Via Glenn I learned that there is a great deal of debate over the failure of the “women and children first” rule to apply to the crash of the Costa Concordia.  It would appear that the consensus opinion is that either: (a) this is evidence of the coarsening of society in the hundred years since the wreck of the Titanic, or (b) this is evidence of the “victory” of the women’s right movement to overcome not just the barriers of sexism, but also its protections.

I would like to suggest a third reason, but one that is no less troubling in its implications:  the chaos came about because it was an Italian ship.

Last night I had dinner with some Canadian friends who also live here in Germany.  They had just returned from a ski weekend and we shared the same observation.   It is on crowded Alpine slopes where one learns first-hand of the vast differences in how various nationalities approach the concept of order.

Formed by the collision of the European and Mediterranean tectonic plates, this mountain range is a metaphoric division of two very different cultures.  It is on this boundary where the residents of those two cultures meet on holiday weekends.

The British queue even if it’s a queue of one.  Should an interloper attempt to cut the lift line, the English response is to politely inform the intruder that there is a queue.  Germans also queue, but they aren’t polite to the interloper.  They crossly inform intruders, in German, that they are in the wrong.  The occasional American skiing the Alps tends to start off polite like the Brit, however, should the line-cutter not oblige, is apt to forcefully enforce the queue.  All three nationalities, along with Scandinavians, Dutch, Austrians, Swiss, and the rare Canuck, share the same basic recognition that those already in the queue have higher priority, and will therefore “wait their turn.”

Italians, especially southern Italians, do not respect this concept on the slopes.  Those already ahead of them when they arrive at the lift are an obstacle to be overcome, not to be waited out.  Pushing, elbows, and skiing across the top of your own skis are all permitted according to Italian rules.

You see this on the roads too.  On the autobahns of Germany, the right lane is where you drive unless you are passing, after which you return immediately to the right.  It is this adherance to order that makes it possible for trucks travelling 100 kilometers per hour to co-exist with cars moving twice as fast.  On Italy’s autostrada, two lanes is just a suggestion.  Three cars abreast is not uncommon, as a faster car coming upon two slower travellers, passes his way forward, often on the right.

Spaniards are like this too.  French are far more Italian than they are German.  And Greeks?  Well, I can’t say, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen any Greeks skiing–probably because they can’t afford to.

Gross generalizations?  Sure.  There are rule-breaking Germans and orderly Italians.  (The latter perhaps because they hail from the northen part of Italy that until 1919 was Austria.)  But the stereotypes are true enough to give you a sense of a country’s culture. 

In German restaurants after the waitress has brought you your meal, she will return to ask, “Alles in ordnung?”  Instead of asking if she can get you anything else, she wonders, “Is everything in order?”  Order is everything.  Certainly, Germans take it to an extreme, as I complained last week.  But German order is preferable to Italian anarchy–at least in small doses.

To those who view this weekend’s catastrophe as evidence of the end of civility, I say, cheer up.  Had it been a German or British ship that went down in the North Sea, I submit that the scene would have been far more reminiscent of the Titanic’s “women and children first” rule, than the chaos of the Costa Concordia. 

On the other hand, the Concorida gives witness to the unbridgeable divide in Europe.  The Continent is two cultures separated by a common currency.  Economic chaos is the inevitable result.  And women and children may end up being the first thrown overboard.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Glenn and Rand for the links.  While you’re here, take a look around.

MORE: 

Theodore Dalrymple:  “Greeks aren’t Germans.”  True dat.  And neither are they Irish or Italian.  The EU, both in population and in physical size, approximates that of the United States.  Don’t let that fool you.  Cultural differences (akin to that scary “stereotype” thing some label as bigoted) are real.  And they are far greater than the East Coast-West Coast, North-South, urban-rural, black-white divides that you find in the United States.  Don’t let the common currency fool you; Europe is a concept not a country.  This is the European Disunion.  The “E.D.”  Make all the erectile dysfunction jokes you like.

Read the whole thing.

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On the same day that Standard & Poors downgraded Italian debt, along with the bonds of eight other European nations, an Italian cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany.  German radio network, SWR, is reporting that among the 4,200 passengers are at least 500 Germans.

I don’t wish to exploit a tragedy, but I can’t help but to think of this story as a metaphor.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Glenn for the link.  Take a look around while you’re here.

