Courage and Democracy

            In the middle of World War II, E. B. White wrote this about the meaning of democracy: "It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea that has not been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee."

            We have a sense of America in these words. It's the confidence that what's right and decent will prevail. It's the sense that people in the Heartland are far more genuine than narcissistic politicians who think they're above the law. It's the conviction that freedom of speech and freedom of worship will not give in to political correctness and secularism. It's the belief that the fight to preserve our values will win out over hedonism and moral dissolution.
            Are E. B. White's words, written seventy years ago, still valid in 2013?
            Our fathers and grandfathers fought against evil in World War II. Their wives back home did their share by living with wartime shortages, while keeping the children safe, taking them to church on Sunday, and making sure they did their homework. That took sacrifice and courage at both ends.    
            Where is the sacrifice today among people who think it's the government's job to take care of them from cradle to grave? Where is the courage among our leaders who value re-election more than the future of our country?
            Whatever happened to the virtues of hard work, honesty, fair play, and self-reliance?  And the ability to see the difference between right and wrong? Sadly, the moral relativism espoused by society's elite has become the norm and is corrupting these virtues.
            More than ever we need leaders who have the courage to do the right thing, even if it means risking the loss of cherished perks, the power of office, and the adulation of the masses.
            "Courage," Winston Churchill once said, "is the essential virtue, because it guarantees all the others." But courage, it seems to me, is in short supply these days.

 

Entitlements

            Remember the days when we were told that the greatest long-term threat to the world was overpopulation? We don't hear that very much these days. The opposite is true in many countries that now view shrinking populations as a serious problem.             

            The population replacement rate is the number of children that need to be born to keep the population number steady. That number is 2.1, that is, an average of 2.1 births per woman. It used to be much higher, but with advances in medicine and child care, infant mortality, an important factor, is much lower now. But look at the replacement rate in these countries: Germany 1.36, Japan 1.4, China 1.54. The lowest rate of all is in Singapore: 1.1. In the U.S. the overall rate is 1.93. It's higher than the others mainly because of the higher birth rate in the Hispanic community; the rate among white, educated women is 1.6!
            What does this mean for us in practical terms? It means we have an aging population that is supported by fewer and fewer young people. For example, there are not enough workers paying payroll taxes to cover seniors on Social Security. And it's getting worse now that the Baby Boomers are retiring. That's why analysts are saying that Social Security and Medicare will soon bankrupt this country if nothing is done to rein in their costs. Yet, too many of our solons in Washington view these two programs as sacred cows.
            With our national debt growing at a rate of more than a trillion dollars a year, spending is seriously out of control. There are many ways to reduce spending, but no programs cry out louder for reform that Social Security and Medicare. Some proposals for reform have come from forward-looking thinkers like Paul Ryan, and even the President's own Simpson-Bowles Commission has pointed to the need to reduce entitlements. Sadly, all of them have been ignored or fiercely opposed by the Administration and Senate Democrats.
            Even the voters are leery of any changes. The future beneficiaries of government largesse don't seem to worry much about the burden they will be passing on to their children and grandchildren. They insist on their turn at the government trough. This is the entitlement mentality that has become so pervasive in this country. It's the nanny state gone wild.
            The citizens of this country need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the realm of reality. People are living longer and working longer. So why are we stuck on 65 as the magic number for retirement? Why are we not means-testing the beneficiaries? Why are we not coming up with reforms that put young people in charge of their future security instead of relying on a broken system administered by an incompetent government?
            I read recently that law school applications are down almost 50% from what they were ten years ago. I guess that's good news if it means we can look to a future with fewer lawyers, considering just about everyone in Congress is a lawyer.
            But we'll save this discussion for another day.         

Lies and Lies

             It was a subtle lie, but a lie nonetheless. When the President in his State of the Union message bragged about 6 million new jobs having been added during his first term, he neglected to point out that the U.S. labor market has fallen by 6.4 million jobs since 2007. The official unemployment number of 7.9% is the same as it was when he took office, but if you count those who now only work part time and the 8 million people who have stopped looking for work in the last four years, the number is closer to 14%. The sad fact is that we have fewer people working a full-time job today than we had 30 years ago. No lie, no matter how subtle, can override this fact.

