Maynard contemplates
Here are snippets from Peggy Noonan’s latest article, “The Internet Helps Us Get Serious”. I don’t always agree with Noonan, but I appreciate her arguments, and I can always see where she’s coming from. In this case, I think her comments are worth repeating.
We’re long past the point where the economic numbers should have sane adults pushing the panic button. The rising trend of entitlements and unfunded liabilities are on track to overwhelm America’s capacity to produce. Obama’s own projections, in contrast to his soothing words, show huge, endless deficits. With the ever-growing cost of servicing the debt, in a few years merely paying interest will gobble up the income tax revenue. If debt is held by China and other foreigners, then the primary function of the IRS will be to extract money from your pocket and send it abroad. Or, alternatively, loose monetary policies (in the words of the bright boys, “quantitative easing”, otherwise known as “printing money”) will push us back into stagflation…which will reduce the dollar to wastepaper, but at least we’ll be freed of the debt burden by cheating anyone holding Uncle Sam’s worthless IOUs.
The Republicans announced a bold plan to trim the deficit by a few tens of billions of dollars. This will make the difference between driving head-on into a wall at 160 mph and driving head-on into a wall at 155 mph. The Democrats vow to block these “draconian” cuts.
Ho-hum, business as usual. Black history month and Motown. Gay marriage. Collective bargaining. Me me me, mine mine mine, more more more.
Why are they doing this? Here’s Noonan’s list:
First…From the point of view of the Hard Left, America’s economic crisis is a positive development.
If you are from the deep left, if you’re on the leftward ridges of the Democratic Party, you believe in high spending, higher taxing and a more dominant role for the federal government. So you wouldn’t be alarmed at the current crisis, you’d be more or less happy: You’re sort of getting what you want. If you’re told entitlement spending will ultimately force severe cuts in America’s defenses, you might think, “Good, fewer guns, more butter.” Since you likely think America is a prime source of trouble in the world, you wouldn’t be too concerned that nations that hold our debt might come to exert influence on our foreign-policy choices. In the new and emerging global world, what’s so bad about a more bridled America?
People that think that way are prominent and outspoken, but they represent a numerical minority. What about the rest of us? We should, in theory, raise objections. Continuing…
Some are numbed to crises due to endless “crisis-ism”.
You don’t know you’re in crisis because you’re always in crisis, you’ve always been in crisis, and you’ve always gotten through, so what the heck. Crisis-ism is the inability to apprehend that this time it’s different, that this time the crisis is an actual crisis.
There are senators and congressmen who’ve been on the hill for 10 and 25 years, and from the day they walked in, all they heard about was the budget crisis. “This spending will kill us.” But it never did. So maybe it wasn’t so bad, and, ergo, isn’t so bad.
Yep. A crisis presents an excuse to do what you wanted to do anyway. The economy falters, so we get Obamacare to fix it. (Yes, they said this.) Our leaders don’t believe in the crisis, but the rubes do. So a crisis is nothing more than an opportunity not to be wasted.
Then there’s “Rich Boy Syndrome”.
You grow up immersed in the assumption that we are rich and will always be rich, that we’re powerful and will always be powerful, you start to think that America can take any amount of damage and still continue. This is called optimism, but it is not optimism, it is Rich Boy Syndrome. A boy is lucky enough to be born to rich parents who are themselves the product of generations of wealth going back as far as the eye can see. But he never got into the habit of making money, never learned to respect it, and never felt protective of the system that allowed it to exist. So the money went away. Rich Boy Syndrome is thinking wealth will just continue no matter what you do.
Maybe the people in Washington think it’s true for them. Are they wrong? You may lose your house, but a Kennedy’s not going to go begging. Bill Clinton defended Obamacare by saying it’s unfair that he gets better health care than the man in the street. But does anybody really think that’s going to change? If you believe that, I’ve got some bridges to sell you. No, these rich boys seem to think they don’t live in the real world.
Finally, the temptation to behave like an ostrich and stick one’s head in the ground is understandable.
It is really convenient and pleasant not to see a crisis, because if you don’t see it, you don’t have to do anything about it. You don’t have to be brave, you don’t have to put yourself on the line, you don’t have to lead. You can tell yourself you don’t have to be brave and lead because really, at the end of the day, despite all the screaming, there is no crisis.
I would add to that the contrapositive notion that the pain of addressing the crisis is politically unacceptable. A leader that squarely acknowledges the coming train wreck will feel the full fury of the Left’s wrath. Tammy speaks of this a lot, and you’re watching it happen. You can see why people that know what must be done are often cowed into silent submission.
