Avoiding Conflict Avoidance

In the official liberal belief system, the key to it all is "conflict avoidance." Because if only we could avoid conflict then everyone could live in peace and justice.

Er, no. Not quite, chaps. In reality, life in the world is all about conflict. We humans, occasionally, create a moment in which conflict recedes to the margin. But not really. Conflict still continues, but in a sublimated form. Thus, in politics, we fight civil war by other means.

Against the liberal notion of conflict avoidance, I believe we should understand conflict, its rhythm and its typical human manifestations, and use that knowledge to make society work better--and families and churches and associations, for that matter.

That's why I think that we need President Obama and his Democratic friends to pass their awful ObamaCare legislation. They have done the American people a huge favor by overreaching on health care. They could have got to ObamaCare eventually, by slowly ratcheting up the level of government intervention, by turning every health care problem into an argument for more government.

But they didn't. They went for the whole Kahuna. And the American people woke up and decided they hated it.

So now we have a once-in-a-generation chance to make a huge national statement against Big Government. Not a government that slowly encroaches upon Americans and their freedom. In this case it is a government that is lunging towards a huge increase in government power.

In November, we have a chance to make the election about a single issue. The issue is simple: Repeal the Deal. Repeal the huge increase in government power. Repeal the huge increase in taxes. Repeal the huge increase in government boards and bureaucracies. Turn America around and make a statement for freedom and against government power.

Americans can always be tempted into signing on to some delicious subsidy that gives them something for nothing. We are all tempted by that kind of offer. But the Democrats in their hubris, going for the big historic achievement, have made a mistake. They have accidentally framed the issue in Republican, conservative terms.

Anyone can believe that a neat little subsidy might be rather nice. But nobody can believe that a huge bureaucratic government program is going to deliver better health care to the average American than the private sector.

So let's thank the Democrats. And let's not avoid the necessary conflict ahead. We are going to have to fight this battle over the size of government some day, and the time to fight a battle is when your side has the best chance of winning. I'd say that the current situation heavily favors the Republican side this fall.

Suppose that a new Republican Congress is elected on the platform of Repeal the Deal? What does the president do then? What does the MSM do then? Do they say that the American people were confused? That the American people are wrong?

Or do they admit that the new Congress was elected with a mandate, a mandate to repeal the cruel and unjust health legislation passed in a blur of corruption and Chicago bare-knuckle politics?

Obama's Four Porkies

Everything about ObamaCare is smoke and mirrors, starting with the idea that the system is broke. But the president did us the courtesy of actually listing the four things that ain't so in his health plan, writes Jon Ward of The Daily Caller. Ready?

1. It's not a government takeover. OK, technically it isn't. But the government will increase government supervision by a very big leap. It's the closest thing to a takeover without putting the entire health industry on the federal budget.
   
2. Republicans want to protect the insurance industry. If only. Who cares about the bloody insurance companies? It's the root and branch government regulation of health care that we care about and that we want to eliminate.
3. Obama's plan will reduce premiums. In your dreams, pal.
4. Obama's plan will reduce the federal deficit. Technically, the president has a point. But he will reduce the deficit by smoke and mirrors and by increasing taxes by more than the increase in spending. That's not what Americans mean when they talk about reducing the deficit.

I've been saying that we need Obama to pass his bill so that we can mount a vast national campaign to repeal it. Now Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is chiming in. He said in an interview reported by Jon Ward:

[I]f Democrats use a little-known procedure to pass health care reform it will spark an “instant movement to repeal the law.”

Alexander, in an interview on Fox News, said that this “movement” would “dominate every single congressional race in November.”

Not that he's planning to start such a movement. He is just assuming that the movement will come out of the woodwork, and I think he's right.

David Warren has recently said that Barack Obama is the best thing for conservatism since Ronald Reagan. And that brings up the tricky question. How do we know that Obama isn't a Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed years ago by mysterious Republican operatives into becoming a ideological bomb to demolish the Democratic Party?

Keep on with those porkies, Mr. President. You're driving independents away from the Democrats in droves.

The Consent of the Governed

Today, according to reports, the president will announce that he is going for "reconciliation," the tactic of passing his huge ObamaCare reform through the Congress by a method that is intended to reconcile budget disagreements between the two houses of Congress.

Some have said that in doing this, the president "crosses the Rubicon," after the famous act of Julius Caesar in marching his army across that river in his march on Rome.

The Wall Street Journal edit page calls his act simply "An Abuse of Power."

But I would say that it goes beyond that. In trying to force their unpopular bill through Congress the Democrats show that they misunderstand the whole point of constitutional government and democratic politics.

And that point is encapsulated in the first great document of the American founding, the Declaration of Independence. Here is what it says.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

When the Government so instituted passes legislation clearly without the consent of the governed, then you have a pre-revolutionary situation. You have a situation in which some people will say that the Government has abrogated its right to exercise its powers because they are no longer just.

The whole point of the "consent of the governed" and "limited government" is to curb the instincts of the Government to assume that the governing elite knows best, and to govern accordingly: to deny that the government can be no better than the people it governs.

