Revolt of the Masses
WASHINGTON — Owing to the promotion tour for my new book,
After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery, I
have been meeting with what the intelligentsia once called “the
masses.” They read books. They pay taxes. They attend lectures. Oh,
and by the way, they are now a lot more prosperous and even more
civilized than the intelligentsia, today’s version of which are
actually anti-intellectual and occasionally only semi-literate.
The reason that “the masses” are a lot more prosperous and even
civilized is that they have been participating in our free-market
economy for years. It has made their lives easier, and they
recognize it. As Arthur Brooks, the urbane president of the
American Enterprise Institute, demonstrates in his new book,
The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big
Government Will Shape America’s Future, seventy percent of
Americans favor free enterprise, with only a glum thirty percent
turning their tremulous palms up to the nanny state.
At any rate, after talking with thousands of ordinary Americans
on talk radio and at book receptions, I have come to the conclusion
that America has arrived at a historic turning point. It is not
just that Tea Partiers are revolting against big government. It is
something more. Usually a revolt against big government has meant
that restive Americans wanted their taxes lowered, but as for
cutting government back they were vague. They favored economies but
certainly no cutbacks in their entitlements — a loaded
word, that, entitled to whom from what? — or
government subsidies. What makes this a historic moment is that
growing numbers of Americans now accept that they too are going to
have to forego at least some of their so-called entitlements. They
recognize that the budget crisis is that grave.
For well over a decade simple demographics suggested that a
budget crisis loomed for such programs as Social Security. Yet our
politicians — as the phrase had it — merely kicked the can down
the road. We have now arrived at the end of the road. What hastened
our arrival at this dead end was the profligacy of the most
inexperienced and left-wing president in American history.
Budgetary overhang was ominous when the Prophet Obama arrived at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Then he confected the Troubled Asset
Relief Program, a $787 billion stimulus package, a hugely
imbalanced budget, and his trillion-dollar healthcare monstrosity
that he lyrically promised would save a trillion dollars. All told,
it has been the largest increase in federal spending since World
War II.
During times of growth, federal spending is usually in the
neighborhood of 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). It is
now rising from 21 percent of GDP to 25 percent. As a percentage of
GDP, the national debt will double within a decade unless the
citizenry gets control of the budget. From my travels among the
citizenry, I have come to the conclusion that Americans are they
are ready to do so. This fall they will elect representatives who
will cut their entitlements. That will be a new day in American
politics.
As Michael Barone points out in the Washington
Examiner,”It has long been a maxim of political scientists
that American voters are ideologically conservative and
operationally liberal.” That has changed. In a pungent line he
observes, “pork is not kosher,” and he goes on to observe that “the
political scientists’ maxim seems out of date.” From my recent
experience on the book tour, he is right.
If the Republicans take the House of Representatives this autumn
as I think they will, the Republican leadership had best arrive
with plans to undo President Obama’s folly. Equally important they
had best have plans to cut entitlements and other spending in such
a way as to avert our present rendezvous with bankruptcy. I am
confident they can. In After the Hangover I outline a plan
for fiscal solvency. Before you accuse me of boasting, let me
hasten to add that I lifted much of that plan from Congressman Paul
Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future.” It is posted on his website
and ready to be implemented. If I did not believe that, I would not
have pilfered it. This might have been an act of grand larceny, but
it was the grand larceny of a patriot.
The Taranto Principle Vindicated Again
WASHINGTON — The exposure of Connecticut Attorney General
Richard Blumenthal as a hoaxster boasting of a non-existent record
of service in the Vietnam War is a splendid example of what is
known as the Taranto Principle. Someday the Taranto Principle will
be taught in all the journalism schools, assuming one or two
survive the present detumescence of journalism. Formulated by the
inimitable Wall Street Journal editorialist James Taranto,
the principle posits that when the Liberal mainstream press
indulges a Liberal politician’s deceits or fails to hold the
politician accountable for his misbehavior, it encourages the
politician to ascend to a higher level of misbehavior.
Thus, for years Senator Jean-François Kerry was wont to boast of
his exploits in the Vietnam War. His sympathizers in the press
never bothered to remind him or to remind the citizenry that Kerry
had embellished his military record and - worse! — upon returning
from Vietnam he cast his lot with the rising anti-war movement. As
an opponent of the war he even was emboldened to appear before
Congress and mendaciously testify that his comrades had “personally
raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable
telephones to human genitals, and turned up the power, cut off
limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages
in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.”
This garbagespiel was televised nationally and he should have
known that tapes of it were readily available in 2004 when he ran
for president. Nonetheless, rather than stressing less
controversial aspects of his years of public life, thanks to the
Liberal press’s indulgence of his exaggerated claims to heroism he
made the risky choice of running as a veteran of the Vietnam War.
That angered those who had served with him and their revelations
about his service sank his candidacy. The Taranto Principle is
vindicated.
It has been vindicated again with the revelations about
Blumenthal. For years he has been fawned over by the Liberal press.
Pari passu with the passage of time, he has gone from
being a young man who sought five military deferments during the
Vietnam War to claiming repeatedly and falsely that he actually
served in the war. On the way to making those false claims he did
indeed enlist in the Marine Reserve, but he never served in the
war.
In 2008, the New York Times reports that he said in a
speech, “We have learned something important since the days that I
served in Vietnam.” At another point in 2008 the Times
reports that he informed an audience that “I served during the
Vietnam era,” concluding that “I remember the taunts, the insults,
sometimes even physical abuse.” As recently as a few weeks ago he
publicly recalled being spit upon when “we returned from
Vietnam.”
Now his campaign for the United States Senate is in grave
jeopardy. Perhaps it could all have been avoided if years back the
press had taken a look at his claims, reported them, and chastened
him from making the increasingly bold assertions of nonsense.
As an addendum to the Taranto Principle let me add an
observation. Increasing numbers of candidates for public office,
particularly at the national level, seem given to fantasy. They are
encouraged to tell dramatic stories about themselves. The press
loves it. Goaded by the Taranto Principle it is not long before
those stories become total fantasies. Blumenthal is obviously one
of those fantasists. Had he not been tripped up this week, he might
have soon been telling the electorate about his Congressional Medal
of Honor. Possibly if he somehow manages to win the Democratic
primary he still will, and then when the stakes are so high and the
possibility exists that a Republican might beat him, will the
Times raise doubts about his Congressional Medal of Honor?
Taranto will be watching.