Oh, and I should also mention the simple phenomenon of the “spend-aholic”, as well as the natural human inclination to meddle. We’ve all got a bit of that in us. When I feel bad, I go out and buy a book. When Obama feels bad, he buys a 50-billion dollar choo-choo train, and leaves us the bill. None of us is perfect. But my problems, as stupid as they are, are personal. You can ignore my problems, and that’s why you and I can coexist in peace. My problem with Obama’s problems is that Obama’s problems are my problems too, and yours. Yet Obama seems oblivious to intrusiveness of his agenda. He’s not crashing into our lives and spending our money and beggaring our nation; he’s “helping” us mend our erring ways. His lumbering intolerance is a formula, not only for national bankruptcy, but for a civil war. At some level, he seems to want this.
Thus do we rationalize and enable our national suicide. Nevertheless, Noonan ends on the hopeful note that the word is, slowly but surely, getting around. This is thanks to the Internet, which spreads information in spite of mainstream efforts to limit our input to selected sound bites and politically filtered news.
As a speechwriter, Noonan is a lover of words. I respect her for this. We’re going to need a lot more than words to do the job, of course. But it’s words that get the ball rolling.
I agree with Noonan’s optimism about serious thoughts getting through to people because of the internet. It’s probably why the Tea Party movement has been able to be formed (due to serious discussion of issues, not just the web enabling organizing).
What I don’t get is the observation that “there’s no sense of urgency,” because everyone’s heard “crisis” before. The crisis is not just a notion. It’s a thing you can see if you understand arithmetic, and the principle of interest, and just apply some statistical projections that go out 5-10 years to the current numbers and trends to see, “Hey, this isn’t going to work!” Do the “rich boys” not understand how to do this?
Secondly, the reason crises have always been averted before is that in some cases the crises really existed, but adjustments were able to be made in time to avert it. The problem is I don’t see much adjusting going on. That’s what’s giving us the feeling that they just expect the problem to go away.
Makeshifty – Certainly, crisis is not just a notion. Those of us ‘here’ who have been paying attention are very much aware there is indeed a truly cryptic iron hand seeking to grip this nation; it’s not just one either, but several!
The reason it’s important to bring up the repetitive ‘crisis’ mode we’ve been subjected to is due to ‘crisis’ (usually generated by government policy) being what has launched government intervention and horrendous policies for too long now (the feds creating the problem then jumping in like a superhero to proclaim it will save the day). Such rhetoric and over-reaching policies did not begin with Obama at all. If it did just begin with him, he would have been impeached by now; however, this says something more about how long we’ve tolerated manipulative language, actions & people that helped lure our entire nation into the pot of lukewarm water, slowly letting it get warmer to the point it’s now boiling & we’re noticing we’re almost ‘done’.
We are not going to see this administration adjust anything in our favor; they will ‘adjust’ toward their advancement to enslaving us all into a one-world regime. That is indeed where we are headed. When you have a president aiding in fostering ‘change’ (chaos) in the Middle East and Middle West, deliberately spending us into oblivion while we’re struggling, attacking businesses, taking control of everything he wants, holding parties in times of ‘crisis’ – expect that we are in trouble.
What is happening is our president is of the hard left. Noonan correctly puts into perspective that what is happening now is acceptable to the hard left. Who is the hard left? Try an organization like Progressive Democrats of America in addition to Organizing for America and any offshoot. PDA (not to be confused with Public Display of Affection – not for America anyway) is left of the left. I had the opportunity to catch them in Tucson last week outlining their vision to take over the Democrat party. Their statement was they are not the Democrat party, but they want to take the Democrat Party their way. These are the people showing ‘solidarity with their brethren’ in Wisconsin. I’m sure they are doing so for Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and why not? Congressman Raul Grijalva was one of the speakers at the PDA event. His work with La Raza and approving Code Pink’s ‘humanitarian’ trip to Fallujah to provide aid and comfort to our enemies who had just killed 51 Americans and injured 560 more should tell you much about the direction he seeks for America. BTW: Code Pink supports Muslim Brotherhood and a host of other terror networks. Count Raul Grijalva in there, too, the member who heads up the Progressive Congressional Caucus in the house.
I’m glad to see Noonan has posted this piece and thank you for sharing, Maynard, along with your very insightful words. I only wish that Noonan and others in the upper echelons of the GOP would have realized what us average Americans saw in 2008: the threat of Obama. Instead, they concentrated on dismissing Palin very publicly and encouraging us to all get along blindly accepting our new and dear leader.
