Obama’s punitive liberalism,

or why treating success as a form of failure is wrong

William McGurn, in a brief but splendid article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, helps us to understand the way that moralism plays out in Obama’s policy prescriptions. The key term, McGurn notes, is “fairness,” a loaded word that Obama (like many liberals) deploys as a moral bludgeon. Consider the issue of taxes. At Saddleback Church in Southern California the other day, one of the issues Rick Warren asked McCain and Obama about was taxes. “Define rich,” he asked. “I mean give me a number. Is it $50,000, $100,000, $200,000? Everybody keeps talking about who we’re going to tax. How can you define that?” Some on the Left have pilloried McCain for saying that he considered an income of $5 million a year “rich,” but the gravamen of McCain’s response, as McGurn points out, came in his elaboration: “I don’t want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich.”

How different was Obama’s response. What he was looking for, he said, was “a sense of balance, and fairness in our tax code. It is time for folks like me who make more than $250,000 to pay our fair share.”

“Our fair share.” That is the Obama refrain. “[W]e will save Social Security for future generations by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.” It’s a small step from the invocation of “our fair share” to Obama’s call for a tax on “the windfall profits of oil companies,” a tax increase on capitals gains, elimination of the tax on Social Security tax, etc., etc.

The crucial point here is that what Obama is interested in is not increasing but in promulgating redistributionist policies that make it harder for people to prosper economically. McGurn recalls Obama’s response to ABC’s Charlie Gibson when Gibson observed that rasing taxes led to decreased revenues: “Well, Charlie,” Obama replied, “what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

“For purposes of fairness”: that means, “for purposes of economic egalitarianism.” McGurn comments:

[I]t doesn’t really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It’s not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if it’s done in the name of fairness.

Now there are good reasons Mr. Obama is not likely to pursue the revenue side of the fairness question. As this newspaper noted in a recent editorial, the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service does not show to Mr. Obama’s advantage. As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes — the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.

The bottom line is that when Obama invokes “fairness,” he wants us to feel guilty about economic success. This is the secret of his appeal to to socialistically inclined. It is also the reason why the rest of us are so uneasy about the prospect of an Obama administration.

Read the whole thing. Pay attention to the concept of "Punitive Liberalism."

Very Slick:

Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars this morning, Barack Obama delivered an amazing show of chutzpah. John McCain had addressed the VFW yesterday, and as the Associated Press reports, he was predictably critical of Obama:

McCain . . . said Obama "tried to legislate failure" in the Iraq war and had put his ambition to be president above the interests of the United States. He said the Illinois senator did this by pushing for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq and by voting in the Senate against a major appropriations bill to help fund the troop increase.

Here is Obama's reply:

"One of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Sen. McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same. . . ."

Of course, if Obama were to accuse McCain of picking his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition, everyone would laugh, because it obviously is not true. By contrast, there is quite a bit of evidence that Obama has placed political expediency above national security (for an excellent example, see our item yesterday on his shifting explanations for his original opposition to the liberation of Iraq).

In politics one often hears the charge of hypocrisy: My opponent criticizes me for X, but he has done Y, which is just as bad or worse. Obama's argument here, though, is roughly opposite in form. He concedes that McCain is above reproach on this particular subject and therefore demands that McCain treat him as if he were beyond reproach. Obama's acknowledgment of a McCain virtue is well and good, but it does not mitigate or excuse his own shortcoming.

Five Ways to Wreck a Recovery

Giving in to protectionism

Blaming the messenger

Increasing taxes in a downturn

Assuming bigger government will bring back growth

Ignoring the cost of inconsistency

Go read it

From the Shanghai Stringer:

Human Nature Being What It Is

Back to the 19th-century

We saw a glimpse of the back to the future world with the neo-czarist invasion of Vladimir Putin. Russia knows the great truth about the West: it will pour a half-million people into the street to protest the United States removing a homicidal dictator to foster democracy, but not a half-dozen to object to Russia attempting to remove a democratic government to foster dictatorship. Absolute standards of morality are passé; for the Left grandstanding about Abu Ghraib brings some sort of psychological recompense for being a blessed Westerner; objecting to Russian or Chinese behavior either is futile or gives no kick to a sense of self-loathing.

The Russians understand the Thucydidean truth that ‘the strong do as they please, and the weak do as they must.’ Putin et. al., as in the case of the Russian leveling of Grozny, have sized up the world — the sanctimonious E.U., the blow-hard U.N., the self-important World Court — and in response have rephrased Stalin’s quip “How many divisions do they have?” And they are right, of course. Old Gorby has been writing his usual post-Marxist nonsense with barely disguised glee over the resurgence of Russian pride and power. Most Western talking heads on television blather about “Bush and the neo-cons,” “We gave the Georgians the green light,” or “We went into Iraq”, in-between a sort of poorly-disguised respect for raw Russian power.

