Posted by
Patrick Henry on Sunday, September 05, 2010 12:34:29 PM
America is facing its worst economy since the Great Depression. Last quarter's
GDP tanked to 1.6%, unemployment stands a 9.6%, but if you factor in those
who have been forced from full-time to part-time and those who have simply
given up looking, the real number is closer to 20%. Mortgage foreclosures continue
at historic highs as property values continue to plunge, and more homeoweners
find themselves "underwater" on their house notes.
Vice-President Joe Biden spent the summer touting the "Summer Recovery" that
wasn't, and Barack Obama in four consecutive speeches has explained, using some of
the most "creative" math in political history, that the economy is actually recovering
nicely, just not fast enough. Regular Americans, however, recognize this for the
politically motivated bullpuckey that it is, and seem bent on a November change of
management.
Everyone not drinking the Kool-Aid knows that the economy is stuck in the mud,
and that for some reason the forces that have always led it to rebound have been
muted and shackled. Obama and his people keep mumbling about more "stimulus"
and more government intervention. Few are reassured. Why?
Ed Morrissey, in his excellent blog Hot Air (which you can and should read on TH),
reported on an article published this week in Der Spiegel by Hamburg (Germany)
professor of economics, Thomas Straubhaar. In it, Straubhaar argued that the American
economy is not recovering because America has become too much like Europe. He
writes:
"Both the behavior of the American givernment and the Federal Reserve
makes one thing clear: they do not see the solution to the U.S.'s economic
woes in a return to traditional American virtues. Obama is not calling for
the unleashing of market forces, as Ronald Reagan once did during an
equally critical period in the early 1980's. On the contrary, Obama, driven
by his own convictions and advised by economists who believe in government
intervention has taken a path that leads far away from those things that
catapulted America to the top of the world in the past century . . . The
Obama administration's current policies rely on more government rather
than personal responsibility and self-determination. They are administering
to the patient more, not less of exactly those things that led to the crisis."
Straubhaar goes on to argue that those who settled America came here for one thing
above all else: freedom from government control over belief, speech and destiny. Their
creation of a constitutionally limited government was seen as a way of facilitating this
goal and was never intended to intrude into people's lives. The state was for securing
freedom, peace and security while economic prosperity was left to the individual. Once
that belief system is stripped from America's heterogeneous society, conflict between
various segments of that society is inevitable.
He further argues that European societies are more historically homogeneous, and
therefore government interventions work better there. (But he quickly adds that whether
they actually "work" is debatable). Using modern Germany as an example, he reminds
that Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly disagreed over how much
government intervention was appropriate. Then Germany crafted a far less ambitious
intervention than Obama's, and while their GDP ballooned to a robust 9%, ours was
tanking to 1.6%.
Funny how it takes a foreigner to remind Americans just how good what they once
had really was, and how straying from it is a shortcut to mediocrity. But the bottom
line is this: Barack Obama is a Marxist. As a Marxist he believes that the only way to
create a "just" society is for government to tightly control (regulate) the means and
profits of production. In other words, to make a homogeneous American culture into
a heterogeneous European one. To do that, he continues to spin the wheel of economy
lotto, and keeps coming up snake eyes. Until he is stopped cold, his tax and spend
policies reversed and his stranglehold on American businesses released, the economy
will not enjoy meaningful recovery. Even after November, Obama will control the
power of executive order by which he has repeatedly sought to bypass congress and
implement damaging socialist policies. What may be in our future is an epic confront-
ation between a Republican congress and a recalcitrant ideologue bent on re-shaping
an unwilling nation after European mediocrity. Who wins will determine our national
destiny. Let freedom ring!