It's a temptation that all elites have, and our modern "educated elite" is no different that any other aristocracy. (We are using the term in a non-pejorative mode meaning "the best.") They think they know best and they are determined to give it to us.

Well, the whole point of modern democracy is that the governing elite has to persuade the ordinary person of its policies. That is why we normally agree that great reforms should only be enacted when there is a general consensus that it should be enacted. That is why most presidents try to pass legislation with a bipartisan majority. It lets them argue that the legislation was not a partisan cram-down but the consensus of the governed.

In the United States today we talk about a 50-50 nation. We mean by that two great factions, liberal and conservative, that want to take the nation in different directions. In the middle is the great mass of people that aren't sure that they like either road.

In this 50-50 nation the chances are that any effort by either conservatives or liberals to try an end run around the opposition is going to create enormous opposition. We saw how liberals ginned up a vocal opposition to President Bush on the view that the consensus he had created for the Iraq War was false. They argued that the consensus to go into Iraq was built upon a lie--that the Bush administration assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was a lie.

Now, we do not know whether the Bush administration knew beforehand whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But our liberal friends acted as though he did.

Imagine therefore the rage that will be built up by conservatives against the Obama administration if it proceeds with its health care reform without a consensus, without even a manufactured consensus, without even the fig-leaf of a consensus built upon a lie.

From a strictly partisan viewpoint I love this. The only way you make progress in politics is when your side is all riled up and the opposition is demoralized. A cram-down on ObamaCare creates the once-in-a-generation opportunity for a real change in national political orientation towards the conservative side.

But I fear that the heightened partisan conflict will lead to dark days for America. If we get a big change in the November elections, say with up to 100 seats changing hands in the House of Representatives, we will enter an era unlike anything since the years immediately before the Civil War.

A big change in Congress would set up the opportunity for real reform of the welfare state. Confronted with such reforms, I fear that our liberal friends will not go quietly. Their welfare state, their privileges, their subsidies, their sinecures are not just the spoils of political success. They are the liberal religion, their belief system. To take their religion and their sacred symbols away from them is not just relieving a thief of ill-gotten goods. It is to take away from liberals the very meaning of life.

That's when people do desperate things.

That's why I think it is a great tragedy that President Obama and the Democratic leaders of Congress are going for it and trying to pass a massive reorganization of one sixth of the economy in a straight partisan vote. They are setting in motion events that could utterly change the face of America, in ways that we cannot imagine.

Canada's Housing Non-Meltdown

How did those Canadians manage to dodge the mortgage meltdown? Do they know something we don't know? IN The American, Mark J. Perry takes a look at the reasons why Canada isn't in the middle of a housing/banking crisis.

And another thing. How come the Canadians have a bigger share of people owning their own homes? Even without Fannie and Freddie, mortgage interest deductions, and the ruthless regulations of the Community Reinvestment Act? Without even Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank? How do they do it?

Here's what makes Canada different.

1. No "non-recourse" mortgages. That means that if the bank forecloses, it can go after you for the balance of the mortgage.
2. Short fixed-rate terms. No 30-year fixed mortgages. Rates are negotiated every five years. That avoids meltdowns like the S&L crisis in the late 1980s.
3. Mortgage insurance more common. About half of mortgages carry insurance (see 1, above) and the mortgage insurer can challenge the appraisal. Nice bit of check-and-balance there.
4. No income tax deductibility for mortgages. That means that people don't use their houses as ATMs.
   
5. Higher pre-payment penalties, typically three months' interest.
6. No Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to loan to unqualified customers.
7. Better diversification of banks. Canada has fewer banks and they are all national in scope.
8. Banks keep most of their mortgages (about 68 percent) so they need to keep their mortgage portfolios in good shape.

So there you are, congresspersons. No subsidies, no bullying. Convenient checks and balances. And the bottom line is that more Canadians own their own homes than Americans. So all the hullaballoo since the 1930s about helping homeowners is a bunch of baloney. Canada hasn't "helped" homeowners, yet a bigger share of Canadians own their own homes.

Maybe the best thing to do with housing is to leave it alone.

Pelosi's Forced March Politics

Conservatives have always been irritated by Nancy Pelosi. But she is certainly one tough Speaker of the House of Representatives. Of course, she leads a majority of 257-178. That's a majority of 79. You can be plenty tough with a 79 seat majority.

In The Politico, John Bresnahan and Jonathan Allen marvel at her strong leadership and the brutal election year she faces. It's the usual Democratic-leaning approach. Strong leader Pelosi faces challenges from party splits as she heads into election year.

But I wonder if the take-no-prisoners strategy, that now seems to be include procedural shenanigans to get ObamaCare over the line, won't turn out to be a monumental error.

We complain about politicians because they are such wusses. They are like horses; they shy at the least little thing. There's a practical reason for that. Politicians want to please their supporters and give them goodies, but they don't want to rile up the opposition.

You don't let sleeping dogs lie because you are a nice guy. You do it because it is almost always the best way of keeping your seat.

President Obama and Speaker Pelosi seem to have gone out of their way to rile up the opposition. Whether that is deliberate, whether it is clumsiness, or just a feeling that the opposition is too weak to count, I don't know.

