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Pick Obama’s Brain
May 16, 2013 | 61 comments
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Remembering Herb Romerstein
May 10, 2013 | 5 comments
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Obama’s Planned Parenthood Love Fest
April 29, 2013 | 69 comments
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Happy Earth Day… and Lenin Day
April 22, 2013 | 33 comments
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Bill Casey’s Centennial
April 5, 2013 | 69 comments
Special Report
The New Government Class
The more dependent this group becomes, and the more it enlarges — to the benefit of its Democrat benefactors.
The latest unemployment figures are depressing, but not for the usual reasons. They provide further confirmation of Barack Obama’s fundamental transformation of America, and specifically through his creation of a growing government class.
The numbers show a massive increase in government jobs created over the last five months — 621,000, to be exact, dwarfing private-sector job growth. Those new government jobs account for a staggering 73% of overall job growth. In all, it means that 20.6 million citizens now work for government, out of 143 million people employed in America — or one in seven Americans.
This is exactly what Barack Obama and modern “progressives”/liberals want.
Indeed, the vision and policies and programs of progressives/liberals are rapidly generating a new government class that relies on government for its livelihood. The current such class — the one that re-elected Barack Obama — is comprised of federal workers; of state, county, and municipal workers; of employees in public-sector unions; of Americans collecting food stamps, welfare, and unemployment benefits; of those looking to government for their healthcare; and still more. They don’t all vote Democrat, but many of them do. Incredibly, there is even a growing group of young women — supple prey to demagogic Democrat politicians — who are angrily expecting Uncle Sam to pay for their contraception and abortions.
We might be tempted to corral this new class into Mitt Romney’s “47 percent,” though the much-maligned Romney label probably underestimates the total. Likewise, these citizens might be targeted to Rush Limbaugh’s “Santa Claus” category, though Rush, too, underestimated; after all, Santa Claus bears a mere gift or two once a year. He doesn’t provide full-time paychecks.
Either way, these new Americans constitute a huge and expanding segment of the population — and voters — who are becoming not merely dependent upon government but dependent upon Democrats. The more dependent this group becomes, and the more it enlarges, the more it redounds to the political benefit and enshrinement of liberal-Democrat politicians. We can argue whether or not this is intentional by Democrats as a whole, or a deliberate tactic of the wider progressive/liberal agenda, but there is no denying that it is a political reality that liberal Democrats will “benefit” from.
All of these segments of the citizenry — or, perhaps, constituencies — have steadily expanded over the last 100 years of progressivism/liberalism, and have surged under Barack Obama. Under Obama, there are a record 47 million Americans on food stamps, up from 32 million at the start of his presidency; that’s a 50-percent jump. The welfare rolls have exploded. Unemployment has not only increased but remains stuck and stagnant, with the actual unemployed around 15% and no doubt rising. (There are even 636,000 homeless Americans — double the number from the Reagan years, and totally unreported by the media.) Not only does the huge number of federal workers continue to balloon, but so do employees joining public-sector unions beholden to Democrats: SEIU, AFSCME, teachers organized through the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Writing on this phenomenon, my colleague, Dr. Marvin Folkertsma, observes:
America’s mammoth federal government constitutes an interest group itself, which means it does all the things other public and private groups do to protect itself…. [A]bout half of the population receives some form of aid from the federal government, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2012 Index of Dependence on Government, and these recipients constitute perhaps the most behemoth group of them all…. [C]lose to one-half of the entire population does not pay federal income taxes, a figure that climbed from 12 percent in 1969 to 34.1 percent at the beginning of the Bush administration, to its current figure as President Obama starts his second term.
That current figure is bad news for the literal solvency of the republic, but good news for those cynically hoping to expand the boundaries (and collective dependency net) of progressivism/liberalism.
The first flame of this roaring government class came with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, picking up from the spark lit by Woodrow Wilson’s progressive presidency two decades earlier. The next significant expansion came via President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s. Incremental additions happened thereafter, with an agency or new department started here and there. To cite just one example, President Jimmy Carter, for instance, started the Department of Education.
Ronald Reagan, long before his game-changing presidency attempted to halt this, referred to this steady enlargement as “creeping socialism,” which is precisely what it is. Oblivious Americans stand idly by and naively vote for Leviathan, and for their country to slowly and steadily become socialist.