I hope the GOP now gets a clue that it’s progressive democrats – like Obama – who are the enemy and not tea party! The GOP is still engaged in eating it’s own at a time when all efforts should be made to offset the looming danger of what has started in Wisconsin and other parts of the midwest and this weeks announcement in Tucson that two lawyers (one was a former Democrat party chair) starting a movement to have Pima County secede from the state of Arizona to become a 51st state. This is all the result of the left not getting their way in November! Maybe when they lose even more in 2012, they will finally get the hell out!
BTW: My apologies for the run-on sentence in the last paragraph. Didn’t get to the edit button in time! Geez!
The adjustments I was referring to were things like adjusting Social Security so it wouldn’t go insolvent. That sort of thing. That’s been done in the past, but it’s had limited effectiveness. It keeps going back into insolvency territory. Ultimately I think it’s going to have to be scrapped, because the demographics cannot support it anymore. “Adjustments” can’t be made forever. As far as I’m concerned, any payroll tax I pay is just a tax. It’s not likely I’m going to see benefits from it when I reach retirement.
I was not referring to things like TARP and the “stimulus” bill of 2009 as “adjustments.” I get what you’re saying about those moves, and the dynamic of the government creating the crisis and then doing something under the guise of “solving it,” which just leads to the next crisis. In those areas, our government is like someone with Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. It reminds me of the scene from “Dave” where they’re just introducing him to the role of being a stand-in for the real president. It went something like this. The chief of staff tells him, “Imagine someone you care about is sick, and you’re driving them to the hospital. Well, that someone you care about is our country. It’s in the car with you, and it’s sick. And you need to get it to the hospital.” It’s a sick delusion, more like.
Re. Arizona
Here’s a link to the story you’re talking about. From what they were saying, this isn’t the first time this has come up. Interesting. I remember some radical right group in Texas tried something like this back in the ’90s when Clinton was president. It didn’t get anywhere, and from what the newspeople on the local Fox affiliate were saying, it doesn’t sound like this is going to get anywhere, either.
I do get the sense of a split happening there. My mom told me about a conversation she had recently with a long-time friend who lives in AZ. It’s scary how much her friend is in denial, divorced from the reality of the world around her. I keep thinking that it’s impossible that people could be this ignorant and delusional, but I see it more and more every day. Her friend acted very worried about “what the state government is doing.” “There’s so much poverty here, and they’re denying help to those who need it. They just cancelled Medicaid. They’re offering money instead to big corporations so they’ll come to Arizona,” and, “People are so gun crazy here.” My mom tried to explain that there’s a scary amount of violence going on south of the border, and there’s a real concern about it washing over into our country. Her friend’s response floored me. She said, “Well, there’s been a lot of propaganda about that.” Excuse me??? Hello!! Have you noticed the carnage taking place in the northern part of Mexico, and the kidnappings in Phoenix??!! Have you noticed the zone in AZ that the federal government doesn’t want you to go into because there are drug gangs that move through there regularly and you could get killed if you go in there?? What planet is she on??
My mom brought up the recent murder of the rancher who wouldn’t sell his land to the cartels. Her friend said, “We don’t know who shot him.” My God! The only reason she can say that is the rancher was shot by a sniper, shooting from several hundred feet away, from what I understand, from across the border. My guess is the shooter was not apprehended, but it doesn’t take a lot to figure out what phenomenon created this situation. Geez!
Secondly, I don’t blame the State of Arizona for offering financial incentives for companies to come there. THAT WILL HELP SOLVE THE PROBLEM WITH POVERTY! The reason they cancelled Medicaid and are offering the incentives is they’re trying to decrease expenditures and increase revenue, because they have a dangerously low amount of money. They can’t even afford the buildings they do their business in! Helloooo!!! Amazing she doesn’t get this, but she is convinced of her reality, and she seemed very threatened that the world around her doesn’t agree with it. So I feel for you, ArtGal. I imagine you have to work hard to keep your sanity in the midst of this craziness. I’ve heard about what the AZ state government has been doing, and while it sounds scary in some respects (having to rent their own state buildings), I think what they’re trying to do is reasonable given the conditions they’re faced with.
Does your mother’s friend live in Pima Co.? It may explain her divorce from reality! lol
Seriously, though, the border situation is very real. I know you’re aware of that. It still boggles my mind that people can live in this state and not have a clue. If there is a TammyCon in AZ, I want to take you guys on a border tour. You truly have to see the area in order to really get a sense of what’s happening.
