Pondering Thanksgiving From the Outside

This year, as in every year since 1989 when she escaped with other "boat people" from communist Vietnam, Kim Vu will offer thanks borne out of a deep gratitude for what America has meant to her since she and so many others risked their lives for something they regarded as even more valuable: freedom.

A generation has grown up since the boat people caught the public's attention. To many in what has become a self-indulgent generation, it may be difficult to fathom how anyone could go to such lengths to achieve something too many of us take for granted.

Vu was 20 years old when her father urged her to follow her brother, who was the first to escape. She is now 41. Vu says she was not afraid, though the Vietnamese communists sank boats they could spot and killed many who tried to escape. Vu tried twice to escape, but pulled back when she sensed danger. On her third try, she succeeded.

Vu's father, a retired officer in the South Vietnamese Army, gave her two gold bars to pay for the journey. She was taken in a small boat that held no more than three people to a larger boat that waited offshore in darkness. "We spent seven days on a trip to Malaysia with no food, only water and the water consisted of three bottle caps each day."

Later she was transferred to another refugee camp in the Philippines where she spent six months before the paperwork was completed and she was allowed to come to Virginia where her older brother lived following his escape.

What does freedom mean to Kim Vu? "It means a lot, because I lived with communists, who wouldn't let me go to school. I am very appreciative to live in this country." She became a U.S. citizen in 1995.

What would Vu say to her now fellow Americans who might take their freedom for granted and not appreciate the country as much as someone who once experienced oppression? "They need to see what other countries don't have that we have here. Some people don't see, so they don't know."

Kim now cuts hair at a shop in Arlington, Va. I ask her what she likes best about America. She laughs and replies, "Everything is good."

Such is the story as told by Cal Thomas (November 25, 2010). 

Many of us born in this country have become intellectually alienated from our our own home. We have a colonial critique of America, or a capitalist critique of America, or emphasize a "house divided" between rich and boor, black and white, male and female. I call these "alienating critiques." Some in the church, such as Stanley Hauerwas, John Yoder, and others, have a religious critique of standing in opposition to America. They are "counter-cultural." All too many Americans think that they gain an intellectual or moral high ground when they see other places as superior to America. However, today, I invite you to reflect upon the blessings you already have, that you did not earn, for you were born here, in America, a country founded upon the idea of freedom. 

Pondering the Ineffectiveness of the 2010 Deficit Commission

Steve Manicek, in his November 10, 2010 article, offers a word of a caution concerning the preliminary statement by the two chairs. What I find interesting is that his focus is on a quite different point than what I have heard on television. For him, the crux of the proposal comes down to two points: capping federal government expenditures at 22% -- and eventually 21% -- of GDP, and capping revenues at 21% of GDP. And each of these represents a BIG problem. The first is on the spending side. Except for the anomalous stimulus/bailout/recession years of 2009-2011, federal government expenditures haven’t reached 21% of GDP since the collapse of the Soviet Union – and since World War II only exceeded 21% of GDP during the Reagan-Bush military buildup of the 1980s and early 90s. For virtually all of the Clinton and G.W. Bush years – and during all the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon years – federal expenditures ranged between 18 and 20% of GDP. So while the 21% figure represents something of a cut versus the out-year projections of the President’s most recent budget, it leaves plenty of headroom to establish and make permanent even more government than we had in the immediate pre-Obama years.

For him, the more important problem is on the revenue side. According to Office of Management and Budget figures, federal revenues have NEVER reached 21% of GDP. In fact, only in Bill Clinton’s final year in office – and during WW II – did revenues even exceed 20% of GDP. During the whole time from 1960 through 2008, federal tax revenues almost always fell between 17 and 19% of GDP, only occasionally rising above 19% (chiefly in Clinton’s second term) or below 17% (G. W. Bush’s first term). Even President Obama’s FY 11 Budget has federal revenues rising only to around 19% of GDP by 2015. So the 21% “cap” represents two full percentage points of GDP above what we have experienced even during historically “high” tax environments.

By way of comparison, the last time we had a “balanced” federal budget – FY 2001 – revenues were 19% of GDP and expenditures 18%. 

For me, here is the key. The Commission’s draft, in effect, proposes solving our deficit problem by allowing the federal government to grow 15-20% larger than it was under Bill Clinton, then raising taxes as much as necessary to pay for it. It institutionalizes President Obama’s expansion of the role of government – maybe not quite as much as he and Nancy Pelosi would like – and lays the burden squarely on the shoulders of American taxpayers.

For those interested in pursuing the topic, I invite you to read the following from the Cato Institute.