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I strongly recommend John Tamny’s oped on Forbes.  Here’s the money quote about Americans:

“We’re an ideal, not an ethnicity. Thank goodness.”

I’ve long argued that same point to any who would listen.  I’ve lived about a third of my adult life in three foreign countries on two different continents and traveled to many more.  What I’ve come to realize is that there are very few places on this globe where you can become a nationality because you want to.  I could move to Japan, learn the language and promise to forevermore use only chopsticks.  Doesn’t matter.  I can never become Japanese.  But someone from Nagasaki can move to Nashville and be just as American as any redneck you’ll ever find on Second Avenue.

All we ask is that to become American that you first recognize that it is freedom that makes us great.  But also recognize that freedom is a two-way street.  It means that as others extend the freedom to you to be you, that you give them the same courtesy in response.  In little things, it means that if you want to wash your car on a Sunday, in America you can.  And if you’d rather spend that day at rest, you can do that too.

In bigger things, as Tamny points out, it means that you mustn’t be a slave to tradition.  I’m a student of wine, so let me use an oenological example.  For a wine to be a champagne, it must be made: in Champagne-a region in France, made from only a few select grape varietals, and made according to the méthode champenoise.  Given that Champagne is so far north and grapes grown there are often under-ripe, it was usually the case that the only way wines from there could be made palatable was by the addition of a little sugar.  It was that late addition of sugar to the bottle that gave rise to the bubbles.  Now, if you’re a believer in global warming, you might believe that this would be a good thing for the vintners of Champagne, as it would allow their grapes additional time to ripen and therefore create another avenue to sell their wines.  But you would be wrong.  For a wine to be labeled “champagne,” remember, it must be made in the méthode champenoise–the traditional way of making a sparkling wine in Champagne.  So the Champage producer who would like to make a still wine from his grapes would be out of luck.  Why?  Because he bucked tradition, and tradition dictates (not to mention law and international treaty) that for a wine to carry the word “Champagne” anywhere on the label (remember, Champagne is a region, not a synomym for sparkling wine) it must be a sparkling wine.

Okay, so you don’t care for wine, and you especially don’t care for pretentious French wines.  Fine.  But Tamny’s point applies to industries far and wide.  When tradition dictates what is within the bounds of what you’re allowed to do, someone else will find a better way around your stupid tradition, and when they do, they will take away all your customers too.  That’s the American way.  Or–Tamny’s point–it used to be the American way. 

“. . . Entrepreneurs by definition disrupt the existing and accepted commercial order, and considering how many on the planet tend to cling to what already exists and is comfortable, many around us would naturally deem us a bit scruffy for always rocking the economic boat.”

And, while we’re on the subject of wine . . . it is the American way that has made it the case that since 1976, knowledgeable wine afficianadoes have recognized that the greatest red Bordeaus and the finest white Burgundies in the world come not from France, but from California–where until recently experimentation and entrepreuership were encouraged in not just the wine industry.

Read the whole thing.  And may we Americans continue to make some of the world’s greatest wines.

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After I leave here in a couple weeks, there are going to be a lot of things I will miss about Germany.  Sunday isn’t one of them.

Finally.  I had been waiting days for the weather to break. Rain, cold, snow, wind–almost every day this week has been the same.  About two hours ago, while I was cleaning out my bedroom, I saw a strange glimmer on the wall—the sheen of natural light peaking through the window.  There was a gap of blue between the clouds.  I raced out to the car, hooked up the bike rack and put my bike on it.  Off I went to the self-service car wash to powerwash away the grime so that the bike would be clean enough to ship back to the States.  After that I was going to return with the car and do the same.

So I got there and plugged some change into the machine.  Nothing.  Put the coin in again.  Nothing.  The machine wouldn’t accept any coins.  Broken, I thought.  Or maybe it was full and couldn’t hold any more money.  I moved the car to another bay.  Again, nothing.  It takes credit cards, so I tried that.  Nothing!  Again! I tried a third and gave up.

No signs.  No explanation.  Just the shared German expectation, apparently, that washing your car on Sundays is verboten.  It doesn’t matter that the exercise in vehicular cleanliness bothers not a soul and requires no one to work on their “day of rest.”  Never mind the fact that in this post-religious society there is no scriptural basis for closing—which wouldn’t be justification anyway. It is simply that YOU WILL NOT DO ANY WORK ON SUNDAY!

