Did the Greeks Ruin A Free Lunch?

The economy in Greece is sagging, as is their solvency, as a result of massive debt run up by their government. Interest rates on government bonds are over 7% as lenders no longer have confidence that Greece will be able to pay back the immense sums that it owes. How can this be?

President Obama just signed into law a massive new health care program. Admittedly, it isn't as good as the single payer type system that the President would have liked to have had were we "starting from scratch," but the President still touts his program as a net savings for the nation. Greece has had an Obama style health care system for decades now, along with large public unions, and a generous welfare system...just the kind of policies that the Democrats are telling us will result in a fair, fraternal, prosperous society. The result isn't a utopia of high wages, great public services, and affordable government, but a broken system of corruptions, huge black markets, high unemployment, massive deficits, and now rumblings of civil unrest as people take to the streets to keep their handouts.

I'd say that Greece's experience is more instructive of the outcome of the President's policies than tortured CBO estimates that incorporate what could only be described as legislative fantasies of savings by cutting current entitlement programs. The modern welfare state is a walking corpse from the instant its set up. There is no tweaking that can make the model work. Inevitably the welfare state consumes society's wealth and then collapses on itself.

The Sinister White North

Today Michael Medved asked a question to conservatives: Is Canada Evil? He maintains that it is not, and if you compare Canada to Soviet Russia he might be right. Unfortunately there is a lot of evil between "Good" and being a totalitarian regime that slaughters and oppresses millions. I contend that Canada is evil.

Mr. Medved argues in his column that Canada is not evil, even if it is less free than the United States and to support that argument he cites statistics on Canada's relative economic prosperity. I disagree with his methods of proof for two reasons. First, material well-being has no bearing on morality as commonly understood in Western, that is to say Christian, society. Secondly, the assertion that Canada's material well-being is still acceptable under its system of government is misleading, despite the indicators he cited, and I believe, incorrect. Let me explain one step at a time.

I trust that no further explanation be needed about morality being independent of wealth. The rich man may have been wicked, but it wasn't because he had riches, but because he placed them above the Lord.

I don't dispute the accuracy of Mr. Medved's analysis about the relative levels of spending, taxes, and the like, but the way he presents them would lead the reader to believe that America and Canada exist in isolation from each other, as if America were on Mars and Canada on Venus. That is not the case, however, and it seems to me that it is impossible to calculate how much Canada has been enriched by America's good behavior over the decades. Canada has socialized medicine, which he notes is a travesty, but as abysmal as Canada's health care system is, it would be all the worse if not for Canada's proximity to the United States. Every time a Canadian comes to America for medical care it relieves some of the strain on Canada's system and lessens the expense. Moreover, Canada's health care industry benefits from the untold billions of dollars that American corporations have poured into research and development over the years, not to mention the millions of medical man hours developing new techniques that our for-profit doctors have put in. Likewise, Canada's comparable level of spending in terms of GDP is only possible because a muscular American military stands ready to repel all threats and provide a nuclear shield for the relatively defenseless Canada. The same can be said about many aspects of Canadian life; the bulk of the technology Canada and the rest of the world uses was developed or greatly improved by the power of American free markets.

So if Canada isn't the axe wielding lunatic filling mass graves and enslaving everyone around him, our neighbor to the North is at least a shifty ne'er-do-well who makes his neighbor do all the work and goes out to pickpocket during the evening hours. Canadian welfare mentality proffers as its basis the notion that the government ought to provide the public with "services" using confiscated money from productive citizens. Canadian socialized medicine accepts, in reality if not in doctrine, that many people should die prematurely or suffer treatable illnesses longer in order to pay homage to their shibboleth that everyone deserves medical care. Even the limitations on speech are more serious than you make them out to be. Lacking speech rights seriously harms a person's autonomy and degrades society's ability to watchdog its own government.

