Letting Government Order (for) You, Recipe for Disaster

Sometimes, news items far from the main topic of discussion can help clarify ideas enormously. Case in point...

MSNBC, otherwise known as the American version of Pravda, reports that top chefs are encouraging Obama to "improve food policy".

Right. See a problem? Ask the government to fix it. That method has worked so well up 'til now. Hearing that recommendation, the fundamental question to ask is: Why should America have a food policy?

This is both collectivism and the inevitable consequent lack of self-responsibility run amok. Surely, what food to buy and eat should be an individual or, at most, family decision. But it points to a much larger problem, one that reveals one of the root causes of the current crisis: the longing for the 'safety' of dependency, the desire to have an all-wise parent solve your problems.

Up to about the mid-20th century, Americans were used to solving their own problems. Granted, Uncle Sam was always on their backs to some extent. But prior to about 1910, that load was so light as to be almost non-existent for most everyone. Even the Depression Era had plenty of influential voices that still advocated that people help themselves. Fascist-style propaganda of the sort exemplified by a popular song of the period still touted the need to "dig, dig, dig, dig for your supper." It didn't sing, "let someone else feed you while you stand on your shovel and do nothing."

Then came the era of the late 1960s and later that asserted "we are all in this together" followed soon after by "therefore, the President must tell everyone what to do." Or, as Ayn Rand eloquently summed it up: "One neck for one leash."

That it has reached the stage in recent years of trying to control food choices clearly shows that we are on the path to slavery. Nanny state advocates have been yakking about the food supply for decades now. But with Obama in office, the advocates of no-preservatives now want to add steroids to the dish.

"What I'm hoping is that he's going to recognize that we need to do what we can in our country to encourage real food for everyone."

One could spend much useless time debating what constitutes "real food." It always comes down to whatever the collectivist-statist believes would be "best" for health, animal life, or what have you. But debating the specific issue is entirely beside the point. It's not appropriate for the government to even think about discussing to develop a plan to study the subject. It's simply none of anyone else's business, as is an entire range of other concrete issues on the news menu today.

Yet, this state of affairs has hardly been forced on everyone. The majority have invited it, even down to such personal details as what to eat. That this is a big step forward on the road to totalitarianism is summed up by this quote from one of those 'top chefs': "My advice would be more of a symbolic nature, and to not underestimate what can be done through the White House."

If ever was there a statement that eloquently reveals how much some people want a dictator, this is it.

One can't blame Obama entirely, because that commits the same mistake of focusing on one man. He was elected by a wide margin. Just over half the people of the United States are responsible for that, not just the man himself. If it hadn't been him, some other power hungry bacterium would have happened along. Circumstances such as the present create a ripe environment for the growth of that type of germ and there are many more like him in Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Only when the cultural influences and influencers shift in the direction of freedom will we see an end to the trend. Who those are and when they'll operate effectively is anybody's guess. The New York Times continues to be widely read, but also widely mocked. The major media are often roundly criticized by Left and Right (and other points on the political compass), but sometimes by people like Rush Limbaugh, who is clearly a major media figure himself.

No one, including myself, knows exactly how to get the right ideas implemented (though there are thousands who have a pretty clear notion of what they are).

Turning the major universities around seems impossible at this stage. Public education won't be reformed in the next two lifetimes to become once again a place for teaching students not what to think but how. TV news has finally fulfilled to completion Newton Minnow's characterization of the medium in the early 1960s as "the vast wasteland." None of these venues for the spread of facts and ideas will anytime soon favor objectivity, much less individual freedom.

The only feasible options appear to revolve around online columns. If enough right-thinking bloggers, online news and opinion columnists, et al can somehow persuade the right people, and enough of them, with the right ideas, there is still a chance to keep America, Land of the Free, from becoming more than just an obsolete slogan and an historical anomaly.

In the meantime, given the toxic pork the Feds are about to force feed us, try to keep your food down.

Myth of Hands-Off Hoover Updated

For those interested in learning more about how George's Bush's Herbert Hoover's policies led to Barack Obama's FDR's New Deal debacle, I've updated my post on The Myth of 'Hands-Off' Hoover.

The post (and additional material) destroy the hypothesis, popular among Keynesian commentators today, that Hoover stood by idle while the Depression turned Great.

Greens Getting Warmed Up

Peter Cresswell at Not PC quotes Kathleen O'Brian at the Star-Ledger pondering: "Now that money is tight, will environmentalism turn out to have been just a passing trend—the political equivalent of the pet rock?"

