Obama We Hardly Know Ye

AS SEN. Barack Obama (D-IL) becomes the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party today, The Wall Street Journal comments on just what an extraordinary moment this is.

Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows.

It’s also remarkable that a major political party in the United States has chosen, for the first time, an African-American to be its presidential nominee.

But for me, the parallel with President Carter is palpable. I remember first hearing about Jimmy Carter a couple of years before the 1976 election, and I remember being impressed. But I also remember that the closer we got to the actual election the less I liked him. The concept was great; the details told a different story.

And so it is with Sen. Obama. He is an inspiring speaker who talks about “unity” and “change.” But all the details point to a conventional liberal with conventional liberal views on everything.

Every president, upon entering office, has the opportunity to make a difference on two or three big things. But on all the host of little things he is probably the hostage of his party activists, the up-and-comers who appear out of the campaign and the think tanks to take the executive-level appointments in the Executive Branch.

Up to now we haven’t heard about any Big Things from Barack Obama beyond the conventional liberal position on nationalizing health care and the conventional anti-war stance on the Iraq War.

In other words we have no information that gives us an indication that Obama, the product of a conventional elite education, will be anything other that conventionally liberal. Chances are he’ll expand government power in education, health care, and, of course, the environment. That means more rigidity, more subsidies directed at Democratic voters.

We conservative folks think that this century-long expansion of government is approaching its limits. Education is an expensive mess that produces little. Health care is an expensive mess that delivers little in life expectancy beyond what you could get with a robust public health program and neo-natal care. Pensions are unaffordable in the medium term.

We believe that the conservative ascendancy of the last 30 years gave Americans an opportunity to reverse direction and reduce government power and expense it was too late.

Now it looks like we are going to do it the hard way.

Because we cannot expect a President Obama to go back on all his supporters and change the whole direction of government. Not from what we already know about him.

But maybe he will surprise us.

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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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