The only upside to this disaster is that Georgia was not in NATO and thus spared the alliance the humiliation of yawning while a member evoked Article V and learned its allies are out to their accustomed latte.

Child Abuse?

All week I also watched fourteen-something children in China competing in gymnastics, with the assurance that no Olympic committee would ever dare inform the communist party there that it is making a mockery of international rules. Meanwhile if we are not to hear anything about Tibet, then spare us the cute stories about the Pandas.

All About Race — in Orwellian Fashion

Going through letters and email of the last two weeks, and getting very tired of the supposedly outraged who write in to cry “racist” anytime one worries about the neo-socialist agenda of Barack Obama or his utter lack of experience. We are witnessing a sort of national liberal outrage that, in a year when everything favored the Democrats, Obama is still running near even with McCain — something that therefore must be explained as attributable not to his inexperience, gaffes, inability to speak extemporaneously, and messianic self-image, but instead to American racism.

Read the whole thing.

From the Shanghai Stringer:

Obama's Tax Plan Is Really a Welfare Plan

Barack Obama's tax plan is the opposite of supply-side economics. He proposes to raise marginal rates for just about every federal tax. He also proposes a raft of tax credits that taxpayers can receive if they engage in various government-specified activities.

Moreover, the tax credits would mostly go to those who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. His trick is to make the tax credits "refundable." Thus, if the tax credit is for $1,000, but the taxpayer would otherwise only pay $200 in taxes, the government would write a check to the taxpayer for $800. If the taxpayer pays nothing in federal income taxes, the government would pay him the whole $1,000.

Such credits are not tax cuts. Indeed, they should be called The New Tax Welfare. In effect, Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand a slew of government spending programs that are disguised as tax credits. The spending on these programs is then subtracted from the total tax burden, in order to make the claim that his tax plan is a net tax cut overall.

On the tax side of the ledger, the details released by his campaign last week confirm what a President Obama has in mind for our most productive citizens. The top individual income tax rate, for example, would be increased by 13%, to 39.6%; the next-highest rate would be raised to 36%. The top rates on capital gains and dividends would rise by a third, to 20%

The Social Security payroll tax would be raised between 16% to 32% for families making over $250,000 a year. This means that the real returns these people get from their lifetime payments into the retirement program will be driven below 0%, according to my own previous research, which was published by the Cato Institute and elsewhere.

Mr. Obama also wants a permanent federal estate tax, with a top rate of 45%; his health-insurance plan includes a new payroll tax on employers; and he also contemplates several increases in the corporate income tax, including a new so-called windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Then there is the spending side of the ledger. Mr. Obama proposes a fully refundable Making Work Pay Tax Credit, which would have the government pay out $500 to each worker and $1,000 to couples -- reminiscent of George McGovern's 1972 election proposal for the government to send a $1,000 check to everyone.

His American Opportunity Tax Credit would provide a $4,000, fully refundable tax credit for college tuition expenses. His Mortgage Interest Tax Credit would provide a 10% credit -- refundable -- to offset mortgage interest payments for lower- and middle-income families. His Health Care Tax Credits, which the campaign says "will ensure that health insurance is available and affordable for all families," include "a new refundable 50 percent health tax credit on employee premiums paid by employers."

Read the whole thing.

From the Shanghai Stringer:

Obama the Racialist

Why is Obama foolishly evoking race time after time?

Obama's problems with race have nothing to do with his half-African ancestry or his own experience with racism and unfairness, but boil down to his deftly wanting it both ways: reminding the Germans he is a different sort of American from what they're used to (false, they knew Rice and Powell well enough), while preempting by suggesting others will evoke race, but in a negative context. But his polls, I wager, will begin to slip from all this, because all this sophisticated triangulation is about to blow up in the public mind.

1) The voter is starting to hear serially from Obama about race; they were promised a racially transcendent candidate, but so far Obama seems obsessed with identity, either accusing others of racism, or using heritage himself for political advantage. This is a tragic blunder.

2) He has the same want-it-both-ways with odious racists: Rev. Wright is a former spiritual advisor, and "brilliant" scholar who nevertheless serially slurs America, whites, Italians, Jews, etc. Ludacris is "a great talent" and "talented" to such an extent Obama wants him in his iPod menu, and has met with him — but also a racist to be shunned. Ditto Pfleger. A pattern is emerging: Obama associates with or tolerates racists when such quasi-intimacy cements street-cred as an authentic minority or someone cool in the anti-Bush mode; but then when they inevitably revert to form, he not merely casts them off, but is "shocked" at their usual expression, and so like speed bumps they litter the roadway as he barrels ahead.

