I worry that by the time Obama is through with us, the U.S. will
be a second-class country. A lot of people feel the same way. A
similar concern has been in the back of my mind for years. In the
Carter era I also worried about the fate of the country, but I have
to say that the hazards seem far greater now.
After the Berlin Wall came down I thought the obvious
lesson—that socialism doesn’t work—would penetrate the skulls of
our domestic intelligentsia. But somehow it never did. They never
regard a limit to government expansion as a desirable thing.
Nothing seems to have been learned from the fall of Communism—the
great history lesson of the 20th century.
Consider health care, much in the news. When I first came to
America, people would inquire about Britain’s “socialized
medicine.” Their tone was politely skeptical. Was it really free?
Well, no. You’re not charged when you go to the doctor, but
everyone pays because taxes are much higher. The National Health
Service was introduced in 1948 (it now employs more than 1.3
million people), and before that, if you went to the doctor, you
paid for the service. To blunt the blow of misfortune there was
private insurance, and doctors recognized a moral obligation of
charity toward the indigent.
Today, almost everyone will acknowledge that America’s private
health system delivers better services than the state does in
Europe. (“Formerly private,” I should have said.) Don’t forget, the
Soviet Union also had “free” medical care, and good luck if you
went to a doctor in Leningrad. Maybe things have improved now that
it’s St. Petersburg again. Yet today, with little sense of déjà vu,
America is moving toward nationalized health. Obama made “a
promise” of “affordable high-quality care available to every
American.” The thrust of politics will be to make health care much
more expensive for the nation as a whole, and of lower
quality—without intending any such decline.
A few words about education: Until the 19th century, it too was
something that the customer paid for. By the 1870s, however, all
states were providing “free” elementary education. Today, private
schooling has become a much more valuable good than it was 50 years
ago, when government schools still functioned properly. They had
not yet collapsed under the influence of teacher unions,
progressive politics, and the decline of the family. So government
schooling remained a viable alternative.
Even today, in the better suburbs vigilant parents have been
able to maintain standards to some extent by keeping close track of
what goes on in school. The true victims of public education are
the inner-city poor, where all liberal reforms have worked to their
disadvantage. A comparable trend may well reappear with universal
health care. I sometimes wonder whether progressive elites really
care about education. My suspicions were aroused when I read in a
book by Robert Conquest that Lenin said he didn’t care about the
education of the Soviet masses, disavowing Communist propaganda on
the issue. All Lenin cared about was whether the proles could
understand and obey the Party’s instructions.
Do the liberals care about our chaotic urban schools today? No
doubt some do. But effective action would mean challenging unions
and the whole progressive mindset. As long as the unions keep
delivering the votes, they will continue to exercise a major
influence over the Democratic Party and will be allowed to run
their own show—whether or not the inner-city kids learn to read or
write. The recent shutdown of the voucher program in D.C. showed
that the education of poor blacks is not an important consideration
for the establishment.
Obama surely does understand that instructing inner-city blacks
has become a big problem. But he will only be able to do something
about it only if it becomes his top priority. That is not going to
happen— other issues will always be more urgent. Instead he will
preserve the comfortable fiction that education can be reformed by
increasing the dollars appropriated for it.
Let me also say something about the energy madness that engulfs
us. Here lies the real threat to America. The carefully stoked
fears about “climate change” and “energy independence” have the
potential to do real harm. Liberals really believe that oil and
coal will have to make way for renewables, notably wind and solar,
and they believe that this transformation can happen within a few
years. They think goodwill can surmount all problems.
The potential for harm was increased when the Environmental
Protection Agency ruled that carbon dioxide threatens our health
and welfare. Before that a prudent delay had seemed likely, but the
EPA may push Congress into something really foolish.
I WAS FRUSTRATED BY GEORGE BUSH on the energy front. He failed
to confront the bogus science of global warming and he tiptoed
around nuclear power. He favored it, but quietly, as though hoping
to avoid arousing the opposition. But you either confront the
anti-nukes directly or they will defeat you. When irrational fears
drive policy, only full-bore presidential power can turn things
around.
The same was true of global warming. Bush never accepted that it
was man-made, yet he didn’t confront it, even though the scientific
support for the warmists’ claim is abysmal. It’s a house of cards
that could have collapsed (and could still) with the right
opposition. But Bush didn’t want to stick his neck out, and that
meant the “warm-mongers” won.
Now we find ourselves in the murky waters of cap and trade. A
bill that hits the manufacturing, oil, and coal-producing states
with higher taxes will be resisted by lots of Democrats as well as
Republicans. But the relevant congressional chairmen are leftist
ideologues—Reps. Waxman and Markey and Sen. Boxer—determined to
impose big penalties on CO2 emitters. No one knows how this will
play out. I was cheered the other day when the president of the
Cato Institute, Bill Niskanen, told me that cap and trade won’t
pass the Senate. The Democrats just could end up hoist on their own
petard.
The propaganda on behalf of “renewables” has been so misleading
that most Americans—probably a sizable majority—have no idea how
far we are from being able to replace coal, oil, and natural gas
with politically correct power sources (which don’t include
hydropower). Al Gore actually called for all of the
nation’s electricity to come from wind and solar within a decade.
Currently, only 1 percent does. Obama wants 10 percent of
electricity to come from these sources by the end of his first
term, but that too is a fantasy.
Late in the day, some journalists have begun drawing attention
to problems with renewables. It was as though they had found out
about them for the first time. Climate change advocate Juliet
Eilperin reported on page one of the Washington Post that
wind and solar projects “may carry costs for wildlife.” The land
area needed for renewable energy is far greater than that required
by traditional energy sources, she reported. If a nuclear power
plant occupies one square mile, for example, 15 square miles would
be needed to generate the same power by solar technology and 30
square miles for wind power (according to the Post).
Those ratios struck me as far too low, minimizing the problem. I
checked with Howard Hayden, a physicist who puts out a newsletter
called The Energy Advocate. For wind farms, he
told me, the year-round average output “translates into 300 square
miles per 1,000 megawatts, the size of a nuke.” So it seems the
Post reduced this particular renewable problem (there are
many others) by a factor of 10.
Just about everything we have been told about renewable energy
is a fantasy, but that doesn’t mean the Democrats won’t try to cram
it down our throats. So get ready for difficult times ahead, and
pray for the country.
