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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The Great Firewall of China and Internet Piracy

A weapon of war

Almost from the beginning, the Chinese Communist Party recognized the power—and the threat—of the Internet and has invested huge resources to limit access to its own people while simultaneously using the internet to undermine the intellectual and economic output of the United States. Whether we admit it or not, we are in a state of digital war with China. How we fight this war today will have lasting consequences not only for freedom on the Internet but also for freedom generally.

The Internet has matured to the point that actions in the digital world can now cause real changes in the physical world. Last year, we witnessed revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and elsewhere that were started online. We also witnessed a hacking attack which disrupted an Iranian nuclear research laboratory. The Iranians responded by hacking into an American stealth reconnaissance drone and hijacking it—digitally. The Internet is no longer a mere novelty. Digital actions affect real-world events.

One front of this digital war is the rampant and aggressive intellectual property theft which is likely sponsored directly by the Chinese government. State-sponsored and well-funded hackers are constantly attacking American companies to steal intellectual property and the piracy of movies, music, and software is only one element of this attack. Nevertheless, Congress has crafted misguided legislation in SOPA and PIPA to target this small fraction of the onslaught while mostly ignoring the larger conflict.

We must be wary about ever limiting access to the Internet. The amazing power of the Internet to bring freedom to the world is precisely because of its openness. China recognizes this and along with North Korea and Iran is one of the most restrictive countries in the world. There is a legitimate need to combat piracy, but the language of SOPA and PIPA is so broad that the Chinese and other bad actors could actually use it against us by causing self-inflicted restriction of the Internet. This will only benefit the Chinese government’s efforts to restrict access and limit the free exchange of ideas.

The Internet has the power to bring freedom to China, Iran, North Korea, and all the other tyrannical regimes on the face of the earth. As Napoleon once said, "I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Just as Gutenberg’s printing press brought about the Enlightenment in Europe, so too can the Internet bring about a global digital renaissance. America invented the Internet and is arguably the most creative nation in the world. We can use this power to be a force for good in the world—or not. The choice is ours to make.

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Iowa Caucus Ends the Myth of Romney’s Inevitability

Mitt Romney received more votes than any other candidate in last night’s Iowa Caucus, but for the establishment and media favorite to win the nomination, that’s not good enough. Romney is not an inspiring candidate, so he needed to win convincingly to prove he can appeal to more than just the moderate wing of the Republican Party. However, instead of emerging as the clear winner, he emerges bruised and weak. Romney’s win last night was so narrow that he will continue to face strong opposition in the weeks and months ahead.

The biggest story is of course Santorum’s stunning rise from relative obscurity to come within eight votes of Romney. One after another, other challengers have surged as the anti-Romney candidate, but they peaked too soon to see any benefit in the caucuses and primaries. Santorum, on the other hand, was right to praise God in his speech last night for his very providential surge on the eve of the first-in-the-nation contest in Iowa. 75% of votes last night were cast against Romney and the winner of that group was unquestionably Santorum.

Romney’s biggest problem is his lack of message. In his “victory” speech last night, Romney merely reiterated his standard nebulous bromides about American greatness and there was even a moment prior to the speech when his staff began setting up a teleprompter in front of his lectern before being hurried away when someone realized this might make for an unfavorable comparison to President Obama. By contrast, Santorum gave an emotional speech which was well calibrated with an appeal to social conservatives, working-class “Reagan Democrats,” and even a nod to the Tea Party.

The lack of a compelling message is a severe handicap for Romney. In the coverage last night on Fox News, Brett Baier stated that the Romney Campaign spent roughly $110 per vote while Santorum only spent about $1.50 per vote. Although the numbers are slightly different, data from BuzzFeed corroborates the vast difference between Romney and Santorum’s spending levels. Looking at it another way, Romney spent about 29% of the total money to win about 25% of the vote, while Santorum spent less than 1% of the total money to get almost exactly the same number of votes.

As a result, Romney’s performance in Iowa in 2012 was no better than his performance in 2008. Despite being the establishment favorite, outspending every other candidate except Rick Perry, higher overall turnout, his many advantages as a campaign veteran, and with better organization on the ground in Iowa than any candidate except possibly Ron Paul, Romney’s share of the vote remained virtually unchanged from where it was four years ago.

In the end, Romney won a costly and hollow victory in Iowa. Although he leads the polling in New Hampshire, the same was true in 2008 before John McCain’s upset there. Because of his perceived weakness, Romney will be the subject of withering all-out attacks from Newt Gingrich, Santorum, and Jon Huntsman in New Hampshire and South Carolina in the next few weeks. If Romney does somehow manage to win his party’s nomination, it will be a long and painful contest.

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National Popular Vote: An Alternate History

The Prolix Patriot has written in the past on the virtues of the Electoral College system, but the liberal campaign to institute a popular vote for presidential elections is in the news again. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a proposal whereby participating states agree to give their electors to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of the votes cast for either candidate within the state. The compact will automatically go into effect if enough states join it to give the NPV states control of at least 270 electoral votes.

