How Do We Get Out of This?

How much money should the government spend, asks columnist Robert Samuelson? That is the question raised by the huge Obama deficits and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.

It's also the question raised in Britain by Janet Daley when she writes: "Labour Must Admit It -- Big Government is Dead."

Unfortunately the problem is bigger than than just arguing about how big the government should be. The problem starts with the whole question of what government is for.

Michael Barone raises the question rather neatly in an article dissecting Attorney General Eric Holder's reluctance to admit that radical Islamism is a problem. It's the belief that ordinary Americans are a Howling Mob.

The reason that President Bush rushed out on 9/11 and urged Americans to be nice to their Muslim neighbors issues from the same source as Holder's reluctance to name. Both of them fear the Howling Mob. They fear that Americans are just one knee-jerk away from descending on their Muslim neighbors and killing them--or their African American neighbors, or their gay/lesbian neighbors.

It's that patronizing elitism that drives the whole notion of big government. Ordinary people can't be trusted to be civilized; government must instruct them. Ordinary people can't be trusted to educate their children; government must teach them. Ordinary people can't be trusted to get health insurance; government must mandate it.

The attitude becomes self-validating, for when people don't have to suck it in and run their lives responsibly, many don't. If many people act irresponsibly, then elites assume that ordinary people are irresponsible. And why not? The bigger the government the more power to the governing elite.

The proper answer to the question about the size of government is this: Government should not be a jot bigger than it has to be to keep the peace and run the legal system. That's because anything is better than teenagers and twenty-somethings running around in the street with guns.

As for everything else, Americans would be a lot better off, materially and morally, if they did for themselves rather than paying big government to do it badly. They would be more involved in their children's education, more involved in granny's health care, and more involved in pitching in to contribute to civic improvements.

But what about the poor? Well, with all the money not going into taxes, then Americans would have a lot of money, and a lot of moral inducement to get out there and help. They could start by helping out a neighbor, and quietly help a parent with school fees, and go on from there.

With government a lot smaller, it would be able to expand rapidly in time of war or emergency and help get the nation out of a jam. Without breaking the bank.

As for the Howling Mob, here's a little known fact. Ordinary people very seldom turn into a mob. It usually takes a charismatic leader--i.e., a politician--to arouse their rage and get them to surrender their individuality and their timidity to the madness of a crowd.

Gender Imbalance in Education

There is a shocking gender imbalance in the nation's higher education system, raising huge questions of equity and discrimination.

Yes, you are right. Women are enrolling and graduating at rates totally in excess of their share of the population. They are outrageously and inequitably overrepresented in college enrollments and graduations.

Dr. Mark J. Perry of the University of Michigan is the guy keeping track of these numbers. Here is how the imbalance is expected to work out in the Class of 2010, showing the number of women graduating per 100 men. (Perry's numbers from here).

Degree	Men	Women
Associate	100	166
Bachelors	100	135
Graduate	100	152
Professional	100	98
Doctorate	100	107

You can see what is going on. Women are outgraduating men in all areas that don't lead directly to a job.

But, of course, all the programs to encourage women and discourage men are still in place. It just shows the utter incompetence of the poltical system to do anything except hit people over the head. Back in 1970 the men/women university graduation rate of all degrees was 60/40. By 2017 it will be 40/60.

OK let's take another look at the numbers. This time it is enrollment in graduate school by gender (numbers from here).

Discipline	Men	Women
Business	100	84
Education	100	303
Engineering	100	28
Health Science	100	398
Physical Science	100	49
Public Admin.	100	292

You can see the comical nature of the current push to advance women in engineering and science, the so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) effort that hit the radar during the defenestration of Harvard President Larry Summers. I guess the sisters won't be happy until women are outgraduating men in all disciplines!

But the numbers speak for themselves. Women predominate in the areas that are stereotypically interesting to women: teaching children, caring for peoples' health, organizing people. They are underrepresented in areas that are not so interesting to women: areas dealing with things rather than people.

You really wonder about the sanity (let alone the wisdom) of pushing so hard against nature.

Government Legislating Morality

We all know that conservatives are all eager to act as moral policemen, eager to spy on liberals in the bedroom. And we all utterly deprecate it.

But what about liberals?

Moral Police Inspector Michelle Obama wants to tell us what to eat. Armed with a task force report she and her food police sergeants are eager to implement 70 recommendations to improve child nutrition.