As for the Pima Co. seceding craziness: that, too, is something on a larger scale than what happened during Clinton’s time. We have a president who is already attacking Arizona on several levels: border/immigration, suing us over a state law regarding education as well (we dared to require teachers be fluent in communicating in English since 2003) and carrying on in the Bush tradition of making sure the cartels know they are welcome to take over the Buenos Aires Wildlife Reserve (the warning signs were first posted by the Bush administration in 2006). AZ Congressman Raul Grijalva is a socialist who has aided and abetted terrorists through Code Pink and his affiliation with LaRaza. He has also supported the movement for the establishment of Aztlan. He should have been removed from office and brought up on charges of treason right along with Sen. Boxer who aided in that Code Pink mission. What makes this different from the secessionists of the 90’s is they did not have a real movement from within government. The people bringing this issue up in Tucson do! One is a former Pima Co. Democrat Chair and served as 2 weeks at the State Party Chair level. He’s an attorney and it’s more than a little ironic that he & another attorney are bringing this up the same week of the PDA meeting (where Grijalva spoke) in Tucson. This is what they want to do to rise up against Gov. Brewer and the state legislature the people elected. It’s no different than what happened in Wisconsin except it’s not through a state bill concerning unions – but that will be coming in AZ, too! I’m not going to be dismissive of what these people are doing because I know who they are. Tucson is not a big city! This ‘state movement’ is not some separate entity of attention seekers (not entirely anyway) – it’s all part of the same community organizing cloth woven together by their hatred of this nation.
Arizona is leading the nation on many things – we are literally the frontline of a battle many Americans have yet to see – and hopefully, will not!
It’s truly sad to see your mother’s friend upset about Arizona attracting businesses here when we’re a state that needs those jobs! We’ve had our copper mines & access to mining restricted due to politicians of all stripes and the environmental whackjob movement even though the mining companies have demonstrated their state of the art-enviro friendly practices. Not good enough for the liberal elements. If your mother’s friend only understood the reason we are in a financial crisis is not due to Brewer creating a business friendly environment (we were in crisis before Brewer! She’s had the job of cleaning it up!) but due to outrageous spending policies of Napolitano & some in the state GOP who went along with her on the disastrous budget of 2008. If she’s upset about entitlements, she should be! Many people, who have been here illegally, have received a free education, housing, healthcare, food stamps, transportation, utilities and been kept in our prisons – that’s what has made it impossible to continue programs as usual!
The violence is real, and I have been in Buenos Aires Wildlife Reserve with border patrol and have friends who are ranchers. It’s surreal. Anywhere around the border is that way, but the Buenos Aires area particularly because the cartels are running it. I travelled the area last year with Ruth McClung and we saw their tents, their trails -even from 6,000 ft. elevations – they will travel on foot! We were shown some of the lookout posts where cartels monitor border patrol agents – on our own soil! – so they can inform their boots on the ground carrying their drug and human cargo.
Human trafficking is quickly becoming the number one crime in Arizona – and that’s not because we’re a state that’s known for making humans a commodity. Sheriff Joe caught 124 human traffickers in just 2 days in January. Women account for the largest number of victims in human trafficking; children run a very high second. We’re talking in the thousands! We know of reports in Phoenix where children and young women have been kidnapped in their own neighborhoods. Some have escaped or been rescued, but they were victims of trafficking. When I was teaching on Tucson’s south side last year, we were all on alert as young teen girls were being pursued on their way to or from school.
Not to upset you or anyone reading this, but you all need to know what’s taking place. Some involved in the trafficking will sell children for a weekend special of $800. If the child has more than 5 bruises when they are returned, then it’s an extra $200. This is happening on OUR side of the border! Some are kidnapped in Mexico, brought to Arizona and held in drop houses where they will be slaves until their family in Mexico pays the ransom, or they will be enslaved until they pay their debt to the coyotes for bringing them here under false pretenses (promises of citizenship, money, work). That debt may also be ‘paid’ by being gang-raped in the desert. There are ‘rape trees’ in the areas west of Nogales where women and girls are forced to leave their undergarments hanging on a tree or cactus after they have been repeatedly raped serving as a ‘trophy’ for the coyotes. When we did our border clean up in Naco, AZ last year, we saw a young girls jeans & underclothing on the ground along with underwear from a woman.
The Tucson corridor (there are 19 along the entire southern border) accounts for 50% of illegals coming through with the highest instances of human trafficking and drug trade. In fact, Tucson is the main port of illegal drug distribution through this country. Border Patrol informed us that human trafficking was as lucrative as the drug trade.