But my judgment is that the partisan agenda and tone of the 2009-2010 season will turn out to be a big minus for Democrats. It is teaching moderates and independents all across America that the Democrats are not the family-friendly moderates they liked to appear in 2006 and 2008.

Democrats are teaching non-political Americans that, if you elect a Democrat, you are going to get a very liberal government. That is something they strained mightily to avoid in the years from 1992 to 2008.

The default sentiment of the moderates and independents seems to be that first you take care of the economy. Then, if the economy is rattling along, well, you can pass a program or two to help people. It feels like the right thing to do.

Obama Democrats are doing things the other way round. They are concentrating on liberal agenda items with huge price tags, and they are letting the economy wither on the vine with discredited Keynesian pump priming (discredited except at The New York Times).

Instead of figuring out what they can pass with a few Republican moderates they are going for the big play, on a straight partisan game plan.

The reason we have the idea of governing with the "consent of the governed" enshrined in the Declaration of Independence is that it is a good practical basis for government. It minimizes the number of people that get all riled up and want to change things radically.

Democrats are forgetting this fundamental piece of political wisdom and they are going to pay for it, big time.

The poster girl of failure is going to be Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her forced-march partisan politics.

The New Stupid Party

For years and years everyone knew that the Republican Party was the stupid party. How did they know? Because the Democrats ran rings around them.

But maybe that was then. Maybe the Democrats are trying out for the worthy and honorable role of Stupid Party.

That's the takeaway from Thursday's Health Care Summit. The telling sign is that Rush Limbaugh had to admit he was wrong.

All along Rush had reckoned that the Health Care Summit was a trap set by the cunning Democrats for the stupid Republicans. Don't do it, he warned.

No doubt it was intended as a trap. But the trap didn't spring. In the event, Rush had to admit that he was wrong.

But the Republicans need to be commended here for having a pretty good strategery of going up there and ramming this down their throats and not rolling over and playing dead... They are taking it to him.

Tunku Varadaran had the specifics on a bad day for the Democrats:

Was he trying to make the Republicans look bad—retrograde ogres who would leave uninsured babies to die in their cribs?

Yeah. Now I think of it, that was probably the idea. Why wouldn't the Democrats try it? It worked before.

If so, he didn’t succeed at all. On the contrary, they came out of it looking rather alert and grown-up... What was so striking about the summit was the preparedness of the Republicans. All of them had done their homework: Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn, John Kyl, John McCain, Dave Camp, John Barrosso, and Paul Ryan. The Democrats, by contrast, suffered from an acute case of “anecdotitis” (is it a preexisting condition?)”

OK. What is really going on here? (Kudos to the Republicans, by the way, for showing up to play.)

For explanation, we return to Irving Kristol, who wrote that when you are trying to do something for the poor you must include the middle class. That's why Social Security and Medicare work politically. They are intended to help the poor but they deal the middle class in on the loot.

Here's the problem with ObamaCare: Americans already have health insurance. So what was President Obama going to offer them in return for covering the 30 million without insurance? Well, he promised to lower costs. But the American people weren't willing to believe that. They clearly reckon that they are going to pay more. And they are right. So no deal.

Mind you, Social Security and Medicare were triumphs of political flim-flam. People were talked into paying taxes now on the promise of glorious benefits later. No doubt, for the average middle-class American, a better plan would have been a mandatory program of savings and a tax on the rich to pay for the poor. But Americans bought into the idea back then, and now, of course, Social Security and Medicare can't pay out on the promises.

ObamaCare can't offer a glorious future for all against a modest payroll tax for today. That's because Americans already have health insurance and the only glorious future that is likely to excite them is the idea of keeping what they have and not allowing the politicians tax it or take it away.

That, I submit, is what the Tea Party movement is all about.

And it looks like the Democrats are too stupid to realize it.

Welcome to the Stupid Party, fellahs!

Science's Big Problem

The Climategate row is developing into a delicious phase, as Dr. Judith Curry, professor of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology, defends the climate scientists on wattsupwiththat.com and writes about rebuilding trust through better communication.

That was yesterday. Today Willis Eschenbach has responded and he has hit the ball out of the ballpark. It's not a question of better communication, he thunders:

The key to restoring trust has nothing to do with communication. Steve McIntyre doesn’t inspire trust because he is a good communicator. He inspires trust because he follows the age-old practices of science — transparency and openness and freewheeling scientific discussion and honest reporting of results.

Yeah. I'll say. Imagine climate science that believes in transparency and openness!

But the problem is bigger than that. The problem is that the scientists are in the pockets of the politicians. Why is that? It's because nearly all the research money comes from government.

That being so, the Climategate disaster is not a shocking and unexpected betrayal of scientific ethics. It's just what you would expect. Politicians want power. Politicians want science that gives them more power. The only way for scientists to do science is for them to do science that gives politicians more power.

The solution to the problem of scientists doubling as advocates and cutting corners like advocates is to stop taking government money.

Until then it is right and proper for the American people to regard scientists as just like the folks at the DMV. And really, given the tenure and the pensions available to DMV workers and college professors alike, the only difference is that the professors make more money.