The New Government
Why Nobody Can Afford to Ignore Current Events Right Now
I. CRISIS-OCRACY
We are experiencing a new form of politics in the United
States.
Historians will look back someday and date the shift to this new system
to 2010. These future historians might label this new style of administration
using terms such as "Expertocracy," "Neo-Technocracy," or some other
official-sounding word.
I prefer to simply call it what it actually is: Crisis-ocracy.
The key element of this political system is to decide what
you want to do, create a crisis, then convince the electorate that the other
party is keeping you from fixing things. The following five steps accomplish
this very effectively:
1-Decide what you want government
to do (your primary political goal).
2-Turn something routine into a
huge crisis, or at the very least take advantage of any crisis that comes along.
3-Loudly blame the other party for
everything that goes wrong.
4-Promote your primary political
goal (see step 1) as the only good solution to the crisis, even when it isn't a
real fix and even if it will actually make the problem worse.
5-Repeat steps 2-4 over and over,
always using step 1 as the answer for each and every crisis.
President Obama has proven to be a master of this technique.
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's first Chief of Staff and now the mayor of
Chicago, famously said:
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
This is an ideal motto for the politics of Crisisocracy.
Crisisocracy works most effectively when the media is a willing
accomplice, focusing on each successive "crisis" as if it is the great event of our time.
The more
the media uses words like "cliff," "bailout, "riots," "kills," "crisis,"
"fall," "crash," "superstorm," "debt ceiling," "downgrade," "bankrupt," "refuse
to compromise," "obstructionists," "recession," "double dip," "since the Great
Depression," and so on, the stronger the moral authority of the administration
in promoting its agenda.
II. SPEND-OCRACY
In addition to this new type of politics (Crisisocracy), we
are also moving to a new form of government, a true Spend-ocracy.
Various
governments in history have spent too much of the peoples' resources, but a
government whose main point is literally
to increase spending is truly something unique.
Yet this is precisely what we are
witnessing.
The current focus (the primary political goal--see Step 1 above)
of the Obama team is to drastically increase government spending and the power
of Washington.
Why? Well, in their worldview, history is a long struggle
between the rich and poor, and government is the one great hope for real
equality and social justice.
Thus, in this view, the bigger and more powerful the
government, the more likely we are to experience a truly better world.
The more
government spends, according to this perspective, the more it becomes the
center of society--and the closer it gets to wresting control from the elite upper
classes.
So while the end-game is making government the leading power in
society (instead of the elite class), the strategy hinges on becoming a
Spendocracy.
This is almost the polar opposite of the American founding
view, which held that government is dangerous and therefore the people must separate
powers, check and balance government to keep it from hurting its citizens.
While the framers held that government is necessary for national security and to
protect the people from crime, it must always be carefully checked or it will
become the greatest enemy of freedom.
This view is discussed extensively in the Federalist Papers and was written into
the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
The
founding fathers believed that government had a vital role in keeping us free,
but that the great advances of humanity would come from truly free people
taking action--not by government programs.
Over time, this system of freedom continued to spread to all people
regardless of religion, race, gender or beliefs. And such freedom brought
profound results.
For example, by 1945, with just 6% of the world's population
the United States was producing well over half of the globe's goods and
services. And since that time, many nations have sought this same kind of
freedom.
III. THE RESULT
Today we are witnessing the growth of a different American
system.
This new government model, based on the idea that government is our
best hope for...almost everything...and spurred forward by one crisis after
another, is a serious downgrade.
Where the original American model believed in
the enterprising nature of free citizens, the new Spendocracy believes in experts
and government officials who govern the people like adults overseeing children.
The irony of this struggle was captured in a political
cartoon by Dana Summers for Tribune Media Services. In this cartoon, a middle-aged
American couple sits by a table with receipts and bills piled high in front of
them. The husband turns to his wife and says that they have gotten themselves
into hopeless levels of debt, and asks her what they should do. They are both
clearly hurting and worried about their financial future.
Then, in the background, they notice President Obama
speaking on television. The couple turns and listens to him.
When he finishes, the couple have huge smiles of relief and
joy, and they turn to each other and simultaneously exclaim, "Spend our way out
of it!"
They have their solution. Their president has given them
hope. The Chief Expert on the nation's future has spoken.
The sad reality is
that by following this plan they'll clearly get themselves into a much worse
situation. Their debt will drastically increase.
Imagine this in real life. A couple realizes they are
hopelessly in debt, and that to get their finances in order they'll have to
make some hard choices.
Then, after listening to their president, they happily
decide that the best solution is to max out their credit cards, use up all
their checks, spend all their savings, double mortgage their home and spend the
money, and then try to get more credit cards so they can max these also.
This is a microcosm of the current government.
We realize
something is wrong. Almost everybody now senses that Washington is broken. But
a "serious crisis is too good to waste," and many of our leaders are telling us
that the solution to our nation's major financial challenges are, simply, more
government spending.
The fact is that this was the agenda, the goal, long before
the phrase "fiscal cliff" was used by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke regarding 2013.
Indeed the goal of huge increases in government spending was part of the 2008
election.
Note that during the 2008 campaign both Republican and
Democratic candidates promised major spending increases--albeit of different
kinds.
Another recent political cartoon, created by Michael Ramirez for
Creators Syndicate, put this in clear relief: An American citizen stands
between an Elephant and a Donkey. Both of these mascots for the major political
parties are dressed in suits, while the regular citizen is in jeans and a red
sweater sporting the word "Taxpayers."
But the message of the cartoon is subtle: Both the elephant
and the donkey have a hand stuck deep into the regular citizen's pockets.
Since
2008, we have added $6 trillion of new debt, and government is borrowing 46
cents of every dollar it spends--much of it from China.
In a Democracy, the people would vote for something
different.
But in a Spendocracy, anyone they vote for will significantly
increase spending.
Reagan spent more than Carter, Bush more than Reagan,
Clinton more than Bush, and Bush II more than Clinton.
Obama has spent much
more than Bush II, and in addition his administration has promoted increased
spending as a sort of moral imperative.
In short, we are rapidly devolving into a new form of government
(a Spendocracy rather than a Republic), under a new system of politics
(Crisisocracy rather than Representative Democracy).
Indeed, the White House is
specifically treating things this way by ignoring Congress and just issuing
Executive Orders to fix many major crises.
Both Spendocracy and Crisisocracy are bad for freedom, free
enterprise, and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
If we accept the
"bigger government" agenda and try to spend our way out of our problems, the
problems will only get worse.
Social Leader Weekly by Oliver DeMille