Pretty unlikely, given Obama's picks for Sec. of DOE, EPA, etc. Right after he's done signing the $825 billion dollar boondoggle, look for Green issues to get much more press as Cap and Trade or Carbon Tax debates take center stage.

Progressives have gotten a whole new political lease on life with the election of the most 'environmentally friendly' administration in American history and they are just getting warmed up.

My evidence? Well, apart from the continuing talk in Congress about the need to "do something," there is this:

"People are becoming more in cognito in whatever their little luxuries are," she said. "So even if they buy organic or fair trade products, they're not going to flaunt it. They're going to be a little more subtle about it."

When a movement can exert the degree of moral leverage that instills this kind of guilt, you can be sure a culture is in the grip of a new medievalism.

If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider this:

"It's going to be the official policy of the land that we now do worry about greenhouse gases," [Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank] said. "This idea that, 'I'm an American — I can spew out greenhouse gas to my heart's content' will die off," he said. "There is a new sensibility about being sustaining, and not just in the environmental sense. The economy wasn't sustained, in that we couldn't go on forever the way we were."

Green totalitarianism continues unabated, just as the AGW hypothesis is crumbling in the face of new data and continual blowback from skeptics. Things are about to heat up.

The Captive Heart

Full review sometime in the future. In the meantime...

If you're in the mood for a quiet, sometimes even slow in parts, but intensely dramatic WWII POW film, watch The Captive Heart (1946).

In order to avoid being taken by the Gestapo, who are hunting him after his escape from Dachau, a Czech captain takes the identity of a killed British officer just before he's re-captured and sent to a prison camp. To keep up the charade and throw the Gestapo off his scent he begins to exchange letters with the man's wife back in England, who is unaware of the switch.

The dramatic interest is intensified as we learn that the dead man was callous to his wife before the war and they had fallen out. Gradually, the letters rekindle her love for him, while the captain finds himself falling in love with her as well.

This, along with several other intertwined sub-plots of prisoners and their loved ones back in Britain (seen in short flashbacks), forms the core of the story.

Plotwise, there are no rocket flares. But the way the story unfolds is compelling and there's no finer acting in any film than Michael Redgrave's performance as Captain Hasek. Many of the supporting cast are also superb, though few are well known even to film buffs. This buff ranks it in the top 25 films ever made, possibly, but unquestionably in the top 100.

There are many films which show courage in action. But to show the greater kind of courage required merely to endure the unendurable, day after day with no end in sight, and to never lose one's thirst for life and freedom, is a rare cinematic achievement. The Captive Heart does that with supreme skill.

Quote of the Day: On Writing

"Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead." - Gene Fowler

Woodhill on Why Stimuli Fail

I've never heard of Louis Woodhill before. But, he's given me a rare pleasure. It's very unusual to read an article that exposes an error so accurately, simply, and thoroughly. Here's an excerpt.

The very first step in every “stimulus” program is for the government to go out into the market and sell bonds.

When the government sells bonds, it takes money—and therefore demand—out of the economy. Then, some time later, the government puts the money back into the economy in the form of spending or tax rebates or whatever. Later, when the data becomes available, economists are shocked, shocked to find that “consumers saved their rebates” or “business investment fell by an unexpected amount”, or “imports increased”, thus completely negating the “stimulus”. Their hopes dashed, but their belief in “stimulus” unshaken, the stimulunatics then call for more “stimulus”.

The fact is that for the government to be able to sell the bonds in the first place, consumers have to save, or businesses have reduce their investments, or foreigners have to sell more in the U.S. Otherwise, where would the dollars to buy the bonds come from?

“Wait!” the stimulunatics cry. “What if the Federal Reserve buys the bonds with newly-created money? Won’t that increase demand?”

The answer is, “Sure—but then you don’t need the ‘stimulus’ program.”

The Keynesians who object in the comments are equally interesting.


Update:

Peter Creswell at Not PC has an extended commentary that adds meat to the subject.

Rosett On UN-Iran Lovefest

Another great column from Claudia Rosett, in Forbes.

To chair the 2009 governing board of the U.N.’s flagship agency, the multibillion-dollar globe-girdling United Nations Development Program, dedicated to promoting good governance and ending poverty, the U.N. has now picked–wait for it–the Islamic Republic of Iran.
...
But handing Iran the gavel of the UNDP executive board ranks right up there with the U.N.'s choice in 2003 of Libya to head the old Human Rights Commission, or Zimbabwe in 2007 to chair the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Another demonstration, as if we needed it, that the UN is years past its sell-by date. The U.S. should eliminate the stench and close the building in New York.

[Hat Tip: Pajamas Media]