This cold has knocked me flat on my rear end. It has sapped my energy so that I can only stumble around the house cursing and kicking the cats. Whatever capacity for cheerfulness I normally have is gone, and reading the latest news about the financial crisis and the little man in the White House does not help.
Every day I read something that makes me shake my head in disbelief. When asked about the stock market decline, Obama showed no concern, no understanding that it is a serious problem at all, but shrugged it off by comparing the stock market to opinion polls. A decade’s worth of wealth has been destroyed, and it means nothing to Obama. But whereas Obama shows no interest in the bear market, his administration is keenly interested in demonizing Rush Limbaugh.
People who, unlike Limbaugh, sincerely want Obama to succeed, are advising him to put off solving energy, environmental and health care issues until he has stopped the financial crisis. Democrats are worried that if this mess goes into the summer, then their election hopes will suffer in 2010.
These people assume Obama wants the crisis to stop. But what if he wants the market to fail so that more Americans will look to government to take care of them? What if he wants more crises because, as his Chief of Staff famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”? Hillary said the same thing recently. With this readiness to gleefully exploit crises to gain and consolidate power, why not pursue radical energy, environmental and health measures during the crisis? The worse it gets, the better things will look for big government.
If this is Obama’s plan, then he will soon find himself at odds with the “Blue Dog” Democrats and those facing a close election. The leftists and those in secure seats will go along with his Crisis and Leviathan presidency.
For those who want to make some sense of it all, I urge you to read Richard M. Salsman’s “Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis.” He shows step by step how government intervention created this entire mess. Furthermore, he shows how the morality of altruism forced every move in a long history of missteps.
One thing that struck me as I read that essay is how altruism destroys judgment. When people don’t have a proper morality of self-interest as a standard, they can’t assess practical solutions to problems. Faced with a problem such as foreclosing mortgages on poor people, they are liable to think, “Well, let’s try to get money from the feds for this.” Thus the problem never gets solved, but instead festers and the national debt piles up.
The next four years will not be boring.
I need some sleep.
Myrhaf, I’d say the prognosis for your health is far better than it is for our country.