Then there's Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn whose "Walk Bike Ride" initiative aims to change the transportation system in Seattle to encourage walking, biking and transit and discourage automobile transportation.

At a loftier level there's Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, and his new book The Politics of Happiness. Bok has looked at other countries whose governments now are working on Gross National Happiness instead of Gross National Product. He has a stack of government policy recommendations for the US so that it can increase happiness.

Nobody doubts that it is a good thing for children to eat healthy and for people to walk and for people to be happy. The question is: should the government get involved, given that government is force?

Liberals get annoyed with me when I point out that all this government action that puts a moral spin on things, or puts government in charge of happiness, is a violation of the First Amendment, or at least Thomas Jefferson's take on it. In the US we have a separation between Church and State. That is, beyond actually banning an establishment of religion, we feel that the moral and the political should be kept apart.

Liberals get annoyed because they don't think that their political agenda should be considered a religion. But if you are secular and don't belong to a church, then your only way of establishing moral order is through government directly, or indirectly through government schools and government colleges.

Just as we all agree that the Spanish Inquisition was a bad thing, enforcing the moral rules of the Catholic Church with a moral police force and the death penalty, so the same should apply to all governmental efforts to sneak out of the bread and butter of government, the providing of basic public services, into the more exhilarating world of moral militancy.

It's comical, really, that our liberal friends have smuggled the idea of a national church in the back door, but they do that with everything. It will end, of course, in tears. The idea of separating the moral and the legal is a highly sophisticated idea that allows a gray area of behavior that may be morally condemned but not legally sanctioned. That gray area we call freedom. But liberals seem to end up implementing everything on their moral agenda with a law. And that means enforcement by the cops or, as we now say, "enforcement officers," and it reduces the area of freedom, the right to make mistakes.

The problem posed by the the secularization of society erupted immediately upon the birth of the secular society with the French Revolution in 1789. Politicians like Robespierre found themselves enmeshed in the moral, and enforcing the moral code with the guillotine. We have created a word to describe the government that combines secular lawgiving with secular religion: Totalitarian. And the French revolutionaries spawned the bloodier secular religio-political regimes we know as communism and fascism.

I'd just say to Michelle Obama, to Mayor McGinn, to Derek Bok, and to all my liberal friends: be true to your ideals. Believe in the separation of church and state and apply it to your own moral agenda. If you don't you'll be sorry.

Dear Sen. Patty Murray

Yesterday, Senator, you voted against reform. You voted against cleaning up our financial mess. You voted for crony capitalism.

Yet The Wall Street Journal reports that no Democratic senators were to be seen as Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) led the debate against Sen. John McCain's amendment to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the bankrupt government mortgage twins. And only two Democratic senators, Feingold and Bayh, voted for reform.

And yet you are running for reelection to the US Senate this fall? Are you serious?

Maybe your staff hasn't quite brought you up to speed on this. The primary cause of the financial meltdown in Fall 2008 was the flood of mortgage debt--about $5.5 trillion in all--sluiced into the credit markets by the the two Government Sponsored Enterprises. All the CDOs and CDSs and other Wall Street shenanigans that you tribunes of the people railed against were merely dodges to hide the government-created mess of liar loans and dress them up for fixed-income pension funds.

If there is one thing the nation needs to do, before health care, before stimulus, before green energy, before fixing education, it is to put the Fannie Freddie era behind us and bring sanity back to the nation's mortgage finance.

On Tuesday you refused to do that, voting to kick the can down the road.

And that tells the voters of Washington State all they need to know about your fitness to serve another six years in the United States Senate.

My Question for Elena Kagan

I know that conservatives are all fulminating right now about Elena Kagan's policy while Dean of the Harvard Law School. She banned military recruiters from the law school on account of the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy on gays in the armed forces.

Well what do you expect? She's a liberal. Anyway, I believe that liberal ideas on gays and the military, together and separately, come under the category of "worse than a crime, a blunder." Eventually they will blow liberalism apart, or if that fails, blow the nation apart. I believe that upon the Kantian categorical imperative: If everyone did that, then what?

So if I were a senator "axing" questions of the second Obama Supreme Court nominee I wouldn't give any time to questions about gays and gay marriage. Either the liberals will sneak gay marriage into the constitution or they won't. If they do then it will be a false signal to foolish young people that don't understand the folly of childlessness.

