Boost Palin? You'll Regret, Mr. President

"I wonder what he meant by that." That's what Talleyrand is supposed to have said on getting news of the death of the Turkish ambassador. Or was it Metternich on the death of Talleyrand?

So when the president responds to criticism by Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) on his nuclear policy:

President Barack Obama on Thursday made clear he was not going to take advice from Republican Sarah Palin when it comes to decisions about the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

You wonder. Is he serious? What would be the point of commenting on something Sarah Palin said? Does the president want to boost Palin because he thinks she'd be an easy mark in 2012? Or did he just say that in a careless throwaway remark?

I'd like to suggest this to the president: Don't boost Sarah Palin into the position of de-facto leader of the opposition. You'll live to regret it.

Your liberal pals in the mainstream media have done a bang-up job of demonizing Gov. Palin. So everyone left of center now believes that she is a flake.

Maybe they are right. But what if they are wrong? Despite the most horrendous attacks and humiliations, she's still there. She's very popular, not just on the far right wing but with moderate women. And I'd say she has the potential to appeal to rust-belt Democrats, the lunch-bucket Democrats that are on the cusp of deserting the new identity-multicultural party that sneers at God and guns.

Democrats have made much of Palin's inexperience. What are they talking about? She's been a professional politician since 1992. She's been a legislative politician on a city council. She's been an executive politician, as mayor and governor. And she's had experience as a regulator.

Yes, but she doesn't have national experience!

Here's my take on that. In my experience of politics, the higher you go, the more you get paid professional help. On the city council, you are on your own, and your staffers are as green as you are. But when you run for governor you start attracting contributions and ambitious people eager to hitch their wagons to your star. At the presidential level there is a whole subculture of campaign professionals, not to mention national think tanks, all eager to ride your coat-tails to national power.

Palin may have been inexperienced in national politics in 2008, but in 2010 she will be a kingmaker, and by 2012 she will have a fully functioning national political machine.

Palin has already defined her ideological position. She calls it "common-sense conservatism" and she mentions it with practically every breath. What does it mean? Good question, Senator. It means whatever she wants it to mean, but it seems to be uniquely suitable for a run against an ideological liberal.

If I were Obama I think I would much rather run against a Gingrich, a Romney, a Pawlenty, ordinary politicians without the star power of Palin.

But maybe the president knows something I don't know.

Gift-giving and Quarrels

In our tax-paying politics and our exchange economy we have less and less opportunity for gift-giving. We pay our taxes because we must and we exchange our labor for money because that's the best way to earn our bread.

But Roger Scruton in "Gratitude and Giving" points out the importance of giving.

There is, in the gift-giving culture, a display of gratitude at the moment of gift, and a kind of rejoicing that warms the hearts of those involved. On the gift day the tribe does not merely put aside old quarrels; it feels a renewed surge of affection toward its neighbors. This affection is a kind of moral capital on which it may draw in times of conflict.

In our welfare state, where charity and religion have been marginalized, we lack the warmth of giving. So it comes as no surprise that, with the decay of neighborliness, there has also come an increase in conflict. Politicians draw dividing lines between red and blue, and people respond to their encouragement by demonizing the opposition.

Our liberal friends talk a lot about religion as a means of "social control," and they mean by that the power that religion gives the political elite to keep the populace afraid and subservient.

But they forget that religion also ennobles gift-giving, love, sacrifice, and forgiveness. Leaving aside the question of divine will, we can see that any belief system that encourages these qualities will also diminish the opportunity for conflict. People are quick to quarrel. The hard part is to get them to lay down their grievances. "I would you would accept of love and grace," says Sir Walter Blunt to the hot-headed Harry Hotspur in Henry IV Part One.

We need a culture of gift and grace because otherwise there is nothing but politics, and politics is about conflict, civil war by other means.

More and more, I like my Greater Separation of Powers between the three sectors of society: the political sector of force and taking, the economic sector of trust and exchange, and the moral/cultural sector of faith and giving.

Our liberal friends have made a mortal error, in thinking that the political sector, the locus of force, can administer compassion and caring.

They ought to have learned by now, since the great lessons of the last century were the inevitable brutality of fascism and communism, the regimes where the three sectors are collapsed into the political sector.

When you collapse the three sectors into the political sector all you get are mass graves and social collapse.

Even though liberals won't learn the lessons that are staring them in the face, there is no reason why we should stand by and let them wreck this nation while they learn the hard way.

We must take back this nation and revive the separation of the economy from politics and separate the necessary and ennobling care for the unfortunate from the brutality and the inevitable conflicts of power politics.

And the take-back starts in November.

Robin and Roger and Robert, Oh Yeah!

You can think of them as the Three "R's," the three folks that help you learn what to make of the current mess in America, the Mess of Obama.

From Robin of Berkeley, the recovering liberal, we get "The Rape of America." Here's what rape is all about.

Give me what you have because I want it. Whether it's the iPod torn from your ear, or a big chunk of your income, or your standard of living, no matter. I want it, I demand it, give it to me.

What does this mean? It means that that politics is about taking.