Downsizing the Federal Goverment

Pondering Veteran's Day 2010

Veterans Day is annual holiday in the United States honoring veterans of the armed forces and also the men and women killed in the country's wars. The observance originated as Armistice Day, which was set aside by the United States, Great Britain, and France to commemorate the ending of World War I (Nov. 11, 1918). After World War II it was recognized as a day of tribute to the veterans and the dead of that conflict as well. In Canada it came to be known as Remembrance Day, and in Great Britain the Sunday nearest November 11 was proclaimed Remembrance Sunday honoring the dead of both World Wars. In 1954, after the Korean War, the date was officially designated in the United States as Veterans Day to honor servicemen of all U.S. wars.

According to the statistics I have seen, there are 25 million living veterans, 48 million Americans have served since 1776, and nearly one million died in combat or combat related events. War has terrible consequences. The reality of war is different -- it's ugly, it's deadly, and unfortunately, sometimes it's unavoidable. When it is unavoidable, we are lucky to have men and women who are willing to serve our country and make the ultimate sacrifice, if necessary. We are a nation born out of war. We declared ourselves independent from the British in 1776. It took us eight years to earn our independence from the British through the American Revolutionary War.

Many of us remember a soldier, a loved one, on a regular basis throughout the year. Maybe the young person is serving now. Maybe the young person died in wars past. As Ronald Reagan reminded us on a Veteran's Day observance in 1989, when they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do is remember. Some people remember every day, as they remember one who has died. It's not so hard to summon memory, but it's hard to recapture meaning.

Reagan went on to say, "And the living have a responsibility to remember the conditions that led to the wars in which our heroes died. Perhaps we can start by remembering this: that all of those who died for us and our country were, in one way or another, victims of a peace process that failed; victims of a decision to forget certain things; to forget, for instance, that the surest way to keep a peace going is to stay strong. Weakness, after all, is a temptation—it tempts the pugnacious to assert themselves—but strength is a declaration that cannot be misunderstood. Strength is a condition that declares actions have consequences. Strength is a prudent warning to the belligerent that aggression need not go unanswered.”

"Peace fails when we forget what we stand for. It fails when we forget that our Republic is based on firm principles, principles that have real meaning, that with them, we are the last, best hope of man on Earth; without them, we're little more than the crust of a continent. Peace also fails when we forget to bring to the bargaining table God's first intellectual gift to man: common sense. Common sense gives us a realistic knowledge of human beings and how they think, how they live in the world, what motivates them. Common sense tells us that man has magic in him, but also clay. Common sense can tell the difference between right and wrong. Common sense forgives error, but it always recognizes it to be error first.

"We endanger the peace and confuse all issues when we obscure the truth; when we refuse to name an act for what it is; when we refuse to see the obvious and seek safety in the Almighty. Peace is only maintained and won by those who have clear eyes and brave minds. Peace is imperiled when we forget to try for agreements and settlements and treaties; when we forget to hold out our hands and strive; when we forget that God gave us talents to use in securing the ends He desires. Peace fails when we forget that agreements, once made, cannot be broken without a price.

Veterans Day is usually observed with parades, speeches, and floral tributes placed on graves or memorials of those who served. In the United States, group naturalization ceremonies have come to be an important part of the day's activities.

Special Veterans Day services are held at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va., and at similar shrines in other countries. Churches observe two minutes of silence. In 1921, the body of an unknown American soldier was moved from France to be buried in the Tomb of he Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC. The tomb honored all American soldiers who died fighting in the war. Two more unidentified American war dead were buried at Arlington in 1958. One was killed in WWII and the other in the Korean Warn. Then, in 1984, a body from the Vietnam War was brought to join the other unknowns. The 3^rd US Infantry, the Army/s honor guard, keeps a constant vigil over the tomb and it’s a tradition for the president to lay a wreath at the tomb each Veterans Day.  

Pondering the 2010 Midterm Election

Will this election make a difference? Steve Chapman (November 4, 2010) says one reason the status quo is so durable is that the differences between the two parties, when it comes to actual governing, are not nearly as large as they like to pretend. They expend vast amounts of cash in the indulgence of what Sigmund Freud called "the narcissism of small differences." But after the elections are over, the parties come back to the large ground of commonality. Such a view suggests that elections do not matter that much. Granted, they may not matter as much as committed people on the Left and Right would like. The complex nature of American governance will tend toward keeping the status quo. I am confident that many who voted for Obama, for example, expected that soldiers would be out of Iraq and Afghanistan by now, and that the nation would have single pay health insurance.

