Shut It Down

AM (an American combat aviator with an inquiring mind):  Gentlemen, our nation is asleep and in the throes of a nightmare.  We’re becoming mentally and emotionally paralyzed from the constant droning about the recovering economy, distractions from phony scandals, and obstruction from Republicans.  I say:  shut it down!

Old Gadfly:  Shut down what?

AM:  Shut down the nightmare.

IM (an American citizen with an inquiring mind):  How?

AM:  Shut down the Obamacare fiasco or the federal government.  We are rapidly approaching September 30, the deadline for a continuing resolution to fund the federal government.  The dilemma is that Republicans want to defund Obamacare while essentially funding other programs.  Obama has threatened to veto such a bill. A veto would then “shut down” the government. Such a result would be blamed on Republicans.

Old Gadfly:  Why would Republicans get blamed if Obama has an opportunity to compromise—something he keeps badgering Republicans to do?  Besides, Obamacare is still very unpopular with the public—premiums have already increased and will continue to rise significantly, Obama is granting waivers and subsidies for special interest or “privileged” groups in violation of the law, and he has delayed implementing provisions of the law, in violation of the law (among a list of many other issues with Obamacare).  It can’t always be “my way or the highway.”

AM:  All good points, Gadfly.  However, Obama and Democrats have proven to be disingenuous in this matter.  What is ironic is that Obama and the Democrat caucus in both houses of Congress deserve the credit (or blame) for creating such a monster.  Not a single Republican in the House or Senate voted for Obamacare.  Now, with all of his broken promises, implementation problems, and burdens placed upon the American public, Obama and Democrats absurdly expect Republicans to keep feeding this monster.

IM:  Perhaps Obamacare and its adverse impact on employment and the growing entitlement class is part of a more sinister plan?

Old Gadfly:  How so, IM?

IM:  It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy.  Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, both sociologists and political activists, published their strategy in a May 1966 article in The Nation.  The article was entitled, “The Weight of the Poor:  A Strategy to End Poverty.”  The idea was to overload the public welfare system to cause a financial crisis and then to blame it on capitalism.  This manufactured set of circumstances would then allow the political elite in power to substitute the failed capitalist system with socialism in the form of a new welfare system that guaranteed annual income, ultimately ending poverty.  A good indication as to how this has been happening over time is captured in the following chart, using federal budget data that compares the percentage of the federal budget that has been allocated to defense versus human resource programs (entitlement programs).  Notice the steep incline after the article was published.

Old Gadfly:  To understand these developments, it is important to grasp the ideological basis that underwrites them.  The progressive or modern liberal concept called poverty has been an enduring justification for social justice in the form of redistribution of wealth, and is closely aligned with Karl Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism.  Leon Trotsky admired Marx’s approach as a “scientific classification of human societies in the development of their productive forces and the structure of the relations of ownership, which constitute the anatomy of society.”  Dialectical materialism presumes human advancement through epochal crises as history marches forward.

AM: Obama keeps emphasizing crises; and, “Forward” was Obama’s slogan in the last campaign. 

IM:  Absolutely.  And, I would suggest that Obama’s claim to being the most transparent Administration in history refers to his vision, not his actions.  His vision is to transform America from a liberal democracy founded as a Constitutional Republic into a socialistic nation governed by a very powerful central government. 

Old Gadfly:  Obama sees an opportunity to bring into reality Woodrow Wilson’s early attempts to do the same thing.  Wilson completely subscribed to Marx’s dialectical materialism and published his own theory called historicism.  Wilson’s ideology fueled a strong progressive agenda to create a large, central government to promote social justice.  There is a wealth of evidence to track these developments.  For example, Ronald Pestritto has brilliantly analyzed and evaluated Wilson’s progressive efforts in Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism.  

I think the spiritual emptiness of dialectical materialism may have spawned the existentialism movement that started in the late 19th- and early 20th-century and permeated Western Europe.  In other words, dialectical materialism did not inspire nor feed spiritual needs—that is, a person’s sense of personal value, such as the need for belongingness, self-esteem, and self-actualization argued by Abraham Maslow.

AM:  These are heavy thoughts, Gadfly.  Yet, I can see why it is urgent to check the current cultural flow that seems to reflect a growing population hypnotized by a “free lunch from Obama” dream.

IM:  For the common American citizen, trying to understand what is going on in our nation may explain why the national mood is becoming more melancholic.

Old Gadfly:  Now that we have discussed some of the public reaction to the direction our nation is headed, let’s get back to the merits of shutting down the government.

