Hennessy's View

It’s easy to wonder whether humanity has simply grown weary of life.

• Yesterday I noted the inhumanity of Christmas shoppers on Black Friday.
• For the past 24 hours, the world has watched the slow release of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.
• As I write, a gunman holds hostages at a rural Wisconsin high school.
• The European debt crisis refuses to remain quiet beneath the rug under which it’s been swept. 
• The US government is about to unleash tyrannical control over all of our lives through bureaucratic fiat.

These are mostly American issues, but we are are smart to remember that the USA is one nation among many. Our problems, as Rick Blaine might say, don’t amount to a hill of beans when the whole world is collapsing around us.

Walter Russell Mead’s blog post (h/t RealClearPolitics.com) reminds us that we are not witnessing a normal business cycle. 

There are times when the ideas of the world’s rulers and the institutions through which they govern are adequate to the needs of the era, and there are times–like the present–when they are not.  It is not just the Obama administration that seems mentally and even culturally unprepared to understand much less to guide the events now sweeping through the world.  In Brussels, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo and Delhi — to say nothing of Washington –  leaders seem equally clueless, equally committed to outmoded, inaccurate approaches to the issues of our time.

Sobering.

Mr. Mead’s analysis is far more important than the Wikileaks.  The unconscionable, but unspectacular, information found in the document dump by the degenerate international fugitive Julian Assange is a symptom of civilization’s unraveling, not a cause.

The world needs leaders. America’s special place on the world stage demands we send forth a special leader—one who rises above the others, but who does so humbly. America’s blessing bring burdens of world leadership, not the privilege of world domination.

Our next president must enter office with the tacit understand of our greatness, and an open-eyed acceptance of risks.  It’s not exaggeration to say the world is on the brink of a new dark age.  We are one rogue nuke away from an unthinkable regression. While that would delight the environmentalist left, it cause massive human death. It would threaten many species, not just our own.  Desperate, dying people couldn’t care less about nature. They care about living.

As we pause for Advent and the new year, think about whom you would trust to lead in such precarious times.  Who can guide, not just America, but the world between the threats civilization face?

Ronald Reagan is dead. Margaret Thatcher is elderly. The cast of the G20 are pygmies posing as serious men and women. The next great American leader, if one remains, must rise from among us.

Choose carefully.  But choose.  Don’t let the pygmy farmers choose for you.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Drudge’s headlines about Black Friday 2010 raise disturbing questions about America’s purpose as a nation.

We degrade ourselves for deals on crap some puppet-master tells us we cannot live without. In the name of Christ’s birth, we reveal ourselves with headlines like “Craze shoppers stampede,” “Marine stabbed,” “Shopper arrested after packing gun,” “Mall food court placed on lockdown,” “Shopper arrested…raging,” “Police called after thousands rush,” “Woman busted.”

We rush Toys-R-Us doors–angry, armed, and belligerent–because our society is grossly disordered.  And society is nothing but us. 

That should give us all pause.

Let’s stand down from politics for a bit.  Between now and Christmas, let’s examine our relationship to stuff.  In Zen Conservatism I wrote about the dangers of accumulating crap. Physical, emotional, mental, whatever. We need a break.

Let’s set a goal for ourselves and our society: that Black Friday 2011 be a day of happiness and joy. 

Popularity: 2% [?]

Exit polling tells the story.  About 60 percent of voters agree with the tea party core principles of government constrained by a constitution and government transparency.  Well over half of voters agree with specific measures advanced in the Contract From America, including:

1.  Balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

2. Elimination of earmarks until the budget is balanced, and then requiring a 2/3 vote.

3.  Audit the entire damn government, including the Fed.

4.  Require super-majorities in both houses of Congress to increase any federal tax or fee.

5.  Require Congress to specifically cite an enumerated power for each provision of legislation.

While it would be easy for the tea party to take credit for this attitude, it would also be untrue.  The tea party didn’t mold public opinion; it simply gives the public permission to speak.  On the steps of the Arch in February 2009, at the first St. Louis tea party, countless people thanked me for giving them permission to speak their minds.  As if it were mine to give.

As we’ve seen, the left, the ruling class, the academic and media elite, sneer at we who endeavor to run our own lives.  Katie Couric, queen of the elite, calls us “the great unwashed.”  The elite worked hard for years—in schools, in movies, books, and television—to convince us their our opinions were worse than useless.  They told us that the founding principles of America were not just wrong, but evil. 

While we knew better, we were reluctant to speak up.  The cool kids went along with the elitists.  After all, who doesn’t want to be elite?  So we bit our tongues and toiled on, hoping that the elitists would tire and leave us alone.

Instead, the elitists became emboldened and tried to “fundamentally transform” America. That served as a wake-up call to millions.  The tea parties happened. We learned that we were not alone. By the end of the summer of 2009, we learned that most people still believe in our founding principles, specifically that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

What was left but to assert our beliefs on election day.

What’s left is not some magical transformation, but a simple, steady application of our power. We build stronger coalitions, we invite more people into our world, and we slowly reclaim the rights and privileges taken away without our consent. That’s about as reasonable and mainstream as you can get.

Popularity: 2% [?]

