedly anti-Christian twist. Whether in the Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba, or the anarchist protests of our day, left-wing politicians have always been hostile to religion. Obama appears to be no different. Although nominally a Christian, he has nevertheless provided encouragement, if not an outright endorsement, to the Occupiers' reign of terror.

Even for non-Christians and non-believers, the lesson of history is clear. When a democracy is intolerant of different views, disaster and tragedy soon follows. In one especially vivid example, Ken Burns' recent documentary demonstrates that the deadly consequences of prohibition were in large part fueled by religious persecution. When a minority is persecuted, it is never long before the majority begins to suffer as well. As our laws encroach more and more into the private sphere of our daily lives, the danger only increases.

In all this, we can look to the example of Thomas More who was forced to choose between allegiance to his king and to his faith. When King Henry VIII made it a crime to deny his supremacy as the head of the Church of England, Thomas More stood fast to his faith as a Catholic. Throughout his life, More was obsessed with the meaning of virtue. In his study of theology, philosophy, and the law, he came to believe that above all, virtue cannot exist without integrity. In the end, he chose to die rather than sacrifice his integrity.

Whether Christian or not, pro-life or pro-choice, pro-gay marriage or not, we have a duty as Americans to be tolerant of the views of others, but it does not mean we should accept the views of those with whom we disagree. Although it is inevitable that the government will do things that are objectionable--even to a majority of the people--it is also imperative that the government does not violate the essential freedom of belief. It is one thing to pay taxes for dubious government projects, but it is quite another when the government uses tax dollars to persecute those who pay the bill.

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Presidential On-The-Job Training

After last night’s speech, one gets a sense that President Obama is desperate to prove to a skeptical public that he is in charge. However, the President fails to understand is that leadership is about more than just giving commands. Leadership requires respect, wisdom, patience, and above all, humility, but Obama never had to learn these hard-earned virtues prior to his inauguration.  As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other."

Indeed, there are only six other presidents who, like Obama, were elected without any prior executive experience--defined here as either a former governor, military officer, or both:

• John Adams
• John Quincy Adams
• James Buchanan
• William Howard Taft
• Warren G. Harding
• Herbert Hoover

All either lost re-election, or in the case of Harding, died in office. When given a choice, the people clearly decided that they didn't like the results of the first term enough to give these presidents a second chance. Given Obama’s falling poll numbers and unpopular policies, he will have a long and difficult re-election campaign ahead if he is to avoid a similar fate.

Many presidents failed to win re-election despite their experience in the military or the governor’s mansion. Recent one-term presidents like Ford, Carter, and George H.W. Bush all served with distinction in the military. Other one-termers like John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, and Rutherford B. Hayes were all governors. And then of course there is the oddity of Grover Cleveland, who was the only president to lose re-election, but then later come back to win a second non-consecutive term.

It is clear that previous executive experience--even in the presidency itself--does not guarantee re-election. Sometimes events are too powerful for even otherwise great and accomplished men to overcome. Patience and humility are essential virtues when confronted with the unexpected and the uncontrollable. Wise presidents know the limits of the office--and the limits of human nature.

Obama doesn’t have any of these advantages. History shows that lack of experience almost guarantees an unsuccessful presidency.  This is even worse for Obama, who is powerless in the face of continuing economic uncertainty.  As Vice President Biden once said--as he so often does--in an unguarded moment of unintentional honesty, "The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."

 

 

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More Hoover-Carterism

Almost a year ago in these pages, the Prolix Patriot dubbed the President’s flawed economic policies a new era of “Hoover-Carterism.” Little has changed since then. In the debate over increasing taxes vs. cutting spending, Obama has led the liberal chorus of Cassandras who warn that cuts to spending will harm the economy far worse than increasing taxes, but there is scant evidence to support their claims. Rather, the only real support for Obama’s dubious policies is his own hubris.

Prior to 20th century, government spending was an infinitesimal fraction of anything comparable to today. Even when the government was not the behemoth that it is now, the economy grew far more quickly than it has in recent years. Then, on February 3, 1913, the state of Delaware--which ironically has no income tax of its own--provided the 36th vote for ratification of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which created the federal income tax. With increased taxation, the federal government also began spending more money. The effects are striking.

Using data from economists at Saint John’s University and Miami University summarized in the chart above, we see that prior to 1913, real growth rates (after accounting for inflation) averaged roughly 4.2% per year. Meanwhile, the economy only contracted in nine out of more than 100 years. At the same time, there were 43 out of 100 years with better than 5% real growth.

After 1913, real growth rates have only averaged 3.4% per year—almost a full percent less each year than pre-income tax levels. At the same time, the number of years with contractions increased from 9 to 22 out of slightly less than a hundred, while the number of years with better than 5% real growth shrank from 43 to only 29. Worse still, after the creation of the modern welfare state in response to the Great Depression, each passing decade has seen declining growth rates. The last year with real GDP growth above 5% was 1984.

Some will argue that it’s not fair to compare growth rates during the 19th and 20th centuries due to technological and societal changes. However, the agricultural innovations and the invention of the microchip of the late 20th century are no less revolutionary--and probably more so--than the invention of the steam engine which launched the 19th century industrial revolution. If anything, growth today from the agricultural and information revolutions should exceed that of the 1800’s. Instead, we live in a time of economic atrophy.

It’s clear from this exercise that as government taxation and spending have increased as a proportion of economic output, the growth of the economy over time has slowed until today, where it is at a virtual standstill. Despite living in an era of unprecedented technological advancement, the economy is so overburdened with taxation, government spending, and debt, that a year with 5% real GDP growth is now rare.

Obama and his liberal allies claim that more taxation and spending will save us from our current plight, but even a cursory look at history shows just how absurd this Keynesian prescription really is. The hard truth is that the government really has no power to help the economy. Despite the best efforts of tinkering technocrats, the economic growth of the last 60 years has been pathetic compared to historical averages. Rather, the lesson of history shows that the government can do very little help the economy, but is quite capable of doing harm.

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