Mugging Western Civ

Barbara Moeller chronicles the destruction of the Western Civilization and American Institutions program at the University of Texas at Austin.  This program attracted a remarkable amount of alumni and foundation support, putting it among the top fundraising units at the University.  But the administration destroyed it anyway, because too many faculty oppose both Western Civilization and American Institutions.  It’s a sad tale that anyone interested in higher education ought to read, especially before sending a check to their alma mater, which is almost certainly just as bad.

Democracy’s Decline

The Baron has been thinking deep thoughts lately, wondering whether this is democracy’s endgame and contemplating a choice between kinds of barbarism.  He begins by thinking about cap-and-trade:

This bill is not popular with the American people. Its alleged long-term benefits are far outweighed by the massive economic damage it will do to our country within the next few years. In the short term it will benefit no one except the already bloated federal government and its parasitic private entities. No major business stands to make a killing from it. No congressman who voted for it enhanced his chances of re-election by doing so.

So why in the world was such a monstrosity ever passed? Why would democratically elected representatives come out so strongly against our national well-being, our commercial interests, and public opinion?

Cap-and-Trade is hardly an isolated instance. Politicians all across the West are jostling one another to see who can be first to leap over the nearest available precipice, whether the issue is political correctness, mass immigration, capitulation to Islam, ruinous levels of taxation, or environmental orthodoxy.

I can’t find anything to disagree with there.  Our political class seems determined to undermine our civilization in any way it can.  Why?  The Baron asks,

Does democracy carry within it a poison pill that guarantees its own eventual destruction?

It’s a good question.  Plato and Aristotle, both of whom had experience with Athenian democracy up close, thought that it did.  Plato worried about an excess of liberty that would undermine character and lead to a thirst for tyranny, but also about the growth of bureaucracy, which was a problem even in Athens: “in democracies almost everything is managed by the drones.”  The final straw is that the less well-off seize more and more wealth from those who are more fortunate than they.  The upper class seeks to defend itself against this expropriation, and is accused of plotting against the common good.  A tyrant arises who claims to represent the downtrodden but in fact claims power for himself.  Aristotle’s story is similar.  The needy, being numerous, exert power in a democracy, and seize the wealth of those better off, while demagogues exploit the situation to their own advantage.

The Baron’s analysis:

A peaceful and prosperous civil society is a rare gift. Those who have only recently attained it are more likely to understand how precious it is, to safeguard it and be ready to defend it.

But peace and prosperity induce somnolence and amnesia. The current state of affairs comes to seem natural and normal. It is taken for granted, instead of being known for the fortunate anomaly that it actually is. We are living in a brief golden interlude of history: the normal state of human affairs is one of brutality, bloodshed, and barbarism. It will be all too easy to return to the old patterns as our vigilance wanes.

The democratic state begins with liberty as its ideal, the base on which all the other social and political structures grow. Peace and prosperity are the natural consequences of success in this endeavor, yet their accustomed presence induces a desire for security and a lack of conflict.

Eventually the warm cocoon of the omnipotent and omnipresent State becomes preferable to liberty itself.

But this is not just a matter of a soft citizenry.  The bureaucracy grows and, seeking to grow further, destroys national boundaries, thus undermining itself, the society, and indeed the civilization that supports it.

This historical process has unfolded inexorably to reach the endgame we are now facing. From the Enlightenment through Marxism and the Progressive Movement to post-industrial Social Democracy, the trend has been towards an ever-expanding bureaucracy, which of necessity requires more and more socialism, regardless of what name the reigning ideology bears.

As the 20th century progressed, the bureaucratic leviathan chafed at its final limitation: the nation-state. Only by dissolving borders and distinct national identities could the power of the bureaucrats continue to increase. Once again an inexorable logic drove the progression of ideological events as the century unfolded: universal suffrage, universal human rights, the elevation of “discrimination” to the rank of deadly sin, inclusion, diversity, multiculturalism, the EU, the NAU, and the UN.