With President Barack Obama, another extension — actually, a major thrust — is underway, with the centralization of healthcare under Obamacare just one of the more obvious coming manifestations.
Naturally, it goes without saying that the American Founders did not envision this. No, they are rolling over in their graves. They argued over checks and balances, separation of powers. Most important, the Founders spoke eloquently and wisely of a virtuous citizenry, one capable of successfully self-governing itself before successfully self-governing the republic. George Washington expressed this conviction often, believing that virtue and morality were both synonymous and “indispensable supports” to the American republic. Influencing Washington and the Founders was a French philosopher named Charles Montesquieu, whose crucial work is utterly foreign to the current generation, and most certainly not taught in schools. His work included the seminal The Spirit of the Laws (1748). There, Montesquieu concluded that the best form of government is a self-governing one, and yet it is also the most difficult to maintain because it demands a virtuous populace.
In more recent times, great conservative minds like the late Russell Kirk spoke of a citizenry capable of “inner order.” Citizens needed to achieve “inner order” before their republic could maintain “outer order.” America needed what other great thinkers have called an “ordered liberty,” or a kind of “trained liberty.” Consider the line from one of this nation’s sacred political hymns, America, the Beautiful: “Confirm thy soul in self-control; Thy liberty in law.”
About the Author
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. He is author of the new book The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. His other books include The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (23) | Leave a comment
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spike59| 12.10.12 @ 6:26AM
I'm guessing they're celebrating in the WH; after all, they mark success differently:
'We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by
how many are added.'
Ronald Reagan
http://dailycaller.com/2012/12.....ticipants/
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34SNAPmonthly.htm
JD| 12.10.12 @ 1:23PM
Democrats have long defined "success" as "their agenda being implemented." Whether the results are actually good is not considered, because it is taken for granted. This goes hand-in-hand with the Left's inability to separate intent from result, which leads them to assume that their intent is always realized if their agenda is realized. Similarly, they automatically assign all bad things that happened to their enemies, and assume bad intent among their enemies, all as a result of this comically simplistic thinking.
Al Adab| 12.10.12 @ 1:38PM
To the bureaucracy increasing the numbers of people and households receiving "benefits" means they are doing their job and reaching the needy. Like any business, they need to expand their customer base in order to continue to justify themselves.
The social welfare system in dedicated to expanding its role, not properly to eliminating the need which called it into being. Remember how often we have witnessed the creation, by definition, of new needy classes.
Von Mises Jr| 12.10.12 @ 7:34AM
I think that the model we should look to is not devolution to the European Socialist Welfare State, but the French Revolution. While it ultimately failed after ten years of terror, the history is worth noting.
Tocqueville wrote how the local control (liberty) of the towns gave the serfs a taste of freedom. With the Industrial Revolution, freedom and prosperity abounded. The Nobles and intellectuals schemed to destroy the petty bourgeoisie and return to serfdom just as the socialist today target SMB. But many of the people were not going to succumb to quitrents, tallies and privilege to the Noble Class that provided no value after experiencing liberty. Tocqueville explained that "once they saw the crack in the door of freedom, they kicked it wide open.”
America in 2012 is much like France of the late eighteenth century. We are a world leader, and we also happen to be the reserve currency. If we collapse, it will not be like Greece where others chip in and bail us out. If we do not manage the transformation back to capitalism and free markets, we may see a very different America and world very soon. I do not see TX, SC, TN and WY joining hands and singing Kumbaya with CA, IL, NY and MA. The latter can join the EU, but I think I will join the former.
TeaPartyNow| 12.10.12 @ 1:19PM
Fraternity? The French Revolution was a miserable failure. You obviously know nothing of the outcome. Try Edmund Burkes' "Reflections on the Revolution in France". The French Revolution although fighting an established tyranny like ours today, did not offer individual responsibility as liberty. It failed because it replaced on tyranny with another. Kind of like what we'd do if we replaced dems with pubs today.
We need to rebuild America from the very bottom up. We need to tear our all despotism, which is mostly what our rulers are made of.
