And Rightly So

June 5, 2009

Barack Obama has already more than proven right those of us who warned of his dangerous radicalism. Frankly, the stubbornest of the "there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, so I’m sitting out this election" folks ought to be able to see their folly by now. Whatever John McCain lacked as a conservative standard bearer, at least he sees America as something he needs to live up to -- not himself as something America needs to grow to be worthy of. And he has some residual sense of the value of money. (By which I mean knowing what it really takes to produce and earn and save. Who knows what, if anything, our money will be worth once these geniuses have borrowed or printed and spent every dime our children will ever earn?)

In foreign policy, we've already had the spectacle of an American President apologizing for America to curry favor with some of the world's nastiest tyrants. And in domestic affairs, Obama's government is engaged in a truly unprecedented power grab. FDR-style, Obama has rewritten contracts at will, pilloried private citizens to gin up populist support for his takeover of businesses, and handed at least one large corporation (Chrysler) over to his political supporters (the United Autoworkers’ Union). Meanwhile our new President is determined to exceed LBJ and force all of us into socialized medicine. Which, as Mark Steyn keeps pointing out, will irreversibly change our relationship with our government: we who were citizens will become addicts, dependent on our former public servants, now our pushers. Down that road, we soon won’t even be having political arguments about dependency or freedom, about how much social safety net we want to buy at the price of how much of our freedom -- but only sordid squabbles over whom to blame as the government bureaucracy that we’re all dependent on fails and neglects and abuses us.

As bad as President Obama's foreign policy start has been, it would seem that there's actually more hope in that arena than in domestic affairs. Despite his tendency to apologize for pre-Obama America whenever he talks to foreigners, Obama shows some signs of willingness to learn from the hard realities of world politics. Faced with the same difficult decisions Bush faced, Obama has disappointed his allies on the Left by making many of the same choices. Even in the best-case scenario we won't get GWB's tough, principled (if flawed) foreign policy. But we may get something better than Jimmy Carter-style dithering and appeasement. After all, how hard can it be for an intelligent man, more than comfortable with exercising power, to figure out that wishful thinking about the world’s bullies is a losing strategy?

The economy is different kettle of fish. I can't see Obama giving up on the free-lunch lie that's at the heart of the statist ideology, and that justifies all our Left elites' itch to manage other people's lives. This administration is going to take us as close as they can to the European disease: a nanny state, personal irresponsibility, and economic stagnation. And of course the impoverishment of America will, in the end, have drastic consequences, including in foreign affairs. The Pax Americana has meant unexampled security and prosperity for us -- and for a lot of foreigners, too. Every time I read another book about the hell of some communist prison camp or what people suffer in war, I thank God for what we still have. And wish we had a government that valued it, and understood that we can lose it.

What can we do about this mess? First, pray for our country. Then, I think, we have to hope that the ghastly consequences of some of these policies become clear soon enough -- as they did in the Carter era -- to turn the American people against the Obama administration. One small step toward that goal: We need to understand exactly what they're up to and be able to explain it to our friends and neighbors. The Conservative Book Club can help with that! Starting this month with Dick Morris's exposé of the current Catastrophe.

--Elizabeth Kantor

andrightlyso@ConservativeBookClub.com