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Posts Tagged ‘Obama’

Government Isn’t Us

Tagged: democracy, government, markets, Mob Rule, Obama, society

President Obama recently spoke at the University of Michigan. In his speech, he criticised those who attack government as inherently bad. He stated that such people fail to comprehend that “in a democracy, Government is us.”

Why Obama Is Wrong – 1. Democracy?!?

At some level, democratic governments are supposed to be the collective will of the people. But let’s think about that for a second.

In the 2008 election, approximately 63 million votes for Obama were cast. That’s about a fifth of the people. You can’t claim that every policy you want is justified by the fact that a fifth of Americans voted for you, even if fewer voted for the alternative. At the very least, Obama should be saying that Government should be us.

Moreover, this is a rather disturbing example of the belief that 50%+1 should be able to set the rules for everyone. If you’re in the majority, you can get whatever you want; in the land of “we”, people have to give and take. Perhaps for students at the University of Michigan, in a town which voted 70% for Obama, the President meant “We, the majority” rather than “We, the People.”

Why Obama Is Wrong – 2. If Government Is Us, Why Does the State have Special Powers?

Is it right if I lock you up? Can I take thousands of pounds with the threat of force if you do not comply? Can I order a drone to blow you to smithereens? No. No. No.

If we agree with Mr. Obama, then it is morally OK for a large group of people to do things which would be wrong if individuals did them. Indeed, as noted above in the Democracy section, Obama would seem to believe that a sufficiently large mob becomes moral by virtue of its size alone.

There are reasons why the State has some special powers – some theorists might consider it a Social Contract whereby individuals trade some liberty for security. It remains the case, however, that Government is an entity that is supposed to work on our behalf, rather than “us”.

If Government is Not “Us”, What Is?

What can be termed “us” accurately? It would have to be the sum of everyone’s interactions with everyone else. There are two words we could use for this – Society, or the Market. The former implies non-financial interactions and the latter the opposite, but in reality, they are interchangeable. Why? If one stops looking at the Market narrowly as exchange of money and looks at it more broadly as the exchange of our wants and needs, one can include the way we choose to spend our time and amuse ourselves as well.

There is such a thing as Society. It’s not the same as Government, but it is the same as the Market.

Spare Some Change?

Tagged: Change, Conservative Party, David Cameron, Democratic Party, General Election, Left-wing, Lib Dems, Obama

Mr. Cameron, with the aid of Obama campaign staffers, has presented himself and our Party as the champions of “Change”. Whilst it is not yet clear whether this has succeeded in the face of resurgent Liberals, I would like to add my observations and criticisms to the mix.

Change needs to be Change

I would argue that the reason why the change message worked for Obama is that he worked very hard to assure people that he really would present a change. Ignoring for now the doubts many have about what he has and has not done, most people in 2008 believed that he was a chance to break with the flawed policies of W. That is one thing that got him elected.

Cameron, by contrast, sought for much of his time as leader to make the Conservatives for most purposes indistinguishable from Labour. The message of “Change” failed to stick because people found it lacked credibility – Cameron may have changed the Tories, but he changed them so as to provide less of an alternative to the Left. Little wonder, then, that anti-politics parties like the Lib Dems and the minor parties are capturing the change vote – they actually provide something different.

Of course, this does not mean that we should forget -

Change is not an end per se – it is a means to an end – nor is Change inherently good

The politician’s fallacy goes something like: “Something must be done. X is something. Therefore we must do X.”

This flawed logic leads to the incorrect conclusion that action is always better than inaction, that change is necessarily better than the status quo ante. Mr. Cameron seems worryingly close to seeking change as an end in itself, rather than saying why that change is needed.

Conservatism makes sense because we recognise that even the most intelligent of us cannot seek to approach the evolved collective wisdom of humanity. Our meddling may have effects beyond our comprehension – as the Democrats in the U.S. learned recently when dozens of companies that were supposed to benefit from Obamacare had to make massive writedowns to account for costs no-one predicted even days before – and therefore we should tread carefully. Things do need to change from time to time – but trying to achieve grand visions frequently leads to unforeseen and counter-productive consequences.

Mr. Cameron – Tell us that if it ain’t broke, you won’t try to fix it. Tell us that you’ve had enough with bureaucrats trying to deal with the picayune details of our lives. Tell us that you’re willing to see how things go, and only where the current system is intolerable (which in many areas, it is) will you make changes and then only the minimum intervention necessary.

When you’re backing a horse you know (or think you know) that it is more likely to have a favourable outcome than the alternative, but you take the risk that it won’t and you’ll lose what you put in. With Change, you’re taking a similar gamble, but in a world where even achieving your goal and ‘winning’ might lead to unexpected consequences. As Conservatives, we know that it’s not always worth that risk.

So, Mr. Cameron: go on TV on Thursday and tell us that you bring the change we need, not just change for its own sake and not just more of the same repackaged.

