Poisoning The Chalice

FOR THE past thirty years conservatives have been trying to reform the vast empire of government subsidy and patronage we call the welfare state. Conservatives have worked to ease the distortions built into the economy from a peverse tax system. They have worked to enable the forces of “creative destruction” through deregulation. They have tried to unwind the cruel and unjust system of welfare benefits. They have tried to introduce choice into the monolithic system of compulsory education. And they have tried to move away from the first dollar free-at-the-point-of-delivery model of health care.

Not surprisingly, our liberal friends have resisted the forces of change. A century ago they began their program of legislation to provide free education, free health care, generous assistance because they believed that it was the right thing to do. They enacted their program confident in the knowledge that every educated, progressive-minded person agreed with them.

But now, a century later, their rigid programs of education, health care, and welfare assistance are long past their sell date. Initiated with boundless hope they have slowly wound down, year by year, and how exist mainly as patronage programs by which our liberal friends maintain themselves in their sinecures and their clients in their pensions.

In the last decade, especially, our liberal friends have struck out with remarkable venom against those who would seek to reform their welfare state colossus, and in doing so they have poisoned the chalice of US democracy. By blocking all reform, especially in the subsidies for home mortgages, they have brought on a perfect financial storm, and true to the chapter and verse of their tactics manual, have ruthlessly blamed it all on the incumbent Republicans.

That means that Americans will likely elect Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) next week to be president. And he has promised more of the same: more pensions for Democrats, more subsidies for liberal-favored constuencies and initiatives, and more government direction of the national life.

Conservatives believe that we are already long overdue for root-and-branch reform of the welfare state. We believe that Americans should be in charge of the efforts to enhance and improve their communities. We believe that government programs are the least effective way of adapting to the future. We think that the bureaucracy-and-subsidy model has be tried and has failed.

But our Democratic friends are determined to give it one more college try, and if they win they will have a mandate to do so. Unfortunately they will be handed a chalice that they have tarnished and poisoned. In their intransigence they refused, while in opposition, to allow it to be refreshed and renewed. We saw this intransigence before, in 1990, when Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell refused to allow a capital gains tax reduction to ease the pain of recession.

The American people are fed up with the poisoned chalice that politicians in Washington have been soiling for the last decade. They want sensible, practical reform. Next week, most probably, they will call for a change in the national executive branch. That is the one great power they possess.

But they will expect that change to lead to reform. If it doesn’t—and we believe here at Road to the Middle Class that they are unlikely to get it from President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid—they will be back in two years or four years with a firmer demand for change.

That is what democracy is all about.

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

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

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

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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

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

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

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

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

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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