I wanted to scream.  But that’s one of the problems with the tyranny of bureacracy: at whom would I curse?  Rules that are made for everyone are made by no-one.  Complaining is like punching the wind.

Unfortunately, America is playing catch up with ther Germans.  Whether it’s a sex shop in Missouri or incandescent light bulbs in your home, American government of both the left and the right is increasingly comfortable telling you how you must live your life.  It wasn’t always like this.  But unfortunately it’s one of the perils of big government.  When government is responsible for 40% of a nation’s spending, government will necessarily involve itself in 40% of its countrymen’s decisions. 

Sad.  Sad too is the fact that my narrow window of opportunity is now closed; it’s raining again.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Glenn for the link.  While you’re here, please look around.

I’ve received a few emails.  Some with similar stories.  Others expressing support for the idea of a mandated day of rest. 

Here’s the thing about the soft tyranny of bureaucracy: if you stimulate soft tyranny enough, it will grow hard.

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I once heard it that President Lyndon Johnson said that the measure of a bill’s worth was not the good that could result, but the bad that could be done were the same power to fall into the hands of your political opponents.  I don’t know whether or not LBJ really said such a thing, but the idea is certainly true.

It is within this context that President Obama’s signing statement regarding the National Defense Authorization Act should send signals of alarm to Americans of all political stripes: 

“I have the power to detain Americans . . . but I won’t.”

That isn’t exactly what the President said, but it is what he implied when he assured us that “My Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.” 

It has long been said of America that we are a nation of laws, not men.  The strength of the American system comes not from the notion that we give our leaders the power to do the right thing, but that we deny to our leaders the ability to do the wrong thing.  If you number yourselves among those who console themselves that Barack Obama will not use such an awesome power against Americans, I imagine that you might find some among the Republican field who don’t give you the same fuzzy feeling.  And that is why this is a bad law.  For no terrorist can do as much lasting harm to America as can an American President with the unrestricted power to detain citizens forever.

Related post:  Stop Waiting for Superman 

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Now that we’ve had the chance to review last year’s results, let’s go forward to 2012’s predictions:

1.  It’s the end of the Euro as we know it.  Someone is going to leave the currency union.  If Germany was wise, it would be them.  (Sure, a strong Deutschmark would put pressure on their exports, but it would give huge buying power to its people–not to mention, having Euro-denominated debts would greatly reduce its debt load.)  But inertia and obstinacy, especially among political classes, is a powerful thing.  More likely is that Portugal, Ireland, Greece, or Spain will be kicked out of a “full” currency union.  Chaos will ensue.

2.  Before the Euro breaks apart, first will come a failed Italian debt auction in February.  The ECB will finally flood the system with cash.  After a few days of rejoicing, reality will set in.  Gold will soar eventually above $2,000.  The Euro will fall below $1.10.  Germany will get nervous.  In short, nothing will have changed, except that more bankers will have been made whole on their bad debts at the expense of taxpayers.

3.  While long-term investors should look at what is happening in Europe as reason to disassociate themselves from unsustainable sovereign debt, in a world awash in “free” money, there remain few real long-term investors.  Instead, the “flight to safety will push up the prices on treasuries.  The U.S. ten-year note will spend almost the entire year at or under two percent, and will even flirt briefly with one.

4.  Even with interest rates ridiculously low for another year, the housing market will not recover.  The problem is and will continue to be the banks’ holding back of a shadow inventory of 6 million homes either in foreclosure, or badly behind on their payments.  Until that clears the market, real estate will not find its bottom.

5.  Another drag on the economy will be 2012’s Kredit Anstalt moment.  Not sure if it will be BNP, or DeutscheBank, or someone else (there are so many bad banks from which to choose), but a major European bank will fail, and fail spectacularly.  There won’t be enough money to bail them out and the ripple effects will shock the world.  World stock markets will collapse.  Countries will try currency controls to contain the crisis, but will succeed in only making it worse.  By the last quarter of the year, the phrase “global depression” will be freely used.

6.  The Fed will end the year still fighting a mythical deflation monster with an arsenal of ridiculously low rates and gimmicky asset purchases.  As a result, inflation will be coming to America.  Brutally so.  But not in 2012.

