Michael Novak On Hillarynomics

WE’VE ALREADY cast a jaundiced eye on Hillary Clinton’s “on your own” speech at a technical college in New Hampshire in which she castigates the “on your own” policies of the Bush administration and proposes her “we’re all in it together” economic plan of taxes, spending, and regulation.

Now Michael Novak takes a look at the economic policy of the future Clinton administration revealed in her speech. First he takes a look at the vision of the Bush administration.

Bush has set forth a realizable dream of universal ownership for all Americans — the dream of owning their own personal Social Security accounts, their own medical accounts, their homes or apartments, and their own investment plans. He proposes this as real, life-changing help for the poor, by way of independence and self-determination, in local communities of caring. Senator Clinton transforms this vision into the spinning, hellish “on your own” society.

Democrats are always suggesting that Republicans just don’t care about people. So Clinton reminds the students:

“We have sent a message to our young people that if you don’t go to college and you don’t have a high-paying job — something like a basketball player or an entertainer, or maybe someone in a corporation — that you’re thought less of in America.”

Only someone “who doesn’t know any craftsmen, manual workers, or independent electricians and plumbers (who nowadays can bring in more than a hundred grand a year)” could say something like that, according to Novak.

What the Irish saloonkeeper Mr Dooley should have said: “The fella what said that Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels unnerestimated th’ possibilities of Compassion.”

In short, the dream of economic reds is not a vision of an America driven forward by new entrepreneurs, new inventors, and those untamed “animal spirits” that are released by a good system of incentives. Rather, it is a vision of rule-making, curbs, limitations, bureaucratic selection among alternatives, new burdens on the private sector — and larger powers unwisely given to the federal government.

The question is whether the $100,000 plumbers will vote for the economic redness, the dependency and victimhood of Hillary Clinton, or whether they will vote for independence and ownership.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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