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.”
To the contrary, our new government class is not about
confirming one’s soul in self-control, but about confirming and
ordering one’s life around Washington, whether through milking the
system for ongoing welfare benefits, demanding that taxpayers fund
their contraception, or relying upon the federal government for
full-time work — and punishing any politician who vows to scale
back government in order to save America from becoming Greece. Any
real leader who threatens to dissolve the Department of Education,
or de-fund PBS, or enact wage or hiring freezes is attacked as a
pariah and mortal threat to the United States of America and its
citizenry. He is cast as a rogue villain who must be defeated. His
attempts to preserve the republic’s fiscal sanity are viewed as
pernicious, as anathema to the interests of the new government
class.
This new poster child of progressivism/liberalism would make the
Founders shudder, and perhaps even go back to the Constitutional
drawing board.
Ironically, the government class in America today — and those
governing it — look not to the American Founders but to the
Western Europe that the Founders fled. In fact, it’s rather amazing
that a leftist, anti-colonialist like Barack Obama would find his
ideal in Western Europe, but, alas, he does — and he leads his
party and its millions of unquestioning, dutiful followers right
along with him. It’s funny: for decades liberals have been
indoctrinated in their universities to despise Western Europe. Yet,
they’ve completely embraced Western Europe’s welfare-statism. It is
their end-goal.
So, where does this leave us as a republic? Well, in very deep
trouble. Most of those in the new government class become rapidly
conditioned to their reality. Easily lured into their situation to
begin with, they will be easily prompted into vociferously
defending their position — especially those in unions. They will
defend their status quo with ferocious loyalty when the right
buttons are pushed by liberal-Democrat organizers and agitators who
benefit from their votes. And Barack Obama’s sycophantic, partisan
“journalists” will be their unfailing ally.
Ronald Reagan said that the only guarantee of eternal life in
this world is a government bureaucracy. He was correct, especially
once the government bureaucracy is unionized; ditto for the
bureaucracy’s programs and goodies. You will not be able to undo
Obama-care; trying to do so will be like unscrambling eggs. Look at
Britain’s National Health Service; it is the third-rail of British
politics. Even Margaret Thatcher couldn’t touch it.
For a glimpse at America’s future, look to Greece, France, and
Spain, which are already long gone, populated by virtual
citizen-zombies walking along with their hands out. The one glimmer
of hope might be Britain circa 1978-79, when the electorate somehow
awakened and hired Margaret Thatcher, who took on the unions and
the government class. In the United States, however, it will not be
easy. We will need a Thatcher or a Reagan, who will be demonized
unlike any American heretofore, and can withstand and defeat the
demonization. Moreover, we will need that leader very soon. If this
isn’t halted quickly, America as we know it is over.
How long? We have four years. Think about it: How many more
Americans over the next four years will be employed and unionized
by government, on unemployment, on food stamps and welfare, on
government for healthcare, on government for contraception, and
more? And they will be further trained to believe this is the norm
and their natural right, and that anyone standing in the way is a
monster. It may already be too late. The seeds have been planted
and are now germinating.
Barack Obama promised a fundamental transformation of this
nation. It is now fully underway, courtesy of breathtakingly
oblivious voters and pro-Obama “journalists.” They have joined him
as the handmaidens to this ominous new government class.