7.  There will be less employed people in America at the end of 2012 than at the beginning.  Still, because of the vast swaths of the disenchanted who simply leave the job market, the unemployment rate might appear to be little changed, or perhaps might even improve.

8.  Europe’s PIIGS will have two new members:  Belgium and France.  Each will end the year paying more than 6% on its 10-year debts.

9.  Iran and Israel will not come to blows.  There will be no bombing of Iranian reactors.  But the heated rhetoric will not dissipate either.

10.  Iran will come to blows with the United States.  Not sure how or where it will come, but they will launch a successful symbolic strike at what they perceive as impotence.  However, war will not be the result.  What will result is $120 oil, adding to the economic catastrophe.

11.  Russian revolts will continue until they are violently put down.  Think Tiananmen on steroids.  Putin will hold power.  At any cost.  Europe, enslaved by its dependence on Russian natural gas, will timidly express “grave concern.”  There will be calls for America to withdraw from the 2014 Winter Olympics to be hosted in the Russian ski resort of Sochi.  Not wishing to repeat Carter’s 1980 Moscow performance, President Obama will ignore the advice, but to no avail:  he will be pilloried for being even weaker than Carter.

12.  2011’s Arab Spring will result in 2012’s Arab Winter of Discontent.  Egypt will continue to be a mess.  Turkey will be teetering on the brink.

13.  NATO will announce that it will end its involvement in Afghanistan in 2014.

14.  Speaking of NATO . . .   The annual NATO conference in Chicago in May will be a disaster as the splintering economies of several NATO members prompt calls for the alliance to dissolve.  Even worse, is the fact that it is simultaneously scheduled to coincide with the G8 Conference, also in Chicago.  Like rotting fruit to maggots, the spring meetings will draw tens of thousands of anarchists, militants, communists, and Methodists.  It will be 1968 all over again as the city is consumed by riots and a heavy-handed police response.  Pundits from left and right will savage President Obama for the sheer stupidity of allowing these two events to occur in his hometown just six months before the election.  Occupy Wall Street will completely beclown itself, taking down its President with it.  He will never again poll above 43% approval among likely voters after May.

15.  The first economic surprise of the year will be that Europe’s failings will show that CDSs are not in as bad a shape as everyone had feared. 

16.  The second economic surprise of 2012 will be ETFs.  The complicated investment strategies will be exposed as Enron-like impenetrable schemes.  At least one big respected investment house will collapse as a result.

17.  Now to the elections . . .  Republicans will pick up between 8 and 12 seats in the Senate, taking control of the upper chamber, but not achieving a filibuster-proof majority.  Among the gains will be Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  The surprise of the night will be Florida.  Bill Nelson will lose.  Linda Lingle and Scott Brown will  finish excruciatingly close races–close because in both liberal states, President Obama will vastly underperform expectations due to low turnout.  In fact, 2012 will be the lowest turnout election since 2000 as blacks, youth, non-government unions, and social conservatives see their numbers fall off from 2008 and 2004.  Harry Reid will depart the Senate.

18.  Republicans will gain 10 to 20 more seats in the House.  Along with the ouster of five or more moderates in the primaries, the Tea Party wing of the GOP will wield enormous power in the lower chamber.  Nancy Pelosi will announce her retirement.

19.  President Obama won’t win more than ten states.  California, New Jersey, and New York will all give him less than 53% of their vote.  The only states he wins west of Maryland will be Illinois and some of the ones that border the coast.  Only DC gives him greater than 55%.  The down-ticket effect on state races will be even worse for Democrats than they were in 2010. 

20.  President-Elect Romney will immediately let down his base by the nomination of a major financial industry insider as Treasury Secretary.  This will be the first of many disappointments that will follow in 2013.

Bonus prediction which will take years to see if it comes true:  2012 will be the last year that a Republican is ever elected President.

UPDATE:  I received quite a few comments and emails asking what I meant about the bonus prediction. 

In turbulent times it is far easier for those out of power to offer revolutionary reforms than it is for those in power to reform themselves.  Power nearly always acts to preserves the status quo.  Mitt Romney is the status quo.  I believe that President Romney will have a GOP super-majority in the House and a large majority in the Senate.  He will be given an enormous opportunity to undertake reform, but he will be unable to do so.