When Barack Obama became president in January 2009, he began a campaign to weaken America. I’m not talking about military cuts; I’m speaking of America’s stature.  Barack Obama famously refused to acknowledge American Exceptionalism in 2009. He bowed to kings and princes, then denied doing so, then bowed again and again. His White House has driven down the dollar. Timothy Geithner, Obama’s Secretary of the Treasury, warns that the world economy must “rebalance” with less reliance on America.

Barack Obama is short-selling America.

The results of a US President talking down his own country are stark.  America is losing prestige, and the office of our president loses prestige right along with the rest of us. 

Asian Embarrassment

In the last week, Barack Obama got a taste of the new, devalued USA.  In South Korea and Japan, Obama was no longer treated as first among equals, but us the kid at the far end of the table.  Having trashed America’s swagger and replaced it with a lilting prance, Obama learned that it’s not so fun to be a relatively young leader of relatively young nation whose prestige has taken a major blow.

From a Wall Street Journal editorial, we see just how far the USA has fallen under Obama’s presidency:

Has there ever been a major economic summit where a U.S. President and his Treasury Secretary were as thoroughly rebuffed as they were at this week’s G-20 meeting in Seoul? We can’t think of one. President Obama failed to achieve any of his main goals while getting pounded by other world leaders for failing U.S. policies and lagging growth.

For Obama, now, there is nowhere to turn.  American voters have rejected his domestic policy. His base has turned against his handling of Afghanistan. The world leaders, seeing him as weak, are planning world economic policy more or less over Obama’s head.

Stagflation

But there’s more. Obama’s economic policies promise to do two things: 1) perpetuate high unemployment and 2) increase inflation.  In fact, the Fed’s stated policy, which Obama defended twice in Asia last week, is to use Demand-Pull inflation to grow the US economy. 

We’ve seen this before.  In 1978 to 1982, America suffered a malaise brought about by bone-headed economic policies from a president who believed America had gotten too big for its breeches.  Jimmy Carter’s policies produced high unemployment, flat growth, and runaway inflation.  The term for this economic condition is “stagflation.”

True, Bernanke is a Bush appointee and the Fed is independent from the White House.  But Treasury Secretary Geithner and President Obama are full participants in an economic policy that threatens to revisit the disastrous years of 1978 through 1982.  Being unemployed, underemployed, or underpaid is bad enough. When the cost of necessary goods and services rise quickly, things get worse fast for the economically challenged.  And signs of stagflation are everywhere.

Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute wrote in a WSJ op-ed that several inflationary signals surfaced in October:

Producer prices rose at an annual rate of 5.5% in September and 4.8% in August. The broad price index for GDP rose at an annual rate of 2.3% in the third quarter, up from 1.9% in the second quarter and 1% in the first.

For ordinary folks trying to make ends meet, the prospect of inflation is frightening.  Already the weak dollar has driven up the price of gasoline and food—the two things we all need to survive.  The two things the government omits from its consumer price index.  In the past week, gasoline prices in the St. Louis area jumped $0.25 overnight. 

The Next Congress

There is little the 112th Congress can do to repair the economic damage, but it can lay the foundation for the next president and the 113th Congress. I encourage all members of the next Congress to follow Arthur Laffer’s prescription of extending the Bush tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, eliminating incentives for idleness, and push free trade. 

Popularity: 1% [?]

When  you vote for a candidate for high office, sometimes you do so with fingers crossed. You just don’t know how they’ll handle the new responsibilities.  Will they succumb to pressure and influence?  Or will they remain true?

Luckily for us, Senator-elect Roy Blunt showed his courage in a recent Wall Street Journal article about the Tea Party and the GOP.

In a year when voters overwhelming demanded changes to business as usual in Washington, Roy Blunt showed he has the rectitude to stand strong for the tried and true practices of obfuscation, political double-speak, and deflection.

Take earmarks.  The Tea Party’s Contract From America demanded that Congress ban earmarks from deficit budgets and require full disclosure for earmarks at all other times.  Will Roy Blunt bow to the fanatical will of the people by swearing off earmarks?

Hell, no.  For that matter, to demonstrate his brave adherence to the Washington party line, Roy won’t even give a firm answer to the question.  In an era when meaning what you say and saying what you mean is treasured, Senator-elect Blunt is unafraid to dodge the earmark question by pointing out that Ron Paul requests many earmarks for his district in Texas. From WSJ:

"Rand [Paul] doesn’t agree with his dad on that. His dad is a leading advocate of earmarks on this side of the building. I’ll let the Pauls work that out and then I’ll see where they come down." We share a laugh over that.

Now that’s spine. Encourage a little domestic dispute to determine the fate of earmarks.

Any run-of-the-mill Tea Party politician might have given the simple, easy answer.  For example, “You know, I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to requesting earmarks.  But with the trillions in debt and with the new understanding that our spending is destroying America’s future, I’m going to support the tea party’s Contract and co-sponsor legislation severely curtailing earmarks.  In fact, I think we should ban them altogether from budgets with a projected deficit.”

Yes, an answer like that is cowardly.  It panders to the sentiments of 60 percent of  the people who sent Roy to Washington.  And such a straightforward answer wimpishly admits complicity in the monstrous national debt. Who wants leaders to take responsibility for their actions?  

Congratulations to Roy Blunt for showing the testicularity to pretend the Tea Party never happened.

Popularity: 7% [?]