Mental Health

Tagged: NHS, Obama, statism, welfare state

Committee member, token lefty, debater, hat-wearer, writer and Sharpe-fan, Ben Slingo, dispels some myths surrounding the “Obamacare” fracas.

American healthcare. Oh dear. It’s all rather unedifying, both the system and the squabble about how to make ever so slightly less dysfunctional. Certainly recent evidence suggests that US psychiatric units are shutting their doors to many hundreds of needy cases.

Enjoyable as it would be merely to revel in the hysteria, it might be useful to correct some widespread misconceptions. As ever, there are faults on both sides.

1. It is not true that the American poor are denied all healthcare. The Medicare programme does provide treatment. This treatment, however, is

a) inferior to that provided by the NHS,

b) confined largely to emergency care, excluding say consultations about worrying symptoms,

c) funded in a hugely inefficient way and

d) destined to bankrupt the system that sustains it ominously soon.

2. It is not true that the American system classically liberal or free-market oriented. Treatment is funded by insurance companies, who are in turn paid mostly by employers, who in turn offer an often very limited choice of insurance packages to their employees. The commercial relationship between patient and hospital is infinitely more tenuous than that between,consumer and supermarket. Since employers provide insurance, many American workers are unwilling to endure the disruption entailed by switching jobs, a reluctance that limits a vital condition of the free market : labour flexibility. Not only this, but precisely because the American system is privately operated many states have imposed very restrictive and expensive regulations on insurance companies and hospitals.

3. It is not true that simply because several doctors and nurses were very courteous to your ailing grandmother the NHS is a healthcare system of unrivalled quality that deserves its own religious cult (which should perhaps forthwith be declared blessed)

4. It is not true that ‘Obamacare’ would impose an NHS-style system in the States. First of all ‘Obamacare’ itself is a fanciful notion as the President has (unwisely) entrusted the plan to the Democrats in Congress. Something vaguely resembling American NHS may appeal to Mr. Obama and other liberal Democrats, but they are not reckless enough to propose it given its
likely reception.

5. It is not true that ‘Obamacare’ would sanction state-funded abortions (though I would imagine that some insurance premia
are already inflated by the cost of abortion). One might also note that tax revenue is most certainly spent on enforcing the death penalty, something equally repugnant to the Holy Apostolic Church.

6. It is not true that the very large discrepancy between levels of health spending in America (16 per cent of GDP) and western Europe (10-12 per cent) is entirely squandered. The very best American care is truly superb and surpasses that available on
the NHS. This care would not necessarily be threatened by ‘Obamacare’, though a government-backed insurance company would damage some of its private competitors.

7. It is not true that ‘Obamacare’ envisages death panels that would exterminate the Palin family. I decline to speculate on
whether this myth has been peddled by pro- or anti-Obama partisans.

-Ben Slingo

U.S. Bishops must NOT back Obama

Tagged: morality, NHS, Obama, religion, socialism, statism

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/13499

In today’s issue of The Tablet (the international Catholic weekly Founded 1840 – Britain’s oldest journal bar The Spectator), that publication’s characteristically hysterical Obamamania has been taken beyond all moral acceptability, orthodoxy, or any pretence of Catholic sensibility. This time its about healthcare, or “Obamacare”. I shall elucidate.

On political issues the Catholic Church has always been a bit split; prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) the Church mainly focused on critiquing liberalism, secularism, “Modernism” (a sceptical and anti-authoritarian outlook), socialism, Communism, in the 19th Century democracy itself, sexual liberalism, divorce and all the traditional thorny medical ethical issues – abortion, euthanasia, artificial contraception, etc. However, since Vatican II there has been an increasing focus on social issues, including “social justice”, workers’ rights, the evils of excessive capitalism, and re-focusing economics in such a manner that the human being is seen as the end rather than merely the means of economic activity. Laudable moral intentions, for sure, but often displaying a lack of awareness of how economics really works. How do we MAKE people care about each other? The answer to this is pretty unclear, other than everyone becoming Christians and being charitable towards one another voluntarily.

However, The Tablet chooses to interpret these moral imperatives solely according to a narrow, statist understanding. This is certainly a long way from Pius IX’s 1846 pronouncement that socialism is “a pest”, and reflects an uninformed and naive outlook. Having championed Obama during his election campaign, the (highly unorthodox) editorial of The Tablet has proudly asserted from on high that “U.S. Bishops must back Obama.” The argument presented is dangerous and wrong – that the Church in America ought to shelve its problems with state-sanctioned abortion (in the Church’s view mass state infanticide) and all the other areas where monolithic healthcare systems, such as the NHS, trample over traditioanl Christian moral values, in order to pursue the “general principle of the common good”. In contrast to this “common good” of public healthcare, the issue of abortion is passed off as a “specifically Catholic issue”, and the editor attacks the Bishops for failing to “put the promotion of social justice above their churchly priorities.” Sorry, one issue, that of the moral imperative to heal the sick, cannot be so warmly lauded as “social justice” while an equally important imperative – not to kill the unborn – is given the mere rhetorical status of “their own churchly priorities”. This is unfair, un-Catholic, cheap and incredibly one-sided, and a Catholic publication ought to know better.

