This is entirely correct:
Consider the myriad paradoxes of the Obama age. Unprecedented government borrowing is out of control, unsustainable, and finally causing financial markets to panic. Yet we are told that the necessary cutting ahead will further stall the stalled economy. We went from $9 trillion to $14 trillion in aggregate debt in order to jump-start a sluggish recovery, and failed — only to be warned that if we do not proceed to incur even more debt — from $14 trillion to $16 trillion — we will stall the stalled effort to restart the stalled economy. So more of what did not work most surely will work?
The Left insists that the real problem is not unmanageable debt, but near-record unemployment, as if the two were unrelated. Most Americans apparently once agreed, as Obama easily borrowed nearly $5 trillion in his first two and a half years in office, supposedly to stimulate employers into hiring workers. We are now told the U.S. must borrow more, and should worry less, not more, about paying the money back. The logic of the new Keynesians is that stimulus is never quite achieved because indebtedness is never quite large enough — an Achilles-and-the-tortoise paradox that only insolvency will finally dispel.
VDH credits the Left with good intentions. I, myself, do not. I believe that their goal is insolvancy, that they want to bankrupt America. Yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is dumb as yesterday’s roadkill, but they aren’t all dumb. The real leaders can see where this is going as clearly as any of us. They are doing exactly what they want to do. These Democrats aren’t dumb. They are evil.
He continues:
Rioting in London and flash mobbing in American cities have raised another paradox: Does contemporary looting and violence follow from physical deprivation or from a boredom, envy, and anger caused by too many subsidies and too little personal initiative and self-reliance? We know that the more we ensure that young people have generous unemployment insurance and government money for housing, food, and education, the more they are likely not to get up at 6 a.m. and take an extra class or look for a job. And yet the more we provide such bread-and-circuses dependencies, the more it becomes dangerous to question such life support. Ask the Emperor Justinian, who cut back on a bloated civil-service and entitlement bureau — and earned the Nika riots, which almost toppled his regime. So even as we suspect that the welfare state is unsustainable, we are told that it alone can prevent social unrest — which we suspect is currently brought about by the welfare state.
The Welfare State is destroying Western Civilization. I don’t believe that you can reach any other conclusion. Look at what the Welfare State has done to the black community. By any standard, the bulk of blacks are worse off today than they were during segregation. That is not to minimize the evils of segregation, but to emphasize the magnitude of the evil of the Welfare State. The black family has been all but destroyed, and the tidal wave of incarceration, mayhem, and murder that has followed has condemned nearly an entire generation. Who can look at that and call it good?
To Hanson’s credit, he raises the possibility Obama is doing this intentionally:
Was he naïve in thinking that the private sector could be hectored and harassed, and still create enough new wealth to fund his growing redistributive agenda? Or was he Machiavellian in seeing that only by massive new debt, government regulations, and spread-the-wealth programs would America be reduced to the status of just another indebted European-style socialist state — in itself a good and long-overdue thing?
I think Obama’s read his Machiavelli. All in all, this is another good VDH article. Check it out.
Tags: VDH