To fulfill the global plan, our nations must be destroyed by incorporating people from alien cultures so as to dilute our separate national identities and remove the last barrier to the worldwide hegemony of the socialist superstate. Ideological indoctrination through the schools and the media has entrenched the idea that resisting the incorporation of foreigners is racist, xenophobic, and deeply sinful. The result is that it’s difficult now for most people to whole-heartedly support nationalistic ideals. No one can contemplate the defense of his own culture without a sense of moral uneasiness.

The international Islamic jihad has slipped a blade into that hairline crack of self-doubt and widened it into a gaping fissure. The cracks are now spreading, and threaten to bring the entire edifice of Western Civilization crashing down around us.

And so we get to the choice between barbarisms.  It’s still some distance away in the United States, but not so in Europe, where the disease is far more advanced, and where the choice between the Hell’s Angels and criminal immigrant gangs is imminent.

California and Obamanomics

Will California’s fiscal crisis—i.e., bankruptcy—crash Obama’s health care plan?  That’s what Kevin Hassett says:

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat….

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

Bleak Picture

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

The Obama administration has no shame, and is willing to abandon reason altogether to achieve its short-term political goals. Ronald Reagan ran up big deficits in part because he believed that his tax cuts would produce economic growth, and ultimately pay for themselves. He may well have been excessively optimistic about the merits of tax cuts, but at least he had a story.

Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.

Happy Independence Day!

Independence Hall, Philadelphia

Our family tradition, when we don’t go to a fireworks display, is to swim until early evening, barbeque, and then watch 1776.  Moe Lane posts my favorite scene as his Fourth of July gift this year.  Enjoy!

Austin Tea Party Pictures, Part II

Here are some more from this morning.

UPDATE: More pictures from my friend Lefty over at Lefty’s Hounds.

Austin Tea Party Pictures, Part I

I attended the Tea Party in Zilker Park this morning, met Joe Wurzelbacher (aka “Joe the Plumber”), heard him give a great talk, bought a copy of his book, saw lots of friends, and took some photographs.

It Takes One To Know One

The Chinese recognize Obama for what he is:

There is a joke that has quietly circulated its way around–In 1949 it was only socialism that could save China, in 1989 only China could save socialism and in 2009 only China can save capitalism.

Across the great ocean on the American shore, there is a view that has an astonishing resemblance to this one. On the front cover of the mid-February edition of America’s Newsweek magazine there was a very direct heading that asserted “we are all socialists now.” Is the United States a socialist country? Without question, it is not. Are there socialist attributes to President Obama’s reform? Without a question, there are.

During the campaign Obama was accused by his opponent of being a “socialist,” Castro, the Cuban leader, called him “comrade” and, more recently, the Venezuelan president Chavez jokingly said, “Come on, Obama, align yourself with us on the way to socialism!”

With regards to GM bankruptcy protection and the restructuring of financial institutions, Obama’s reform measures, invariably, reflect socialistic characteristics. The largest shareholders of General Motors Automotive are now the government and the workers union. This means that this company, which is a symbol of the American capitalist spirit, has become a “state and collectively owned enterprise.”

The financial reform is very much of the same vein, as the U.S. wants to transform the Federal Reserve into what would be a “super regulator,” comprehensively strengthening regulation towards the financial institutions. It is also planning to establish a new financial consumer safeguard endowed with authority that far supersedes that of the current regulatory system. This way of doing things is in conformity with the Marxist doctrine of the Communist Manifesto in which Marx foretold a capitalist financial crisis. The American Foreign Policy magazine offered a very Marxist “prescription” suggesting that the “whole financial sector be turned into a public utility” — perhaps one could say, “centralization of credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.” (Communist Manifesto).

Something that has an even more socialist flavor than nationalization of enterprise and strengthened regulation is Obama’s medical insurance reform. The intent is to give every American affordable medical insurance by means of establishing a government supported public medical insurance program that would compete with private insurance companies. Obama’s view on the matter was that “if the private insurance companies have to compete with public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down.” In other words, the United States wants to use the strength of the government to establish an “everyone has medical insurance” society, very much in tune with the socialist concept of “everyone has rice to eat and everyone has clothes to wear.”