The election of 1960 was razor thin. Thanks to shenanigans in Chicago and other major Democratic strongholds in the Northeast, Kennedy won the popular vote by a margin of about 100,000 votes, but because of the Electoral College system enshrined in the Constitution by our founding fathers, Kennedy had a clear mandate of 303 electoral votes to Nixon's 219. Now, let's pretend the NPV had been in effect.

Polls in Nixon's home state of California close a full two to three hours after those in Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. As reports come in that Nixon is only down by a small margin (less than 0.25%), the Nixon campaign pushes organizers and supporters in California to get a few more voters out to the polls in Republican-leaning precincts to swing the national popular vote over to Nixon's favor.

When California finally begins tallying votes, voila, the final count comes in with Nixon ahead by 500 votes. Even though Kennedy should have a clear victory in the Electoral College, the NPV rules require Kennedy strongholds of Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Maryland (all current NPV compact members) to give all their votes to Nixon. Given the slim margin, both the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns start requesting recounts and filing legal challenges, counter-suits, and injunctions in almost every state in the Union.

California, Texas, Illinois, and New York are simultaneously adjusting their vote tallies when it becomes clear that Kennedy may still win the popular vote. Nixon supporters in California react by launching a signature drive for a ballot initiative to leave the NPV interstate compact. Meanwhile, disgusted with the possibility that a Republican may take the election, Mississippi's unpledged electors announce they will give their votes to Kennedy.

Lawsuits galore are now headed to the Supreme Court, and then, as an added twist, Kennedy supporters and the press start a campaign to pressure Eisenhower's Supreme Court nominees to recuse themselves from any election-related cases, because Nixon served as an advisor to the Eisenhower administration's nomination and vetting process. By the time the dust has settled the decision on how to resolve the crisis is left in the hands of only four justices with a real possibility of deadlock.

As popular outrage builds with the escalating crisis, Eisenhower convenes all 50 governors at an emergency meeting in Dallas to consider the possibility of deploying the National Guard to maintain order. While traveling from the airport to his hotel, he is assassinated by a disgruntled Communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald. Nixon is sworn in as acting president while the results of his own election are still being litigated and tabulated. Massive riots and violence break out across the nation and Nixon declares "temporary emergency measures" in an attempt to bring the situation under control.

We are used to thinking of such a constitutional crisis as a preposterous and impossible scenario, but if the NPV ever goes into effect, this is exactly the sort of crisis that could happen in the very near future. In fact, the Heritage Foundation and the State Leadership Foundation hosted an event this morning with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell which examined just these sorts of problems. As former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith once observed, “We are so accustomed to stable, generally good government that we sometimes forget that failure of government structures is historically much more common than success.…[W]e tinker with our success at our peril.”

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The Power of Inequality

In Soviet Union, Winter Occupies YOU!

As the Occupy Wall Street movement fizzles out with the approach of colder weather, it is worth revisiting the Occupiers’ central argument. Namely, that income inequality between the top 1% and the rest is somehow relevant to the present economic crisis. However, this is a dangerous diversion from the heart of the problem. Instead of focusing on income inequality, we as a society should be focused on improving economic growth.

Income inequality is an inescapable reality. Even in famously egalitarian countries like Sweden or Norway, there is no such thing as perfect equality. Whenever people engage in economic activity together, there is some element of wealth creation over what could be achieved if each person had to fend for himself. Although on a small scale it is possible to apportion wealth creation evenly to all participants, history has shown time and time again that it is more efficient to apportion the rewards of economic activity in proportion to individual contributions.

Furthermore, according to recent economic data from the CIA Factbook, there is no real correlation between income inequality and economic growth. As an example, both South Korea with a low Gini coefficient of 31.4 and Mexico with a very high Gini of 51.7 have similar growth rates. Conversely, Japan and India have similar Gini coefficients, but the annual GDP growth for India is more than double that of Japan. Indeed, an academic paper on the subject concludes that, “Evidence from a broad panel of countries shows little overall relation between income inequality and rates of growth and investment.”

Worst of all, policies which are intended to promote income equality are not always successful and almost never contribute to greater prosperity. When pursued on a large scale, such policies can result in economic disaster as was the case during Stalin’s infamous five-year plans and Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” both of which lead to crop failures and the deaths of tens of millions of people from starvation.

Income inequality is a distraction from policies which contribute more directly to promoting prosperity. Numerous studies have demonstrated the relationship between strong property rights and economic growth. As the evidence shows, Americans do not need the government to tell them how to live their lives. If the government fulfills it central purpose of protecting our long-cherished rights of personal liberty and private property, Americans will be free to pursue their own aspirations of happiness and prosperity in whatever way they see fit.

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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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