Yet, from the politically conservative perspective, the election of Obama and the Democrat Party in 2008 has made a large difference – in the wrong direction. I think elections matter. The quality of life in a democracy is, in part, determined by political governance. The point is to make them increasingly just, peaceful, and loving, apart from coercion. For many political conservatives, the message of the past two years has been one of federal smothering of individual lives, whether through taxes, health care, and regulation.

In any case, the election of 2010 has mattered. I hope that I can express at least a little of difference that it makes.

Cultural advances by groups in a society and a political party are important. In 2006, the Republican Party was described as a white, male, and southern party. Such is no longer the case. The election saw Republicans add two magnificent new black faces to the Congress. Allen West in Florida beat Ron Klein 54.3 percent to 45.7 percent (with 97 percent counted, Klein wouldn't concede). Remember his name, for he is an Iraq war hero. He could be one of those “rising stars.” Tim Scott in South Carolina defeated Ben Frasier, 65-29. Republicans also launched three new Hispanic stars this election: Sen.-elect Marco Rubio from Florida and the new governor of New Mexico, Susanna Martinez, the first female Hispanic governor in US history. A Hispanic Republican – Brian Sandoval – defeated Rory Reid, son of the very man who said he could not understand how any Hispanic could be Republican. It was not close: Sandoval dominated Rory Reid and secured a double-digit victory. In Washington, Jaime Herrera chose not to highlight her Hispanic origins in her battle against Democrat Denny Heck for the open seat in Washington’s third Congressional District. She ran a very strong, issues-based campaign, and won comfortably. And Republicans got a bonus Sikh -- Nikki Haley, the new governor of South Carolina, nominated by Republicans and attacked because of her background. The other Indian governor is another Republican, Bobby Jindal. Raul Labrador, a Puerto Rico-born attorney, pulled an upset victory over incumbent Democrat Walt Minnick in Idaho’s first Congressional District, in which the Democrat tried a racially charged ad against his opponent that, thankfully, backfired. Although such facts on the ground will make it harder to accuse Republicans of being racist, I am confident that those on the Political Left will figure out a way.

As many have noted, the most important outcome of this week's election may be the change in the state gubernatorial and legislative races. Next year, state lawmakers draw new congressional districts, determining the congressional map for the next decade. In the past, Democrats have had a 2-1 advantage in congressional redistricting. Not anymore. Tuesday night, Republicans won governorships in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Alabama, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina -- pause, deep breath -- New Mexico, Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Maine, Iowa and Florida. They also swept the state legislatures. Meanwhile, the Democrats won governor's races in California, New York, Massachusetts, Arkansas and Maryland. The advantage that Republican Party governors have is that the governors of New Jersey and Virginia have already pointed the way to how to act quickly on behalf of their states.

Clearly, California and New York remain bastions of liberalism despite the economic decay brought about by liberal government and high taxes. Like an addict, the people of these two states have not yet “hit bottom.” When they do, they may reach out to the hand that can help, that is, cutting the cost of government, cutting regulation, and reducing taxes on producers.

People often think in terms of “making a difference.” Tea partiers won some and lost some, but their influence was strong enough to make a statement: the movement has made a difference. Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle lost by healthy margins, but Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and others won big. Voters from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin elected politicians with a distinctly conservative bent — one that was clearly influenced by the tea party.

It was a “wave” election, the third one we have had since 2006. Could we have another such wave in two years? Absolutely, and I am not predicting which way the wave would go. The house has not had a switch of over 60 votes since 1948. As Michael Brone (November 4, 2010) notes, then, as now, very fundamental issues about the size and scope of government were at stake. Britain's Labor government went fully into socialism, and Roosevelt proposed the same program in in 1944. The people said no to Roosevelt in 1946 and in 1948. Even the surprise switch in 1994 was one of 54 votes. Democrats gained 31 seats in 2006 and another 23 seats in 2008. The fact that the Senate remains in the hands of the Democrat Party reflects facts on the grounds. Many of the Senate seats were open in solid Democrat states, as well as only one third of the seats were on the table. Personally, I never had much confidence in the Senate going Republican.