            The President's jobs initiatives have been a disaster. He asked for and received over $600 billion in stimulus money that he promised would create jobs, but that money was poured into a vast sink hole of special interests like Solyndra, electric cars, and other green energy projects that did nothing for the economy. He reduced drilling and exploration on public lands by a third, while using the EPA to destroy the coal industry and prevent new methods of extracting fossil fuels on private lands. He unleashed an unprecedented barrage of costly regulations that eat into small business profits and prevent them from expanding and creating new jobs. The list goes on.
            But the proposals keep coming, all with false assurances that "Nothing I'm proposing tonight [in his State of the Union message] should increase our deficit by a single dime." That is the same assurance he has given us repeatedly, beginning with Obamacare, which the CBO projects will cost taxpayers a trillion dollars over the next ten years. That he can continue to lie to us in this way after raising the national debt by $6 trillion dollars is mind-boggling.  There are subtle lies and damned lies. I think Obama has clearly moved from the one to the other.

Minimum Wage Folly

            In my last blog I wished that the President would target gun violence in gang-infested neighborhoods like the ones in his hometown of Chicago. I wished that he would address the root causes of the senseless violence, beginning with a culture that glorifies drugs, denigrates education, and accepts illegitimate births, broken families, and government dependency as the new norm.

            Well, kudos to the President who did go to Chicago and spoke passionately on the subject, especially to young black men who shun the responsibilities of fatherhood. It was a good start that I hope will be followed up with more exhortations from him.
            It was a pity, however, that Obama chose that occasion to push wrong-headed measures that he thinks will help the economy pull out of its doldrums. One measure in particular was raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour. He could not have come up with a worse idea for his audience.
            Unemployment among black men is over 20% and much worse for young blacks looking to enter the workforce. Entry level jobs paying minimum wage are a place to start, a foot in the door. Yet, every study on the subject has shown that increasing the minimum wage costs jobs; it bars the door to those young people who lack the skills and experience to enter the workforce at a higher level. Employers will simply eliminate jobs that they cannot justify paying at the higher rate. It's simple economics, and the Anointed One just doesn't get it. He might as well have said, "You young people need to get a job. I've got an idea that will make that harder."
            Economics is not the President's strong point. He should stick to what he's good at: reading teleprompters, bashing Republicans, vilifying the rich and successful, raising taxes, increasing our national debt... Hmm. Maybe not.

           

Ban All Guns!

            The debate on gun violence continues unabated as the nation looks to prevent another Newtown massacre. Clearly, no gun control legislation can ever be totally effective in stopping a nut from blasting away at innocent children. Yet, leaders from the President on down must demonstrate that they hear the voice of the people crying, "Do Something!" "Ban all guns!"

            Well, denying law-abiding citizens their 2nd Amendment rights would be no more effective in preventing gun violence than turning schools into fortresses defended by armed teachers in every classroom, as some have suggested. That makes about as much sense as outlawing automobiles to prevent highway deaths, which far exceed gun-related deaths.
            As sad as tragedies like Newtown may be, a better place to target gun violence should  be gang-infested neighborhoods. Why doesn't the President start with his hometown of Chicago? It produced over 500 gun-related homicides in 2012 and is off to a roaring start again this year. Why doesn't the President address the root causes of this senseless violence, starting with a culture that glorifies drugs, denigrates education, and accepts illegitimate births, broken families, and government dependency as the new norm?
            Why doesn't President Obama campaign against the corruption of our youth by an entertainment industry that relies increasingly on violence and degeneracy to generate obscene profits? Oh, no. Some of his biggest supporters come out of Hollywood, after all. Instead, what we see are the stars coming out in support of the president's initiatives, whatever they may be. As the foul-mouth, sycophant racist Chris Rock says, "When your Dad says something, you listen." Now there's an intellectually persuasive argument if I ever heard one.
            Even worse was the vacuous, unintelligible rant we got from a senile Tony Bennett. "It's the kind of turn that happened to the great country of Germany, when Nazis came over and created things, and they had to be told off." Mr. Bennett's interesting interpretation of world history no doubt qualifies him for a teaching position at one of our prestigious universities.
            We all love our children; we would do anything to protect them. But there is no quick fix: knee-jerk gun control legislation is not the answer. We need leadership of a different kind. When the President promotes his proposals by saying that if broad and far-reaching legislation can result in the saving of just one child, then it's worth trying, he shows that he is completely clueless as to what ails this society.
            For starters, he might want to look in the mirror.