Barack Obama, when he took office in 2009, had that same opportunity.  But he was beholden to his status quo: labor at the auto firms, government employee unions in the states whose budgets were bolstered, the green lobby, and Goldman Sachs.  Parties in power are hamstrung by the interests that brought them to power.  Incrementalism is the only thing they have to offer.  It is only those out of power who are unconstrained by the necessity to hold on to it.

Over the next four years I expect numerous so-called “black swans,” events that are thought to be unpredictable, but arise only because shared assumptions are shattered.  Today we assume that money has value because government says that it does.  We assume that governments will honor their social spending obligations.  We assume that Western Europe will remain a peaceful and prosperous place.  We assume that China’s capitalist trajectory is ever upward.  We assume that developed nations never wage war on each other.  Enormous resources rest on these assumptions and others.  

Soon these assumption  will be tested.  Some (most?) will fail and enormous problems will be the result.  Solutions to those problems cannot come from those in power, any more than the solution to the housing crisis can come from the banks whose very viability rests on the belief that the value of their mortgage assets will recover.  The powerful will always act to preserve the status quo–and when it fails, they’ll attempt to preserve the illusion of it.  You need only to see what has happened with the Euro over the past year to understand just how much effort those in power will expend to preserve an illusion. 

Over the next few years I expect very bad things; things which require solutions, not illusions.  A Republican Party which holds all the levers of power, will shoulder all the blame.  As for the Democratic Party, as long as it embraces redistributionism it will always have a natural constituency.  It can never go away. 

In short, at the height of crisis, when Democrats offer only redistribution and Republicans have been repudiated, I expect that a third party will emerge.

NOTE:  Thanks to Glenn for the link!  While you’re here, please, look around at things like this.

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Before giving my predictions for the coming year, let’s grade last year’s results:

1.  Neither Italy nor Spain will require a major bailout . . . much to Europe’s growing chagrin.  The default of either country would be the death knell of the Euro.  Instead of a heart attack, the patient will linger with terminal cancer and be further weakened by chemotherapeutic attempts to shore up confidence in Greece, Portugal, and newly stricken Belgium. 

Nailed it!  Next year, however, will be different. (1-0)

2.   Austria will join the growing list of countries of economic concern.

Nope.  Hasn’t happened . . . yet.  Even though the spread between German and Austrian notes has increased from a 25-50 basis point range in the first half of 2011 to 100+ points for most of the second half of the year, the sovereign bond market hasn’t yet put Austria on the deathwatch list. (1-1)

3.  Germany will continue to be damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t.  Its debtor neighbors will resent having to continue begging the Deutsch for dough.  But once they get it, they’ll resent even more the restrictions that come with the loans.  Through currency, Merkel accomplished what Frederick, Bismarck, and Hitler never could by force:  a Continent united under rule by Berlin.  It won’t continue.  At some point resentment will bubble over into conflict . . .  However it ends, it won’t be pretty.  It won’t end this year.  But it will end soon. 

Exactly correct!  Living here in Germany for most of 2011, I see it from both sides.  Germans resent having to bail out their indebted brethren, while their deadbeat relatives hate the Germans for the fact that they are indebted to them.  The end will be ugly when it comes.  (2-1)

4.  The biggest foreign economic surprise of the year will be Luxembourg. 

No way.  Luxembourg has weathered all storms well.  Its citizens, on average, are the wealthiest of the EU.  But before Luxembourgers get too complacent, they should keep in mind that a collapse of the European banking system will hit little Luxembourg especially hard.  (2-2)

5.  No American state will default on its debts in 2011.  Even California will somehow muddle through, though it will issue IOUs instead of money for months.  The following year, however, won’t end so well.

Yes.  California and Illinois didn’t default.  However, that won’t last forever.  (3-2)

6.  At least one mid-size American city will go into bankruptcy.  Others will be queued up behind them. 

Sort of.  Alabama’s Jefferson County (home to Birmingham) has filed for bankruptcy.  Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg is next in line.  On the other hand, the Meredith Whitney-predicted fear of cascading municipal defaults did not happen.  So the second half of this prediction–that it would become a major political hot potato hasn’t either.  (3-2-1)

7.  Early 2011 optimism will give way to a dark economic reality.  The only question:  is it a double-dip?  Or did the first recession never really end?  The one area where almost everyone agrees:  Keynes is dead.  Paul Krugman never gets past denial.  Incredible as it might seem, his lamentations grow even more shrill.