IM:  I would start with the notion that we have allowed our federal government to incrementally get larger and larger, and thus more costly over time.  For example, in our last discussion we looked at a chart that compared the cost of government in relation to the Gross Domestic Product.  What the chart does not reveal is the actual cost of the federal government.  I did some analysis and discovered the cost per person in constant dollars was about $600 in 1933.  Today, the cost is about $12,000 per person.  This comparison says we have allowed the cost of government to increase 20 times greater than in 1933.  Why is the cost of government so expensive today?  Do we now have 20 times more programs and services?

AM:  I’ll be blunt:  the federal government has become a self-licking ice cream cone.  Unions have reinforced this notion.  We know that one kind of market failure is called monopoly.  Unions are a form of monopoly.  Yet, of all the working sectors, the highest concentration of union membership is in government.  The following chart is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Further, if we follow the money trail on “stimulus” spending, we would find a significant amount went to unionized sectors.  Detroit’s bankruptcy is a classic example of the unsustainability of a self-licking ice cream cone.  And, those who promote such absurdity expect the federal government to bail them out.  Are we fools?  Where does the federal government get the money for bailouts?  They take it from us in the form of taxes.  They play and we pay.  How stupid are we?

IM:  Why stop at defunding Obamacare?

Old Gadfly:  You have a point.  Instead of being dissed by the cavalier suggestion of phony scandals, perhaps Republicans should delay funding to organizations associated with the obstruction of justice.

AM:  I think what I am hearing is that until the Department of Justice provides documentation on Fast and Furious, the Department of State provides documentation on the Benghazi incident, and the Internal Revenue Service provides documentation on how certain groups were targeted, these organizations would not get funded.  Perhaps members within those organizations would become more forthcoming as whistleblowers.  There is a reason our Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of the purse.

Old Gadfly:  There is an important concept underwriting our discussion:  justice.  What we are witnessing is anything but justice in the current Administration.  The same government that would fine Hobby Lobby $1.3 million per day for not complying with the contraception and abortifacients  provision of Obamacare placed Lois Lerner on administrative leave for months with full pay and benefits while the Administration obstructs Congress’s Constitutional duty for oversight of the IRS and other executive branch departments and agencies.  Imagine this:  if an employee is not happy with Hobby Lobby’s hiring arrangements, he or she is free to find a different employer.  Yet, we do not have the freedom to refuse to pay taxes to an organization that violates our trust by abusing its authority.

IM:  I agree with AM:  shut it down.  We have 50 states that can take back the authority prescribed for them in the ninth and tenth amendments to our Constitution.

AM:  If politicians, Republican and Democrat, refuse to muster the courage to lead at this point in our history, then it is a matter of time when the federal government will experience a far worse fate than a simple shut down—it will implode.

IM:  Besides courage we also need judgment.  Is there no judgment within the Administration?

AM:  I remember, during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Obama was accused of having “no experience.”  This observation did not intimidate Obama—he agreed. But, more importantly Obama boasted, he had superior judgment that more than substituted for his lack of experience. 

Old Gadfly:  Obama speaks and acts like a true intellectual without an ounce of wisdom.  Thomas Sowell brilliantly explains that there is a major difference between intellectual and intelligent.  Here is an excerpt from his book, Intellectuals and Society:

 The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges.

            Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.

            Wisdom is the rarest quality of all—the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding.  Wisdom is the fulfillment of the ancient admonition, “With all your getting, get understanding.”  Wisdom requires self-discipline and an understanding of the realities of the world, including the limitations of one’s own experience and of reason itself.  The opposite of high intellect is dullness or slowness, but the opposite of wisdom is foolishness, which is far more dangerous.[1]

IM:  May I suggest that the combination of dull Copernican drones following Obama’s foolishness is not new?  The distinctions described by Sowell existed more than two thousand years ago.  They have been documented in such historical texts as Proverbs in the Bible.  As we have discussed in previous conversations, Proverbs 26:11 comes to mind.

Old Gadfly:  If our national leaders have lost the capacity for the wisdom that might overcome the foolishness that has put our nation on such thin ice, then we may find ourselves seeking some solace in the book that follows Proverbs.

AM:  I’m not ready for Ecclesiastes.  To our elected officials, I say:  grow a spine and shut it down—if not Obamacare, then the federal government!

Old Gadfly:  The deadline is six weeks away.  How do we get the word out?

IM:  We need faith in the resilience of Americans to deal with any chaos from a government shutdown.  We must also muster our own courage to tell our family, friends, neighbors, elected officials, and anyone else we encounter between now and decision-time in September to “shut it down.”

Old Gadfly:  Let’s get started.  

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[1] Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, (New York NY:  Basic Books, 2011), p. 4.