We will civilly rebel. The American People are taking it now. But there will be a point where we no longer do. It won't be the French, it will be our founders that we look to. No matter if our tyranny is so ingrained in everything that we are. Private property, natures' laws, natures' god, natural rights, individual sovereignty, self government, these things are infinite truths. Our battle will be one like the world has never seen before. & we will win. Liberty is still the human hearts one true love.
Nancy in NC| 12.10.12 @ 8:00AM
This article is really good and really depressing in its truth. I, for one, am in dire need of hope...and I don't mean hope and change.
Even though reading AS everyday is informative and enlightening, I think we need to do more than read. We need to start pushing back, and waiting for an election isn't the answer. I think the results of the past election almost seemed preordanied. I personally know no one that voted for ozero, but here we are stuck with him for another four years.
The progressives have been working to this conclusion for over 100 years, and the rest of us have sat on our collective cans and let them get away with it.
Have the universities changed? Have the public schools changed? Has the media changed?
I want to do something...just can't for the life of me to figure out what to do except what I'm already doing...being informed and fighting the system locally.
I fear it's too little, too late.
PolishKnight| 12.10.12 @ 8:45AM
The idea of buying votes via pushing people into pits and selling them carrots is nothing new. It was FDR's successful strategy. The trick is that as the electorate wises up and it no longer becomes feasible to blame Hoover (GW Bush), he needed a new distraction. Time to go to the spa while those decodes from British intelligence about Japanese aircraft carriers in the pacific sit in the inbox...
The current leftist policy of defunding the military, hitting "reset" in relations with Moscow and the Middle East and then sitting back and seeing what happens is pretty close to that. Only they probably won't have the patriotic American people to run to the local draft board to sign up for the wag-the-dog war.
What the left has today that FDR didn't and even the Soviets lacked was a reliable set of race and gender class privileges which are effectively free to handout while party member jobs, either here or in Moscow, were in short supply.
Pecos Pete| 12.10.12 @ 9:30AM
As Kengor states: The USA is screwed.
Santiago| 12.10.12 @ 11:32AM
Why wait around for chaos to ensue? Get out (or at least think about where to/have connections outside the US) while you still can.
JmsA| 12.10.12 @ 4:49PM
Where to, Santiago? Mexico? I hear Mexicans are rather exclusionary should they perceive you not to be Raza. Ever heard the phrase, Pinchi gringo, vale madre? (roughly translated: Damn and worthless American) I have, as it was directed at me many a time when knocking door-to-door during my get-out-the vote efforts at the behest of Reagan's first presidential campaign in 1980, out here in sunny Cal. I learned my lesson, though, and refused to do it in '84. None the less, if only I had a dollar for every time I heard it, I'd be really happy. Forget about it. The rest of the world, except very few places, is either just crap, socialist, or both. This is the place, the U.S., where most escaped to. I sincerely hope you don't find these comments "grating", but ultimately, I don't care.
jcm5| 12.18.12 @ 8:39PM
I'm thinking of going to Australia - they have a Carbon tax!
Claudius| 12.10.12 @ 11:55AM
It inarguable. These employees of the state form a modern day "Praetorian Guard". Claudius in his time wanted to bring back the Roman Republic, and step down as emperor, but they wouldn't let him (at least according to Robert Graves).
Welcome to the American Empire. Efforts to bring back the Republic will be more and more forced underground.
Good luck. We will need it.
Who Knows?| 12.10.12 @ 11:59AM
Hey, basically more people NOW have government “jobs” than don’t, and they will forever more be able to continue to stay in power, by the one man one vote “LAW”.
Maybe we should redefine the word “job”, though.
Unlike the official definition, which includes productive work that yields real money, the REAL definition should include ALL those people who receive money for NOT working. Their JOB is to take the money, and vote Democrat!
It’s nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try!
Hardcard| 12.10.12 @ 12:35PM
Jim Demint, Dick Armey, and Pete King pull the plug. Congress want to negotiate, obamao puts his foot down, bonehead is lost (too much tanning spray) and confused, cantor wants to concede but he lost debbie waserman-schultz's cell phone number. newt is for hillary in 2016, she's unbeatable and she's got uma weiner.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 12.10.12 @ 3:54PM
Perhaps Huma will be jealous now that the Christina Aguilera story about Hillary is starting to circulate a bit.