Spot on.  Especially the Krugman part.  (4-2-1)

8.  Gold will fall early in the year, dropping into the 1200s, if not lower, before June.  The bond crisis and a growing consensus that the Euro is in its final days will inflate gold to back over $1400, where it will end the year before really taking off in 2012.

Nope.  I had thought that the first half of the year would have contained better market news than it did, and that that would have pressured gold down.  Instead we just muddled through the doldrums, keeping gold high.  Then when things went bad this summer in Europe, gold shot up briefly to $1900.  It’s still more than $200 higher than I thought it was going to be–and I was one of the few offering a pessimistic economic prediction for 2011.  That’s how bad 2011 really was.  (4-3-1)

9.  Multiple economic crises and presidential politics will combine to make the President announce that American combat forces will be gone from Afghanistan by the end of 2012 and all forces will depart by 2014.  NATO will announce that its Afghanistan mission will end in 2012.  The last American brigade will leave Iraq in 2011. 

Half right.  Iraq is over.  Afghanistan is nowhere near an end.  (4-3-2)

10.  President Obama will receive pressure from activists on the internet left and pundits from the middle to drop out of the race, but then what?  Hillary Clinton will not run for President.  Russ Feingold will not run.   Howard Dean will not run.  The simple fact is that there is no room to Obama’s left and no Democrats remaining to his right; hence no challenger.  Instead, most realistic Democrats will resign themselves to the fact that they are likely to suffer an enormous presidential defeat, and no one of any consequence steps up to be the next McGovern.   By year end Barack Obama will have only token opposition in a race to secure a nomination that no one wants.

Half wrong.  Occupy Wall Street was evidence of the pressure on Obama from the left that I predicted.  And I was correct that there appears to be no Democratic challenger.  On the other hand, it’s not all “gloom, despair, and agony” in the Democratic camp that I predicted.  Of course, that probably has less to do with how bad the Democratic electoral situation is than it has to do with how lacklustre GOP candidates have been.  So far it’s been a race between Mitt (Bob Dole without the war record) Romney and a series of anybody-but-Romneys that have included two minor leauge candidates (Bachman and Perry), a smooth-talking Lothario (Cain), the absent-minded professor (Gingrich), and the guy who has a lot of good positions but is also an addled anti-semitic racist nut (Paul).  (4-3-3)

11.  Republicans, meanwhile, will provide lots of electoral entertainment.  By the middle of 2011 the pundits will announce that the race is a contest between Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin.  Neither will be the favorite by the end of the year.  Instead, the shortest man in the race will cast quite a long shadow.

Nope.  The only part of this that I got right was the Sarah Palin part.  As we enter the election season, Mitt Romney is still the favorite.  Of course, keep in mind that in all three of the most recent contested primaries, the year-end leader  ultimately lost the race for their nomination (Dean, Clinton, and Romney).  Unfortunately, the man whom I thought would be leading the race by now didn’t enter the field:  Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.  (4-4-3)

12.  Republicans in Congress will be a big disappointment.  There will be many individual bright spots, but not enough Paul Ryans to overcome the Lisa Murkowskis.  A real third-party challenge will begin to coalesce.  2012 will begin with the question: will the splintering of the GOP be enough to cause the re-election a President with a sub-40 approval rating?  It becomes the Democrats only hope and the media’s clarion call to highlight disaffected conservatives. 

Yes.  Republicans have been a disappointment in Congress, not having held the line on spending.  And I do expect that the media will coalesce around this meme of GOP division in 2012. (5-4-3)

Now to 2012’s Predictions . . .

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In their anti-endorsement of Newt Gingrich, the editors of National Review said that, “A hard-fought presidential primary campaign is obscuring the uncharacteristic degree of unity within the Republican party.”  Alarmingly, when they reviewed the points along which there was so much unity, I found myself quite apart from their position.  So let’s pick apart each of the points the National Review says Republicans are, and should be, united about:

“All of the leading candidates, and almost all of the lagging ones, support the right to life.”  Firstly, apart from Supreme Court appointments, the President has no vote on the issue.  And even there, I don’t support a litmus test on that issue or any other aside from this question:  Do you believe that the Constitution is an unabridged list of explicit powers ceded by the States to the Federal government and that if it isn’t in there, it isn’t there?  Secondly, while I am a strong supporter of the right to life, at this time, to list this concern first–or even in the top ten–is preposterous.  How out of touch is the National Review not to recognize this?