No. My line of questioning would go something like this.

"Back in 1933, President Roosevelt ordered the American people to turn in their gold for dollars. Then he devalued the dollar. Do you think that is constitutional, Ms. Kagan?

"Given that the United States is facing a huge entitlements crisis in the years ahead, the government will be wanting to access more money to pay for its programs.

"Do you think that the government has the power under the constitution to reach into peoples' savings accounts denominated in foreign currencies and convert them into dollars and then devalue the dollar?

"Do you think that the government has the power under the constitution to reach into peoples' 401(k) accounts and levy a percentage of the assets in a national emergency?

"Do you think that the government has the power under the constitution to reduce Social Security payments?

"Do you think the government has the power under the constitution to reduce Medicare benefits?

"Do you think the government has the power under the constitution to reduce public employee retirement benefits?

"Inquiring citizens, and in particular my constituents back home, would like to know, Ms. Kagan.

"In point of fact, whose side are you on, Ms. Kagan?"

These questions may seem rather arcane to you readers right now. But think about the Greek bailout. Think about the GM and Chrysler bailouts. Think about the fact that the dollar, worth 1/20 ounce of gold a century ago is now worth about 1/1200 ounce of gold and no end in sight.

These will be the great questions of the next 20 years.

Tea Party: First Blood

If the Tea Party means anything it means limited government. That means government is limited.

So maybe it's appropriate that the first real casualty should be a Republican senator from Utah, Robert Bennett. He was denied a place on the Republican primary ballot for the US Senate by the Utah Republican State Convention.

If political principles mean anything, they should mean that we, our side, our guys, follow our principles. Principles mean nothing if they are just cats-paws that we use to scratch the other side.

That's what the Democrats did with their two election victories in 2006 and 2008. They ran on Republican principles of waste and corruption. And the American people responded. But as soon as they were elected they proceeded to pay themselves a $787 billion stimulus and ram through a monstrous ObamaCare that will waste trillions. All that stuff wasn't supposed to apply to Democrats, just eevil Republicans.

First put your own house in order. Maybe teaching over-spending Republicans a lesson will let the odd Democrat through, so the new Congress in 2011 won't be as conservative as it might be. But principles matter. It matters that, if we conservatives believe in limited government, we hold our office-holders to that standard before we hold Democrats to that standard.

We're not talking about a mad consistency. We are just talking about a sensible practical consistency that people, especially moderate voters, can respect.

Above all, the people that must earn our respect are the Tea Party moms like Dana Loesch. They are thinking about the future of their children.

"Motherhood itself has become a political act," says Ms. Loesch. "And the tea parties are an extension of our need as moms to protect the future for our children."

It was about a year ago that I wrote that we needed a woman-centered conservatism. But the gals were there before me.

Mind you, it makes sense. After the exhilaration of liberation, women are now back to thinking about the big picture. And the big picture for women means the welfare of their children and their families.

When you think about the welfare of children and of families, you start to think about limiting the power of government. It just comes naturally.

Brits Are No Fools

So the British voters decided not to decide. They made the Conservative Party the biggest party in Parliament. Latest results are Conservatives: 305 seats, Labour: 258, Lib-Dems: 57. But the voters denied the Tories the 326 seats that would give them a majority.

It makes sense. The Tories are the center-right party. They don't really believe in the relentless expansion of the centralized welfare state.

But nearly everyone in Britain is sucking from the nanny state's teat. You can imagine that they are hesitant about weaning themselves off nanny's milk, even if the country is running a 10 percent of GDP deficit. Even if Greece is imploding just down the street.

In a way, it would be better for the Tories if the center left parties formed a coalition and governed against them. Then the center-left parties would be confronted with the need to do something about their cruel, corrupt, unjust, and wasteful welfare state. They might actually cut some spending!

Then they could take the blame for the cuts and let the Tories take over when the bloodletting was over.

But that is hoping for too much. The likely scenario is that the Conservative Party under David Cameron will form a government and implement some spending cuts and be forever after pilloried as the cruel Tories that cut the heart out of Britain.

Or maybe not. If David Cameron has a special skill, it would be to talk to the center and entice it into believing that he cares about Middle Britain almost as much as his posh Tory friends. If he can do that, then maybe he can form a new center-right coalition to push back against the center-left consensus that has ruled Britain since 1965 with only a brief Thatcher interregnum in the 1980s.

There is always hope.