Victor Davis Hanson (November 4, 2010) says that on Tuesday voters rejected President Obama's attempt to remake America in the image of an imploding Europe -- not just by overwhelmingly electing Republican candidates in the House, but by preferring dozens of maverick conservatives who ran against establishment Washington. He asks, Why the near-historic rebuke? Out-of-control spending, unchecked borrowing, vast new entitlements and unsustainable debt -- all at a time of economic stagnation. So what is next? Like the recovering addict who checks himself into rehab, a debt-addicted America just snapped out of its borrowing binge, is waking up with the shakes, and hopes there is still a chance at recovery. It will not be easy. Obama and his Democrat Congress ran up nearly $3 trillion in new debt in just 21 months -- after running a disingenuous 2008 campaign that falsely promised to rein in the fiscal irresponsibility that had been rampant during the spendthrift Bush administration. So the voters intervened and sent America in for rehab treatment. In our three-step road to recovery, we, the sick patient, must first end the denial, then accept the tough medicine, and finally change the entrenched habits that caused the addiction. Hanson offers the opinion that Republicans should be willing to be demagogued by a weakened Obama as heartless and cruel budget cutters -- even if the president may well be the ultimate beneficiary by running on the new theme of fiscal responsibility and a recovering economy in 2012.

Larry Elder (November 4, 2010) offers that Obamalism has now been arrested. Voters rose to say no to the two-year gusher of spending and the staggering increases in the annual deficit and the national debt. Under Obama and the Democratic congressional majority, the national debt, as a percentage of GDP, jumped from 69 percent to a projected 94 percent. Voters said, "Enough!" I know it frustrates good Democrats and good liberals that Republicans could be the party of “No.” However, in essence, the voters were saying “No,” and the Republican Party was the vehicle for that expression. As Michael Barone puts it, Americans gave their verdict on the Obama Democrats' sharp increases in government spending and Obamacare. It was as resounding a "no." As Steve Chapman (November 4, 2010) put it, the GOP takeover of the House is far more useful as a brake than a steering wheel. The new majority can stop Obama from advancing new proposals by voting them down. But it cannot force him to accept Republican ones.

At this point, I think, we may see a difference between England and America on the one hand and France and Greece on the other. England is now going through a difficult process of reducing government spending and regulation, and doing so without riots in the streets. I think the American people are ready for changes in Social Security and other entitlement programs, as well as the corporate welfare on which too many on Wall Street have come to depend. They will do so without riots in the streets. If so, this result will be quite different from that of France and Greece, where riots occur because government increases the retirement age from 60 to 62. I think it instructive that America produces a tea party that makes a difference toward less government, and the French and Greeks both riot in the streets to have more government.

Nothing I have said should give the Republican Party too much of a “head trip.” The voters saying to Obama and the Democrat Party is not the same as the voters saying “yes” to the Republican Party.

As one looks ahead, the election proves there is a potential to repudiate the political left, but now Republicans have to think through how to replace it with a center-right governing majority. The challenge of thinking through, explaining and implementing a replacement strategy as national policy will make the next two years an intriguing time, especially for those who seek the Republican Party nomination for president in 2010.  

Road to Serfdom and the 2010 Midterm Election

As you may know, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek, Volume 2) is the classic book written in the early 1940’s by Friedrich Von Hayek that defined the threat imposed by the unchecked growth of central government and the resulting loss of individual freedom and liberty. Bruce Bialosky, in his his October 16, 2010 article, thinks we are headed in that direction. For him, this election will determine whether this nation surrenders to the Washington oligarchy and the media elites or "we the people" reassert the values that have been the shining hallmark of this great country for over 200 years.

If you have any age on you at all, it seems like every election "is the most important of our lifetime." For Bialosky, this time it is the truth. He even expresses the view that it may be the most critical election in America since 1860. In 2008, the nation elected a President and Congress committed to the wholesale expansion of government and the commensurate reduction in individual freedom. He admits that the people may not have thought that is what they were voting for, but that is what they got. However, any presidential candidate who promises "fundamental transformation" clearly does not like individual freedom, for what is "fundamental" about America is the charter of freedom and protection from an intrusive federal government. For Biolosky, any vote that leaves Congress in the hands of the Pelosi-Reid Democrats endorses that path. But a vote against the Democrats will repudiate their policies of invasive government and limitation of individual choice.

Well, if you are going to motivate change, one has to convince others there is a sense of urgency. At least, that is what John P. Kotter says in his classic work on leadership, Leading Change. In many ways, I am one person who is committed to politically conservative ideas who would hope that "the people" will listen to this sense of urgency and act upon it, for the defense of individual liberty. 

Tom Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, has for years been an intellectual guru for the left. In his September 28th column, he wrote: 

“Leadership today is about how the U.S. government attracts and educates more of that talent and then enacts the laws, regulations and budgets that empower that talent to take its products and services to scale, sell them around the world – and create jobs here in the process.” 