Furthermore, The Tablet presents the Obamacare issue as solely one of a distinction between people either having healthcare or not – it’s either given to them graciously from Their Lord Barack or denied them by greedy capitalists, apparently the “robber barons” of our age. The subtleties of the difficulties of state funding, the inefficiencies and abuses generated by a universal “free-at-the-point-of-use” principle, as weighed against the evil of people not having healthcare, are dealt with using one sweeping, blunt conclusion: the state must provide universal care, so saith the Lord, and the Bishops are obligated to pressure for this. All else, even the rights of the unborn, are secondary.

Even if one accepts that Church teaching on imperatives to heal the sick must translate directly into state-run healthcare (a highly contentious assumption), one must surely accept that this is less clear and more tenuous than Church teaching on abortion, which is thoroughly clear-cut. What’s more, the Church must fight the battle of attitudes: we in the West generally do not see any intrinsic evils in state healthcare, but are morally apathetic about abortion – the Bishops must draw a line in the sand and defend it, because once Obamacare is accepted in principle it is only a small step further to sanction state-funded abortion en masse. Even if you personally agree with abortion, or believe in the right to decide for oneself whether it is acceptable, then surely on the latter principle one must oppose the confiscation of taxpayers’ money to spend by the state on abortion “services” against the will of many of the taxpayers? Opposition to abortion in the US is widespread and many will be outraged to see their money spent in this way. The Bishops are entirely right to focus on this issue and the need to keep abortion out of the state system. This is not a “mistake” and The Tablet, if it makes any claim to retain the name of a Catholic weekly, ought to be ashamed of itself.

Obama

Tagged: Obama

Barack Obama is President of the United States. In some ways this is a good thing. The Republicans are certainly not much better, having doubled the national debt in less than a decade and trampled civil liberty. But let’s look at what’s bad about Obama.

He’s no friend of free trade. Despite much prevarication on this and other issues during his campaign (such as corporate campaign donations), Obama’s instincts are protectionist. He wants to “protect” American jobs at the expense of American consumers, for example by “renegotiating” NAFTA, even though this will make most Americans poorer, and he opposes free trade deals with countries like Colombia. Obama told voters in New Hampshire: “I would stop the import of all toys from China”. 80% of toys sold in the US are made in China.

He supports the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the US government to spy on its own citizens.

He supports the “Fairness Doctrine”, which would allow people to force private broadcasters to provide airtime to opposing views.

He wants to legislate to make it easier for union bosses to control their members, for example by abolishing the right to secret ballots, through his chilling “Employee Free Choice Act”.

Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both cut capital gains tax, and both times, revenue from the tax increased. In the 1980s the tax was raised and revenues decreased. Obama is morally vacuous enough to want to raise capital gains tax “for purposes of fairness” even if it would reduce revenue and would affect 100 million Americans who own shares. Obama’s other tax changes will increase marginal tax rates on low-income earners by 13% or more, because he doesn’t understand the poverty trap. This might be deliberate, to increase dependence of the poor on the state, swelling the numbers of Obama voters. He also plans a huge expansion in the public sector payroll, which will create a client state of Obama voters. By the 2012 election, currently illegal immigrants will be legal, and able to vote Obama.

Obama’s love of “fairness” means he appears to have virtually no regard for the rule of law. The recent bank bailout, which Obama supported, is a massive scheme to redistribute wealth from the prudent and responsible to the imprudent and irresponsible. It makes a mockery of his desire to “spread the wealth”. It is, of course, unconstitutional.

A survey of Obama supporters found that only 29% believe that judges should rule on what is in the Constitution, whereas 82% of McCain supporters said they should. 11% of McCain supporters said judges should rule based on their sense of fairness, but 49% of Obama supporters thought they should. This is also called “judging a case on its merits”, or ad hoc justice, and is utterly contrary to the rule of law.

Obama appears to agree. He said: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” [My emphasis.] And I thought justice was supposed to be blind, and judges were supposed to uphold the law, not empathy.

He has a consistent record of opposing private gun ownership, despite the clear statement in the constitution that this right “shall not be infringed.” If he is really against the Second Amendment, why doesn’t he try to abolish it? Why has he opposed guns through unconstitutional measures, rather than trying to change the constitution? Does he consider the constitution “just words?”

In a 2001 interview, he said that one of the problems with the Supreme Court was that it has “never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society… It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.”

We have a man leading the free world who does not value freedom.

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