“All of them favor the repeal of Obamacare.”  Okay.  But not enough.  Medicare Part D, the prescription drug plan pushed by George W. Bush, should also be gone.  It was unaffordable then, and doubly so now.  And as for Mitt Romney, there’s a lot of justifiable skepticism that he really supports the complete repeal of a health care plan so similar to his own?

“Most of them support reforms to restrain the growth of entitlement spending.”  This is what really sticks under my craw.  I don’t want to restrain the growth of entitlement spending; I want to slash all government spending.  I want the ponzi scheme that is Social Security to be transitioned out of government hands so that the American people themselves can control the 13.4% taken from their paychecks every month.  I want Medicaid limited only to those poor who can’t work–not those who don’t.  I want food stamps severely curtailed in recognition of the fact that America’s poor of today don’t face a starvation crisis, but an obesity epidemic.  Just as importantly, I want a candidate who recognizes that while it is our obese entitlement system that threatens to overwhelm the national debt, it’s the rampant size and scope of government and its intrusion into every facet of our lives that threatens the nation’s overall well-being.  With federal spending approximately 40 cents of every dollar spent in the nation, the government itself is is crushing the economy.  It is unsustainable, and it has to stop.

“All of them favor reducing the corporate tax rate to levels that will make the U.S. a competitive location for investment.”  Good.  But we need to hear the undeniably correct argument that corporate taxes themselves are a sham.  Corporations don’t pay taxes; their customers do.  But Republican candidates aren’t sure enough of their beliefs (or perhaps they don’t believe it themselves) to even try to advance the philosophical case.  It’s a case which must be made to show the public that all Americans–even the poor–pay these corporate taxes that Democrats pretend are only the provenance of the rich.

“Almost all of them seem to understand the dangers of a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and of a defense policy driven by the need to protect social spending rather than the national interest.”  This is a two-parter.  The war in Iraq is over.  It’s been that way since the end of my second tour there last spring.  By then Americans had advanced Iraq as far as we could push, pull, and prod them, but the rest was up to them.  While Obama was pushed out of Baghdad against his will, it is hardly a precipitate withdrawal–It is about a year too late.  As for Afghanistan, we accomplished our mission there by 2004.  That original mission, if you’ll recall, was to make sure that the country could not be used as a base from which to plan, coordinate, and launch large transnational terrorist attacks against the United States.  It was right and proper to continue to support Afghan forces with US special forces and other assistance coordinated and led through the Department of State.  However, a large scale Defense Department led mission to remake an uncivilized corner of the globe into a country even as successful as Iraq was, and is, doomed to fail, and to do so at great cost. 

The second part is the “need to protect social spending” that isn’t well described by the editors or the candidates.  Where is the outrage over $16 biofuel the Navy had to buy from politically favored contractors?  Where is the demand that the entire F-35 program, not just its unnecessary second jet engine, be eliminated.  Where is the call for consolidating America’s four-star military commands?  Or the demand that wartime agencies like the three-star-led, $4 billion-a-year Joint IED Defeat Organization be dismantled now that IEDs are no longer a strategic threat?  Why not the call to redeploy the last remaining troops from the Balkans?  While there is no need to reduce any combat brigade or ship, aside from those Army brigades still in Europe, and there is plenty of money to keep the remainder well-trained, there is a great need to reduce their unnecessary and redundant higher headquarters and staffs.  A top-heavy command structure has sclerotized the senior reaches of the Defense Department and turned them into just another bureaucracy in search of mission creep in order to justify their continuous expansion.  As a result the military camel’s nose is under far too many tents, like the prevention of infectious diseases, counter narcotics, countering organized crime, counter human trafficking, and border control.  Not only is this wrong from a cost point-of-view, the vast expansion of the military into domestic responsibilities is corrosive to the very fabric from which our nation was formed.  Little do I hear this complaint voiced except by Ron Paul, although his position on this matter is too isolationist and too extreme even for me.