I’m afraid your mother’s friend suffers from what many do: they do not want to face the truth. To do so means you have to do something about it. It shakes our security and our very souls when we see how depraved and grizzly humans can be toward one another – and knowing means you can no longer dismiss it! That’s what fuels my outrage at so many of our ‘leaders’ in DC: they KNOW this! Yet, they still want to facilitate it through ‘Amnesty’. Every politican who supports any form of amnesty and keeping that border open is supporting the human trafficking and rapes of women and children.
I would be happy to take your mother’s friend on a border tour with Border Patrol and to speak with ranchers in the area. If only more people would listen to those who live along the border instead of their filtered news reports. Sue Krentz, whose husband Rob was killed last March on his own ranch by an illegal, could give this entire nation a wake up call!
About adjustments:
We are actually on the same page re: adjustments. I know what you meant in your first post. I was just making it more broad by including anything that could be adjusted in our favor as a nation is something this ‘president’ will not do. Period. Perhaps we could say he’s ‘readjusting’ things in order to bring about this ‘change’ making our nation into something we don’t recognize any longer. That seems to be his approach. There are many things he could have avoided (such as TARP and Obamacare) to avert ‘crisis’ or the looming threat of one, but instead, he wants to bring it all under the umbrella of his control – and that translates to a larger threat.
Re. “It’s truly sad to see your mother’s friend upset about Arizona attracting businesses here when we’re a state that needs those jobs!”
Agreed. I knew her somewhat years ago. The sense I got with her, from my mom’s conversation, is she’s ignorant on this stuff. She really doesn’t understand the dynamics of an economy. She’s a caring, intuitive soul, but how she perceives the world is pretty much through her liberal ideology, because she doesn’t know any better, and a kind of mysticism that she believes in. Not to say that her liberal beliefs/aspirations are illegitimate, but I’ve found that ignorant people sometimes use ideology, of whatever kind, as a substitute for knowledge.
My guess is she thinks the economic downturn was caused by corporate greed, and she takes from that that corporations are dangerous. She sees the downtrodden being impacted by the down economy, and so she wants them to be helped. That’s why she preferred entitlements for them. I see this same attitude in Wisconsin, and it’s like they don’t understand that if you tax too much, the wealthy and the corporations just leave, or they just sit back and don’t produce, because it’s not worth it. I really get a sense that if they had their druthers they would just confiscate wealth, never mind if it was already taxed as income, or was not taxed in compliance with the law.
As far as she’s concerned, giving money to corporations just benefits the wealthy, and there are no benefits for the people she’s concerned about. I also don’t understand the faith that people like her have in the state, like they could never exploit people the way some corporations do, or do any worse to them.
I can’t say why she would hold beliefs like this about corporations, because I know her husband once worked for a major corporation for many years. He’s now retired.
Re. “I’m afraid your mother’s friend suffers from what many do: they do not want to face the truth. To do so means you have to do something about it.”
Yes, I got that sense of her, too. Maybe if she saw the violence up close and frequently that would change her mind about it. My sense is that she has heard of it, but only through the news, or politicians, and she doesn’t trust that they’re giving her the truth, because she might think they have a racist agenda. I really doubt taking her on a tour with the Border Patrol would convince her. She’d see it as just an attempt to propagandize her, to make her afraid of, and/or feel angry at people who are desperate and need help. In short, she wants more caring and less fear. Never mind if there’s something to legitimately be afraid of, and to act upon. It’s not about what’s actually happening. It’s more a matter of what the general environment feels like…just like what Sheriff Dupnik said.
Re. Obama
I come back to what Richard Epstein said of him in an interview with Peter Robinson in 2009 (Tammy cited this interview earlier). I highlighted something that jumped out at me. It keys into something you said:
I think that says it all.
“Fulfilling the duties and discharging the functions of representative government make heavy demands on leaders and citizens, demands for participation and restraint, for consensus and compromise. It is not necessary for all citizens to be avidly interested in politics or well-informed about public affairs–although far more widespread interest and mobilization are needed than in autocracies. What is necessary is that a substantial number of citizens think of themselves as participants in society’s decision-making and not simply as subjects bound by its laws. Moreover, leaders of all major sectors of the society must agree to pursue power only by legal means, must eschew (at least in principle) violence, theft, and fraud, and must accept defeat when necessary. They must also be skilled at finding and creating common ground among diverse points of view and interests, and correlatively willing to compromise on all but the most basic values. ”
Dictatorships & Double Standards by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick — November 1979
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/dictatorships-double-standards/