From Roger Scruton, conservative philosopher, we get "Gratitude and Grace." Grace, from the Latin , gratia, means giving.

The idea that the world is sustained by gift is second nature to religious people, who believe that they should be givers in their turn, if they are to receive the gift on which they depend for their salvation.

What does this mean? It means that religion is about giving.

From Robert Samuelson, economic writer, "The Poisonous Politics of Self-Esteem." Although " the standard view of politics is that it mediates conflicting interests and ideas." Yet more and more, politics is conducted in moral terms.

President Obama pitched his health care plan as a moral issue. It embodies "the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care," as he said when signing the legislation. Health care is a "right"; opponents are, by extension, less moral... People backed it because they thought it "the right thing"; it made them feel good about themselves.

So on this view, people are using politics to set a moral agenda.

But I suggest that getting moral content out of politics is a chimera.

Government is force, and once you resort to force to enact your moral agenda, you no longer have a moral agenda. You just have force. Because morality is about you giving and sacrificing, not the other guy.

So now I want to fold this into my general theory of The Greater Separation of Powers between the three sectors: political, economic, and moral/cultural. Under the Greater Separation of Powers, we have the separation of church and state, and also economy and state, and also church and economy.

Thus we have state as the locus of taking, economy as the locus of exchange, and religion as the locus of giving.

Politics is about taking; if you carry politics into the economic sector you infect the process of exchange with taking: Robin of Berkeley's Rape of America. If you carry politics into the moral/cultural sector you make religion into a power trip, you transform giving into compulsory taking.

The great mistake of our liberal friends is to imagine that, by distributing benefits and "social justice" through the political system they are "giving."

But that cannot be so. A gift must be freely given, otherwise it is just a tax. When people who believe in giving through politics get into power, all they end up doing is raping the people. Because rape is an act of power, and politics is power.

That's why we believe in limited government. We believe in limiting the scope of taking, the arena of force. Only when you limit forcible taking can the sturdy fruits of work and exchange come forth. Only when you limit forcible taking can the delicate flower of grace and giving open its petals and bloom.

Government is force. Politics is power. All the rest is narrative.

Brits Go for Election

Today British Prime Minister Gordon Brown drove to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve the UK Parliament. There will be a General Election in Britain on Thursday May 6.

On that day, most likely, the 13 year reign of New Labour will come to an end. Yet as of right now, it is not certain that the disastrous rule of Labour will terminate. The center-right Conservative Party is only 4 to 10 points ahead of Labour, and probably needs at least 10 points to get a majority in Parliament.

How is it possible that a Labour Party that has nearly wrecked the economy, running a substantial deficit in the boom years of the mid 2000s is that close to winning?

The answer probably is that Britain is a center-left country. People want and expect "public services," meaning mainly the National Health Service, and they have a horror of ever having to pay for those services themselves. As my daughter told me of the French a decade ago: "Dad, these people are married to the state."

But David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, has a bold agenda. He proposes to reform the school system with the Swedish Plan. It's a reform put in place by conservatives in Sweden that allows almost anyone to open a school and get government money for it. About 15 percent of schools operate under this plan, and that's all it's taken to put the fear of God into the other 85 percent.

Then Cameron has a plan to mend "Broken Britain." There's a vast underclass in Britain that has never had a job and never intends to. You can read about it in Inspector Gadget's Police Inspector Blog. About 15 percent of the adult labor force is on "incapacity benefit," i.e., have been certified as unable to work. The dreadful harm that this widespread idleness has had on Britain is almost incalculable, and the US is heading that way.

Will the Brits take the plunge and elect a Conservative government? Probably. But Cameron has to be careful. The Labour Party has built up a huge client state, including welfare and incapacity beneficiaries, teachers, health workers, and the regulatory state, the so-called "quangocrats" in quasi-governmental agencies. Asking them to vote for change is like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas.

My prognostication is that the Cameroons have been holding fire for several months, waiting for the short election campaign before firing their muskets in a devastating volley. I think we'll see substantial movement in the poll numbers over the next few weeks.

And then there's turnout. Just as Obamis in the US surged out to vote in 2008 while Republicans stayed home, discouraged, I think we will see that Conservative turnout will be substantial while Labour turnout will be reduced.

But there will be plenty of nail-biting before the result is announced on the first Thursday of May.

Obama's Sore Winner Tour is Working

Conservatives are busy trashing President Obama's Sore Winner Tour. The president of all the people is out there challenging his opponents to put 'em up or shut up.

Conservatives are sneering at this, pointing out how the president's approval numbers are still stuck in the mid forties.

But nobody is talking about Rasmussen's Presidential Approval Index. That's the poll computed as (Strongly Approve minus Strongly Disapprove). Conservatives were gleeful a month ago when the index was hitting the high negative teens.

Guess what has happened in the week or so since ObamaCare passed? The Strongly Approve number has gone up about 10 points, from the mid 20s to the mid 30s. The Strongly Disapprove number has nudged up, a bit. The index is now a mere minus 10. In other words, the president's base is delighted with his historic achievement.