3). The "typical white person", grandma-under-the-bus riff, Pennsylvania-"clingers" rant etc., 'no more disown Rev, Wright/but now leaving Trinity Church', etc. themselves are immaterial, but in toto provide a thin margin of tolerance when something like Ludacris or Obama's latest accusation of racism surfaces.

4) Right now Obama does not need to solidify his 90% African-American base or the Moveon.org white liberal adherents; but instead he must remember why he lost all those primaries to Hillary and to what degree his campaign since then has addressed those concerns that lost him those electorates. When a West Virginian hears that Obama is accusing others of racism, or hears him promise that racial reparations will now be a matter of government deeds not words, or a rapper brags he is a favorite of Obama and then slurs Clinton, McCain, Bush in thinly disguised racist terms, it starts to create an image of someone who is not bringing people together, but precisely the opposite.

Why all this? Inexperience and hubris — the same overconfidence that makes him say we need a Pentagon-sized new civilian aid department, to inflate our tires to avoid drilling, and must stop merely talking about reparations and starting doing something about them. His handlers need to return to the teleprompter, since all these incidents have in common the impromptu moment.

Postmodern Architecture

It's getting loony, but then who is to say that the Leaning Tower of Pisa might not really be the Victory Column?

What was stunning about the New York Times' Bob Herbert's charge that the McCain campaign, in its satire on Obama's messianic sense of self, had deliberately inserted clips of the phallic Leaning Tower of Pisa and Washington Monument to drive home a racist trope about black men and white women was not just his embarrassing ignorance of architecture, or his infantile pop-Freudianism, or even his preemptory efforts to tie all criticism of Obama to racism and thereby stifle dissent. It was the sheer arrogance in the manner in which he persisted in his false points: "An image right there... of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and ... the Washington Monument.... You tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed there...".

If one listens to the clip, he asks rhetorical questions, and then in condescending fashion chides his bewildered panelists about their inability to fathom his own pseudo-charges: "You remember that! Alright!...Look at the beginning of that ad again! You tell me!...Pow! ...I really wish someone would answer the question!...Run the ad again and take a look at it!"

There is never any sense of humility or self-doubt that he might just not know anything about the Victory Column or campaign ads. Instead, there is a very strong sense that all he has to do is evoke the charge of racism and, presto, all facts, details, and truth thereby simply are to disappear and skeptics are to cower.

So here we are this summer: a messianic candidate, rebuked in his efforts to use the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign backdrop, then settles for the garish Victory Column, the 19th-century monument to Prussian militarism and conquest over its neighbors, and thereby provides fodder for his supporters to allege that when others use clips of his silly stagecraft they are really inserting phallic symbols in racist fashion. Orwell couldn't have thought all this up.

Read the whole thing.

Obama on Clarence Thomas

So let's see. By the time he was nominated, Clarence Thomas had worked in the Missouri Attorney General's office, served as an Assistant Secretary of Education, run the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sat for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation's second most prominent court. Since his "elevation" to the High Court in 1991, he has also shown himself to be a principled and scholarly jurist.

Meanwhile, as he bids to be America's Commander in Chief, Mr. Obama isn't yet four years out of the Illinois state Senate, has never held a hearing of note of his U.S. Senate subcommittee, and had an unremarkable record as both a "community organizer" and law school lecturer. Justice Thomas's judicial credentials compare favorably to Mr. Obama's Presidential résumé by any measure. And when it comes to rising from difficult circumstances, Justice Thomas's rural Georgian upbringing makes Mr. Obama's story look like easy street.

Even more troubling is what the Illinois Democrat's answer betrays about his political habits of mind. Asked a question he didn't expect at a rare unscripted event, the rookie candidate didn't merely say he disagreed with Justice Thomas. Instead, he instinctively reverted to the leftwing cliché that the Court's black conservative isn't up to the job while his white conservative colleagues are.

So much for civility in politics and bringing people together. And no wonder Mr. Obama's advisers have refused invitations for more such open forums, preferring to keep him in front of a teleprompter, where he won't let slip what he really believes.

British anti-Americanism 'based on misconceptions':

A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states.

The poll was commissioned by America In The World , an independent pressure group that launches on Monday and aims to improve understanding and appreciation of the US in Britain and around the world.

Tim Montgomerie, its director, said factual inaccuracies and mistaken assumptions have contributed to Britons and Europeans taking a hostile stance towards their most powerful ally, which often acted against national interests.

"We wanted to find out how British people understood America and found that there was an unbalanced view. Maybe there are good reasons but if we cleared a lot of that factual ignorance we would have a better understanding of what America really is," said Mr Montgomerie, who also founded the influential ConservativeHome website three years ago.