Hardcard| 12.10.12 @ 12:36PM
(cont.) a government class ?
TeaPartyNow| 12.10.12 @ 1:05PM
It can only get worse now. The American People are powerless to stop anything. The fact that the EPA grows while both factions in D.C. decide how much more we can pay & how much less we'll get back shows that it is all down hill from here.
The American People are ignorant of what their governments are doing. Video games, movies, cell phones, we know all about our marxist media driven culture. Liberty in America is carried by the American People NEVER.
There is no limit how much government jobs will grow, & how much abuse the American People will take. & D.C. is printing us into h--l to pay for their votes via workers expansions. & we will just lie down & die before we the People oppose tyranny.
Culture promotes ignorance. Liberty is absent in America, effectively wholly.
Ronsch| 12.10.12 @ 1:36PM
Paul,
I am not a complete neophyte to reading the alleged "jobs" reports, but one question that I seem to not find an answer for is when calculating employment numbers is: How does military enlistments figure into the jobs equation?
Is the military neutral numbers or do enlistments count as .gov jobs created?
cicero| 12.10.12 @ 3:11PM
You are looking at modern Europe, when you should be looking at Romonov Russia, and its successor, the Soviet Union. Russia went from an hereditary aristocracy to an aristocracy of the beaurocracy. We are going from a democracy to an aristocracy of the beaurocracy. All you need to live well, and better than those who pay the taxes that fund you, is a sinecure with the government.
Europe and its style of socialism is in the process of collapse. The only thing stopping it is that all of those sovereign bonds have not yet been redeemed to the current holders (bankers) and foisted onto the backs of the taxpayers (Germans). As soon as that happens, they will be defaulted, and the working class will be stuck with the bill. In the United States, we are in the process of establishing a privileged class of government functionaries who will be honored with lifelong jobs, pensions, and upkeep, as soon as the legislature in Washington agrees to assume the pension debt of the states, and agrees to continuing stimulus programs that funnels money to the states.
This may work out until the economy is wrecked. All of those beaurocrats feel compelled to do something while they are there. The added regulations andd taxes needed to support the government will kill the economy, as we are now seeing on the horizon.
delahaya| 12.11.12 @ 9:16AM
Is that 20 million all levels of government or just federal? Anyway, nice to see someone with their eyes open. I've been telling my friends that the horrors of the last four years aren't innocent mistakes - this is exactly what Obama wants. He has to pretend otherwise to play the political game - but total destruction of our current system will allow him to "fundamentally transform America". High unemployment just means more government dependence, and so on. FDR once said, "nothing in politics happens on accident. If it happens that way, it was meant to happen that way."
delahaya| 12.11.12 @ 9:18AM
We are screwed. Labor participation is down to 62% now. Of those employed, one in seven is a government worker (I've read one in three, but that may include private companies dependent on government contracts). Literally less than half the country is employed, and employed in the private sector and even eligible to pay taxes (net).
RJP | 12.11.12 @ 9:46AM
(http://goo.gl/YQOFA) In the near term, the priority should remain presenting a comprehensive reform agenda that focuses on the mission and size of government while eviscerating liberalism’s governance model.
A grand compromise to address the current fiscal crisis should not entail merely agreeing to higher taxes. Conservatives should confound the opposition by wholeheartedly embracing redistribution and alternatively proposing the establishment of a guaranteed minimum income.
(For Republican and conservative Romney voters who oppose this idea, they should not forget it was Republicans vowing to preserve Medicare during the campaign.)
Instead of tinkering with marginal tax rates, credits, and deductions and promises of spending cuts, conservatives should agree to a higher, rationalized flat tax in exchange for the establishment of a bureaucracy-less welfare system. (http://goo.gl/YQOFA)
jcm5| 12.18.12 @ 8:37PM
Seriously?
Do all your articles involved strange interpretations of mathematics? Since Obama came in, private sector jobs have increased (by a tiny bit). Government jobs have decreased (by a lot).
In fact, factcheck.org got on Obama's case during the campaign because he kept talking about "private sector job growth" and hiding the reality that government jobs had declined.