Overall, of course, the president's approval number, i.e., Total Approve, hasn't really budged. The net effect of the ObamaCare win is to convert a bunch of Approves into Strongly Approves.

Presumably, the president's Sore Victor Tour is intended to solidify those Strongly Approve numbers, and carry the Democrats through the mid-term elections in November when the key to victory is turning out the base. Time enough to worry about charming the moderates back into the president's column in 2012.

Maybe it will work. Maybe the economy will be going gangbusters by the second half of 2011, and the voters will reward the president with a second term.

There's another narrative. The current liberal euphoria will dissipate by November and the Republicans will score a stunning triumph. The big government expansion and the tax rate increases will slow the recovery and the huge monetary stimulus will convert into inflation (we are talking here about the exact reverse of the Reagan policies of 1981-85).

How will it all turn out? Stay tuned.

Good News on Jobs

For the third month in a row, the Bureau of Labor Statistics Household Survey of the labor market is showing strong positive growth.

(Yes, I know that there were "jobs lost" in the January and February employment report, but that comes from the Establishment Survey and we don't put too much faith in that here)

Here are the numbers:

	Jan	Feb	Mar
Labor Force Change	+111,000	+342,000	+398,000
Employment Change	+541,000	+308,000	+264,000

This is good news. The Employment numbers show strong employment growth, although moderating month-on-month since the gangbusters half-a-million increase in the January number.

The Labor Force numbers are good too. They show that people are getting the word that employers are hiring, so they are returning to the labor force in ever increasing numbers and looking for work.

I think we can look for several months of good numbers based on what we see here.

The question is what happens in the future with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts Jan 1, 2011, and the deadening effect of all the increases in government spending courtesy of the Obama administration.

Here we don't believe that increased government spending creates jobs. We believe that the way to create jobs is to cut government spending and cut tax rates. Works every time it is tried.

The big problem is that about 8.5 million jobs were lost in the recession. At the current rate of about 250,000 new jobs per month, say 3,000,000 a year, we are looking at three years to get back to the jobs peak in 2007, and another couple of years to get back on trend. We are talking about the 5,000,000 jobs that coulda, woulda, shoulda been created but for the meltdown and the recession.

As usual, the only place we can really look for help on the future is the stock market, which is always trying to look to the future. It has pretty well recovered to 2008 levels before the meltdown. But it is not forecasting right now a gangbusters economy in the year ahead.

Beyond Fascist ObamaCare

What famous politician said the following memorable sound bite:

Tutto nello ObamaCaro, niente al di fuori dello ObamaCaro, nulla contro lo ObamaCaro.

I'm not sure how ObamaCare translates into Italian, but here's my translation into English:

Everything in ObamaCare, nothing outside ObamaCare, nothing against ObamaCare.

Well it wasn't Benito Mussolini and it wasn't Barack Obama. In fact nobody said it. Except me.

I am saying it to make a point. The point is that ObamaCare is fascism. With ObamaCare everyone is brought into the orbit of the government's health care plan. You may not be interested in the government's health plan, but the government's health plan is interested in you.

Everyone in the US is going to have to conform to the dictates of ObamaCare. Nobody is going to be able to get outside ObamaCare.

And nobody is going to be allowed to be against ObamaCare. That was the whole point of the Democratic leaders' march across the street to the Capitol on the day that ObamaCare passed.

Let's talk about liberals and fascism.

Our liberal friends have been rather quiet about Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, a 400 page tome in which Jonah makes the inconvenient point that while liberals may not be Fascists, their politics and their governing philosophy is fascist. Liberals always want a comprehensive and mandatory government program for everything that they care about. And they always put themselves in charge of the governing apparatus charged to administer the program.

Jonah points out that, if you take out the sharp uniforms and the marching and the secret police, liberal politics is indistinguishable from fascist politics. That's why he put the manifesto of the National Socialist German Workers Party in an appendix at the end of his book. He wanted his readers to see how close liberal platform comes to an actual fascist manifesto.

But we conservatives want something different. We do not want unity; we do not want government-enforced conformity. We want limited government, limited political power to give space for something more than the state. We are delighted that liberals should choose, for instance, a collective form of health care provision in the State of Washington with Group Health Cooperative. Wonderful idea. Go for it liberals. We just don't like it when liberals force everyone else into a Group Health Cooperative. Because when the government runs it and forces everyone in, it's not a group and it's not cooperative. It is simply government force, another instance of the liberal culture of compulsion.

Michael Barone just put out a piece in which he presents the current political situation in stark terms.

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

Tea Partiers take the side of the Founders. They believe in liberty. The Educated Class takes the side of the Progressives. They take the side of government.

Not coincidentally, the 20th century, the century of the Progressive movement, was also the century of fascism. Fascism and Progressivism come from the same mold. They both believe in the supremacy of government and top-down administration.

The United States was founded upon a different idea, and the next months will determine whether that idea still flourishes in the hearts and minds of its citizens as it did in the mind of Abraham Lincoln.

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth... The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

The way begins with the repeal of the fascist ObamaCare and the introduction of true health care reform that is as large-minded and practical and generous as the American people themselves.