Biolosky points out there is almost no consideration of the individual in this statement, and yet it is the fundamental basis of what they believe – that government is the central point of any job creation.

Personally, I think the media and the Democrat Party need to receive a clear message from "we the people" in this election. The caveat I would offer is that as a political conservative, I am not enthused about the Republican Party. At this point, what I see is that the Republican Party will only slow down the road to serfdom, but they will not have the courage to stop it and start down another path, the road to liberty. 

Pondering the Commerce Clause and Obamacare

In 2005, the Supreme Court said the federal government's power to "regulate commerce ... among the several states" extends to the tiniest speck of marijuana wherever it may be found, even in the home of a patient who grows it for her own medical use in compliance with state law. "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause," Justice Clarence Thomas warned in his dissent, "then it can regulate virtually anything -- and the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers."

The Obama administration, according to Jacob Sullum (October 20, 2010 article), was in court this week defending the new federal requirement that every American obtain government-designed health insurance, seems determined to prove Thomas right. But despite seven decades of stretching by a Supreme Court eager to accommodate every congressional whim, the Amazing Elastic Commerce Clause is still not expansive enough, according to Sullum, to cover the unprecedented command that people purchase a product from a private company in exchange for the privilege of existing.

"Never before has the Commerce Clause ... been extended this far," noted U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson when he declined to dismiss the case he heard this week, in which Virginia is challenging the insurance mandate. Last week, allowing a similar lawsuit by Florida, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson agreed that the Commerce Clause has "never been applied in such a manner before."

That's saying a lot, because the Commerce Clause has been used to justify some audacious assertions of federal power, under the theory that it covers not just interstate commerce but "activities that substantially affect interstate commerce."

In 1942, the Supreme Court said a farmer could be penalized for violating federal crop regulations by growing wheat for his own consumption because he thereby reduced demand in the interstate wheat market. The 2005 medical marijuana case extended this reasoning to a federally proscribed commodity grown by people who were not even farmers. In 1964, the Court held that businesses made themselves subject to a federal ban on racial discrimination by purchasing supplies that originated in other states.

But as Vinson noted, all of these cases at least "involved activities in which the plaintiffs had chosen to engage." By contrast, the insurance mandate is "based solely on citizenship and on being alive."

U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh, who this month dismissed the Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center's challenge to the insurance requirement, disagrees. Conceding that every case in which the Supreme Court has upheld a law under the Commerce Clause has involved "some sort of activity" and "an economic or commercial component," Steeh tried hard to find those elements in a law that punishes people for something that is neither economic nor an activity.

This was the best he could do: "Far from 'inactivity,' by choosing to forgo insurance plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now through the purchase of insurance. ... These decisions, viewed in the aggregate, have clear and direct impacts on health care providers, taxpayers and the insured population who ultimately pay for the care provided to those who go without insurance."

Although Steeh claimed "the health care market is unlike other markets" because people "cannot opt out," his logic is easily adaptable. People who abstain from purchasing a car are making an economic decision to use other modes of transportation, and that choice has an impact on the U.S. automobile industry, which the federal government is committed to saving. People who do not eat vegetables are making an economic decision to consume other foods, and that choice affects the market for health care services as well as interstate commerce in broccoli. As Hudson observed on Monday, the possibilities are "boundless."

Worse, for Sullum, Steeh's emphasis on "cost-shifting" by people who make poor economic decisions suggests a federal government with the authority to override myriad heretofore private choices, including decisions about education, employment, housing, savings, investment and purchases of all kinds. Try opting out of that.

Pondering Obama's Views of his Opponents

President Obama, speaking at a fundraiser in Boston, said:

 "People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be."

Mona Charen, in her October 19, 2010, points out that if the people of the United States are losing confidence in President Obama, he wants it clearly understood that he is losing confidence in them as well. If they are considering voting for candidates Obama disapproves, it is because fear has paralyzed their capacity for reasoned judgment.

The reasoning of the President, as always, is that one could not possibly disagree with him and still be rational. One must be afraid, or, in another context, angry. If philosopher Merleau-ponty is correct in saying that feelings are thoughts that do not yet have words, then even the feelings of anger and fear come from a thinking place of the mind. As Charen points out, voters gave Mr. Obama a chance and are now holding him accountable for his failures. Doing so is a rational, even if fearful and angry, response to what Obama has actually has done: sponsor government take over of health care industry, punish producers, expand national debt and deficit, and increase unemployment. 

My own hope is that my fellow citizens will deepen their respect for the founding of this nation and its fundamental principles, but that is for another time.