Here’s the bottom line:  The National Review codifies for Republicans a platform that defines . . . well, George W. Bush.  Sorry, but that just doesn’t cut it anymore.  I supported him in 2004 on national security grounds, while fully acknowledging his domestic flaws.  These days our own domestic flaws, far more than our enemies, are our greatest national security threats.  A return to the programs of George W. Bush is simply too little, too late.  If the National Review wants to reincarnate the platforms of previous Presidents, they ought to at least strive for Ronald Reagan–or better yet, Calvin Coolidge or Grover Cleveland.

UPDATE:  RedState concurs with the Bushiness of the NR editorial.

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Austerity.  Raging against it is all the rage these days.

Paul Krugman:  “Demands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence . . .  And they have created immense anger, with many Europeans furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power.”

Kevin O’Rourke:  “One lesson that the world has learned since the financial crisis of 2008 is that a contractionary fiscal policy means what it says: contraction. Since 2010, a Europe-wide experiment has conclusively falsified the idea that fiscal contractions are expansionary. . . [The latest Euro-deal] will mean continued austerity on the eurozone periphery, without the offsetting impact of devaluation or stimulus at the core. Unemployment will continue to rise, placing pressure on households, governments, and banks. We will hear much more about the relative merits of technocracy and democracy. Anti-European sentiment will continue to grow, and populist parties will prosper. Violence is not out of the question.”

John Carney:  “So even if we assume that the ECB leaders are deeply enthralled with the ideology of expansionary austerity, we expect that eventually they will give up this ideology in order to save their jobs. In the end, we figure they are strongly incentivized to not let Europe self-destruct.”

Let’s take a look at what this “austerity” thing is.  When you distill all of the econ-gobbledy-gook, what it reduces to is: limiting government spending to what government  resources can support.  That actually sounds rather common-sensical.   And it is.

Dictionary.com defines the antonym of austerity as “leniency.”  Leniency would be warranted if liquidity were the problem—ie, “I just need a little more time to pay back the loan.”  Unfortunately, solvency, not liquidity, is the problem.

Look, I know that this is hard for a lot of people to accept:  Bankers have lent billions to borrowers who will never pay back the loans.  Developers have built millions of houses that cost more to build than they can be sold for.  And whole economics departments are filled with professors whose entire lifetime of work lies dead in the ditch of Obama’s depression.  But the fact is that the current climate has exposed massive economic gaps between real values and what were perceived to be values.  That adjustment has to occur before real growth will proceed.

Ahead of many of the rest of us, Europe—or at least its citizens—is coming to grips with the notion that it has far more debt than it will ever have GDP enough to pay off.  The bankers of the world haven’t yet admitted that many of them are bust.  The builders, realtors, and their creditors can’t quite mouth the words that home values will always limited by household incomes.  And the Krugmans of academia are too old to face the fact that they are farce. 

But the rest of us already know.  There are trillions of dollars in losses that have to be written down, painful Depression-era adjustments still to be made in the world’s economies, and new economic lessons to be learned (or rather, old economic principles to be re-learned again). 

You can rage against austerity all you want, but it is coming.  It’s only a question of where and when.  Germany can pass a Continent’s worth of debt on to its citizens who will never have the wherewithal to repay them, or it can declare those debts to be worthless now.  Accept austerity now and recession is assured, depression is possible, potentially violent chaos will ensue on Europe’s periphery, and recovery is years away—but German citizens will fare better than most.  But if Germany guarantees bad debts with its good money, then they will eventually get austerity later, along with all those same calamities closer to home. 

And so too will we.

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“Sadly,” the pundit said, this will “become the most famous [story] of this election cycle. . . To claim that a [story] depicting a pretty blonde woman [and] an African-American politician does not play on the fears of miscegenation on the part of some whites is to ignore history.”

Those were the words of E.J. Dionne, but they were not about Herman Cain. It was what he wrote about a 2006 RNC advertisement against Harold Ford, Jr. when he was running for U.S. Senate from Tennessee against Bob Corker. Being the naive Northern transplant to Tennessee, I was unaware that there was this taboo that the association of black men and blonde women was an automatic appeal to racism. Having been apprised of that by Mr. Dionne himself, I expect to read any day now his sceptical take on the events unfolding about the Cain campaign.

(BTW, don’t mistake this as an endorsement of any candidate.  I still adhere to my rule of campaigns past that no normal person is overly interested in presidential campaigns before Christmas. . . I do, however, love pointing out hypocrisy, no matter the season.)

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