And Rightly So

September 18, 2009

This month's selection of books may appear to give off a certain aura of gloom and despair. We're offering, inter alia, books entitled National Suicide, Catastrophe, Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift, Culture of Corruption, and CrashProof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse.

Have we at the Conservative Book Club fallen into despair at America's prospects?

Far from it.

The times are dire, no doubt about it. How could they not be, when we've elected a President who doesn't seem to see any aspect of Americans' lives (from our cars to our colonoscopies) that couldn't be improved by the micro- management of elitist do-gooders on the government payroll? But the very danger we're living in seems at last to have aroused the slow-building ire of the American people.

It's remarkable, the things we're seeing today. Didn't you think that socialized medicine would sail into law with only token protests on the part of the spineless Republican minority in Congress? I know I did. Sure, we'd hear passionate warnings of the disasters in store for us from a few Cassandras. But however cogent the warnings (and the British and Canadian examples), the bill would pass with nary a real hitch along the way, and we'd be stuck forever with government medicine, run increasingly on the same lines as the U.S. Postal Service.

Instead, the American people are kicking up a real fight. Energized, knowledgeable, articulate protesters show up at every representative's town hall meeting. And thank heavens for FOX. I could do without the missing-blonde stories, but it's invaluable to have one network where the commentators bring up the awkward facts and ask the uncomfortable questions about Obamacare. And some of them -- Glenn Beck at the head of the pack -- go further, into substantive discussion of the political principles on which our Republic is founded, the economic principles our prosperity depends on, the moral and religious principles in which our freedom has its roots. (Don't miss Beck's newest surefire bestseller, Arguing with Idiots.)

Typically, Americans are not highly politicized people. Most of us aren't bred to be revolutionaries or even community organizers. (A friend from Italy mentioned recently that there had been a lot of violence in his secondary school. Oh really, I asked -- were there gangs? Yes, he said, political ones. They were Communist vs. Rightist teenagers, apparently.) In America we grouse about the DMV, groan at $600 toilet seats, or laugh when a Congressman's caught with bribe money in his freezer. And then we go about our busy, productive lives: making, fixing, and selling things; keeping our houses and cars in repair; raising our children.

But it's dawned on us lately that if Obama & Co. get their way, we'll no longer be able to escape with paying a limited tax of time and money and then be able to go back to our real lives and forget about government mismanagement, corruption, and even tyranny. The space that belongs to us, the part of our lives in which we work and take care of our families and live as free and independent people -- that fraction of our lives that's left over after payroll taxes and hours wasted in line at the post office are deducted -- is going to shrink, and maybe vanish.

What we're realizing is frightening and depressing, but the fact that we're realizing it before it's too late is very good news. Which is why I have a bone to pick with one of our authors this month. Peter Schiff is rightly celebrated for predicting the financial crash before it happened. Who am I to question his investment advice? (Most of which seems well worth considering -- or we wouldn't have it in the Club.) But I can’t help thinking his advice to invest in Chinese and other foreign companies, especially if with borrowed money, misses the hidden reserves of strength in the American people and in our institutions. Everything Schiff says about our debt and the fecklessness of our government is true. But recent events hint that we’re capable of turning things around.

I'm still betting on America.

--Elizabeth Kantor

andrightlyso@ConservativeBookClub.com