Uncertainty and Unemployment

Why does unemployment continue to increase?  Jerry Bowyer has an explanation:

Jobs aren’t languishing despite the government’s best efforts. They’re languishing because of them.

I think that’s exactly right.  FDR’s policies and, just as importantly, aggressive pursuit of new policies created massive uncertainty during the 1930s that did much to suppress economic activity.

The same holds true of the stock market.  I’ve been sitting on the fence for many months, holding a large amount of cash.  I’m sure lots of other people are doing the same thing.  Cap-and-trade?  Socialized medicine?  New regulations?  More nationalizations?  Too much uncertainty!  If the government simply decided not to do anything for a while, I’d jump back in to the market in a moment.

Obama: Pro-Islamist

Melanie Phillips points out that we have a pro-Islamist President:

Sanitising Islam through false claims about its historic achievements and selective and misleading quotation from the Koran, he declared that it was part of his responsibility to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

Why? Did this mean therefore that he would fight against any condemnation of the theologically based Jew-hatred pouring out of the Islamic world, not least in Egypt where he was making this speech?

Did he not have a similar responsibility to fight against the negative stereotypes of Jews or Zionists that are inciting terrorism, war and genocide in the Muslim world?

Through the use of a Koranic reference, he also subtly implied that Jerusalem would become Muslim while stating that it should be home equally to Christians, Muslims and Jews.

And he referred to the region as being where Islam was first revealed. This was a revealing word to choose, implying acknowledgement of divine revelation. ‘Revealed’ is the language of a believer.

None of this proves Obama is really a Muslim. But it does all suggest that America has a pro-Islamist President.

It seemed obvious to me that a vote for Obama was a vote for the destruction of Israel.  The signs were plentiful, even during the campaign.  Of course, it also seemed obvious to me that a vote for Obama was a vote for the destruction of democracy, not only in Israel, but everywhere else (Iran? Honduras?), including the United States.

Friend of Fascists

First Obama takes the side of the Palestinians against Israel.  Then, the mullahs against the people of Iran.  Now, the leftist President of Honduras against the Constitution, Supreme Court, and people of Honduras.  Caroline Glick writes,

So if Obama’s foreign policy has already failed or is in the process of failing throughout the world, why is he refusing to reassess it? Why, with blood running through the streets of Iran, is he still interested in appeasing the mullahs? Why, with Venezuela threatening to invade Honduras for Zelaya, is he siding with Zelaya against Honduran democrats? Why, with the Palestinians refusing to accept the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, is he seeking to expel some 500,000 Jews from their homes in the interest of appeasing the Palestinians? Why, with North Korea threatening to attack the US with ballistic missiles, is he refusing to order the USS John McCain to interdict the suspected North Korean missile ship it has been trailing for the past two weeks? Why, when the Sudanese government continues to sponsor the murder of Darfuris, is the administration claiming that the genocide in Darfur has ended?

The only reasonable answer to all of these questions is that far from being nonideological, Obama’s foreign policy is the most ideologically driven since Carter’s tenure in office. If when Obama came into office there was a question about whether he was a foreign policy pragmatist or an ideologue, his behavior in his first six months in office has dispelled all doubt. Obama is moved by a radical, anti-American ideology that motivates him to dismiss the importance of democracy and side with anti-American dictators against US allies.

For his efforts, although he is causing the US to fail to secure its aims as he
himself has defined them in arena after arena, he is successfully securing the support of the most radical, extreme leftist factions in American politics.

Like Carter before him, Obama may succeed for a time in evading public scrutiny for his foreign-policy failures because the public will be too concerned with his domestic failures to notice them. But in the end, his slavish devotion to his radical ideological agenda will ensure that his failures reach a critical mass.

And then they will sink him.

As I’ve been arguing, he’s on the other side.  Tegucigalpa 2009 = Washington 2012? 2016?