Canada's multicultural state has left it a moral wasteland where any number of vile ideologies have inserted themselves. Anti-Semitism is on the rise and its the kind that threatens violence. Israeli supporters were, just yesterday, attacked with a machete on a college campus. Standing by and tolerating radical beliefs in the name of multiculturalism is like watching someone get murdered and doing nothing to stop it. Right now I'm just using that as a simile, but if the machete-wielders get their way it may not stay that way for long.

Canada is a nation that robs disfavored classes of its people (the "rich"), oppresses freedom of speech, contributes to the death of its citizens (health care), and looks the other way when hateful ideologies reach for their machetes. Is it beginning to sound a little closer to Stalin than first suspected?

So yes, Canada is evil and becoming more so all the time.

As an aside, Canada has sheltered in the strength of American power, but has starved from a lack of American ideology responsible for American power. We have done the entire world a great disservice because we're too focused on the material well-being of other nations even as their civic institutions are rotting. The world didn't need America's wealth to survive and prosper, it needed America's ideology. We have failed to export the one true thing we have of indispensable value: our beliefs.

Government's Helping Hand of Decay

Mark Fisher had an interesting article in Bloomberg Press today about the parallels between Rome's decline as a nation and America. In it he argues that we're reaching a tipping point where decline will be inevitable as a result of permanently poor economic performance, the shrinking military power that accompanies it, and a listless dependent society. Unfortunately there is a lot of truth in his analysis. However, despite recognizing the outcome of our bloated bureaucratic government, as it rapidly takes over every meaningful part of society, Mr. Fisher embodies the mindset that has created the problem.

Unless the government creates a massive jobs program, cuts spending and taxes, and gains control of the national budget and the balance of payments crises, we should fear for our future. Unless our fellow Americans relearn the value of hard work, no government plan stands a chance.

Cutting spending and taxes are all well and fine, but if Mr. Fisher is going to wait on the government to create jobs he'll need to dig in for a lengthy stay. The government can't create jobs that are of any meaningful use to society and various attempts to do so over the years is a big part of why we're in the dismal shape that Mr. Fisher has determined that we're in. Government jobs typically don't produce anything, they simply regulate or engage in other meaningless bureaucratic tasks. Government jobs that do attempt to create something of value inevitably do so less efficiently than the market and usually produces things that society doesn't really want which is a waste of resources.

The government needs to get out of the way. The market can create jobs, but only if a locust swarm of government officials aren't standing by to consume everything that's produced as soon as private citizens finish producing it.

The Road to War is Paved with Peace Treaties

Today President Obama announced new limits on the American nuclear strategy that would for the first time declare that the United States would not use nuclear weapons even in self defense after having been attacked with chemical or biological weapons.

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

As if promising to fight with both hands tied behind our back, with eyes closed, whilst humming a dapper tune were not enough, the President has also decided to unilaterally obsolete America's nuclear weapons over a period of time by refusing to develop new weapons platforms as technology advances.

To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

To set an example indeed. It will be interesting to see how many other nations follow our example. Somehow I can't imagine Mahmoud Ahmadinejad putting off the pending arrival of the 12th Imam by giving up his development of the weapon he thinks will hasten in the world's end. He's already widened out the streets of Tehran after all. The only other detail left to attend to is the destruction of the Zionist Entity.

No one should be surprised by the President's actions though. President Obama I mean, not President Ahmadinejad. The President has a view of the world that is widely shared in the halls of the more elite university campuses. America's possession of nuclear weapons makes other nations "insecure," which causes them to develop nuclear weapons, which then puts the whole world at risk as everyone races to build arms. If we draw down our forces, so the theory goes, everyone else will draw their forces down too.

The problem is that this kind of behavior has never happened in the history of the world, especially not when dealing with authoritarian nations. Weakening America's military only gives the potential for aggressors to develop a dangerous new calculus, namely that they have just enough strength in light of America's new weakness to put their objectives within the realm of possibility. A nation that would never engage in hostilities in the face of a strong America just might be willing to roll the dice in the presence of a weakened America.

That isn't something that the forces of peace should relish.