The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

Asked if it was true that "from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons," 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam's arsenal to him, compared to Russia's 57 per cent, France's 13 per cent and China's 12 per cent.

Read the whole bloody thing.

Iraq today:

Yet too many Americans, consumed with their daily lives or restricted by partisan blinders, see the progress and say: “Who cares? What does it matter? We should have never been there in the first place.” While I disagree with this position, I understand its origins. Americans feel betrayed by what many consider the suspect rationale for the war, have been frustrated by its early conduct, and remain wary of a war without end. These feelings don’t bother me, as they could change when victory — and therefore a drawdown — is achieved in Iraq.

What bothers me, however, is the self-aggrandizing notion that opposing the Iraq war then automatically devalues the important of the endeavor today. Today’s hardcore Iraq war detractors — politicians, pundits, and polemicists alike — all use the same lines of argument to smear the importance of the Iraq war at every turn. The surge was purely a tactical success to them, whereas Iraq overall has been a strategic blunder.

First, they claim, Iraq is not a central front in the global war on terror because al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq in 2003; second, Iraq is a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan; third, the presence of troops in Iraq — and anywhere in the Middle East — perpetuates their hatred for us, thereby creating more jihadists. While there are plenty of overarching reasons to dispute these claims, my latest trip to Samarra suggests these assertions are not just counter-factual, but dangerously divisive.

I challenge anyone to walk the streets of Fallujah, Baqubah, Samarra, or elsewhere in Iraq and tell the locals that their city — their neighborhood — has not been an al Qaeda battlefront. Every Samarran I spoke with — every single one — brought up “al Qaeda,” pronouncing the name with a guttural disdain distinct in Iraqi accents. Most have a family member who has been killed by al Qaeda’s indiscriminate tactics, and still more have no desire to live in their seventh-century fantasy world.

“But this isn’t al Qaeda central we’re talking about,” detractors might say. “These are local thugs acting under their banner.” Wrong. Al Qaeda central has been funneling foreign fighters — primarily Syrians and Saudis — to Samarra, and throughout Iraq, for years. In fact, a few months ago, a raid south of Samarra uncovered the primary administrative hub for al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The bunker complex — piled with medical records, travel documents, and pay stubs — was where foreigners were sent before receiving their suicide assignments. Al Qaeda literature and videos littered the underground headquarters.

While the vast majority of the leadership and financing for AQI comes from outside Iraq, most of their foot soldiers in Samarra are indeed locals. Nonetheless, unlike Americans who wring our hands over ‘foreign versus local’ fighters, Samarrans I spoke with draw no such distinction — same ideology, same brand, same violent tactics. Al Qaeda made Iraq its central front in 2004, and Iraqis faced the consequences. Today, al Qaeda central wishes it had chosen more wisely.

As for the “distraction” argument, war detractors actually have it backwards — Iraq has actually proven to be a distraction for al Qaeda. Their choice to fight in Iraq was, in retrospect, a strategic blunder. (Although it wouldn’t have been, had we withdrawn as some proposed). Al Qaeda had little indigenous support there prior to 2003, and Iraq’s educated and largely secular population was not predisposed to radical Islam. As a result, al Qaeda’s defeat in places like Samarra has denied them terrain for decades to come; and has once again relegated them to the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Al Qaeda will indeed think twice next time they attempt to expand their power base.

America must re-commit to winning the war in Afghanistan as well — plain and simple. We need to kill Osama bin Laden and every last one of his henchmen. However — unlike Iraq — Afghanistan is not advantageous terrain for American warfighters, as al Qaeda benefits from widespread tribal support, safe haven in Pakistan, and bountiful organic funding sources. While I’m confident that General Petraeus will recalibrate U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, it will be a tough fight — requiring additional troops, time, and resources.

Lastly, war detractors continue to propagate the myth that the terrorists and insurgents are “anti-American antibodies” trying to keep their body politic healthy. The American presence in Iraq, they argue, is the cause of the sickness there. If we just leave, everything will get better. My experiences on the ground in Samarra — and the facts of the new counterinsurgency strategy — directly refute this. As we have surged into neighborhoods — to protect the Iraqi people, earning their trust, and benefiting from their help — violence has dropped, and locals have turned against the jihadists.

American troops are tolerated, even welcomed when they effectively provide security; but their presence is cursed when it does not accompany progress. Violence persists not because American troops are present, but when we are present and feckless. For years, al Qaeda exploited our inability to protect the Iraqi people, spreading rumors that our incompetence was actually part of a larger conspiracy to keep them suffering. The security structures American forces have helped build — of, with, and for the people — has changed this. One trip to Samarra would demonstrate this to any objective observer.

Read the whole thing.

Hidden Victories In Georgia