Hail To The Victors

President Obama unveiled the central theme for the Democrats’ 2012 campaigns at a recent speech in Ann Arbor in which he blamed rich people on the University of Michigan.  Or something.

His point was that no one could succeed without public institutions like the University of Michigan discovering things - with government funding.  He used the example of the internet, although he left out the part about its most famous prime movers being college dropouts, and the other part about government having virtually nothing to do with everything we like about it. 

Dropouts making good is quite logical, actually, since the things they learn in Econ 101 – supply and demand, price elasticity, marginal utility, and substitution effect – are useful.  It’s all that Keynesian macro stuff later on that twists the brain into a knot and dulls the competitive instinct.  Better to leave too early than too late.      

Mr. Obama’s speech echoed the moral-takings theory of Massachusetts senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren; namely that all 310 million regular Americans pulled a laboring oar to create infrastructure, without which the fabulously wealthy could never have gotten that way. And since the fabulously wealthy won’t “give back” enough on their own, the government has a moral obligation to take their property by force. 

Good thing they only want our money, because it also would not have been possible for Halle Berry to come down to Rodeo drive to have her nails done unless the government built the roads first, and it sure doesn’t seem fair that one lucky guy gets to be the object of all her affections.   So does the government also have the moral authority to force Ms. Berry to give the all the boys in Barstow a tumble?  I think not, and shame on you, Ms. Warren, for even suggesting such a thing.    

The first two problems with the Obama/Warren “give back” argument are 1) who does the giving, and 2) who does the receiving.  Infrastructure provided by government was paid for by taxpayers – i.e. the rich people - and the people who will benefit from the socialists’ increased rent-seeking will be the Democrats’ wealthy clients and donors, not the working poor at whom the pandering pitch is aimed. 

Here is how trickle-up economics works in the real world:  the working poor will pay higher prices per filling to cover the rich dentist’s tax increase, and those new taxes will pay the Solyndra CEO’s massive severance bonus when it tanks.  Democrats call this infrastructure; people with common sense call it an outrage.       

But the more dangerous problem with Mr. Obama’s lawful-looting strategy is that it abolishes property rights.  If the government can justify taking the property of the rich simply because government itself exists, then it can claim anything from anyone at any time.  Economic liberty and personal liberty are not separable – the taking of one freedom imperils all others.   

Most Americans are still in denial that we now live in a post-constitutional and post-capitalist world - and it shows.  The reason we find our nation in such dire political straits is that we have rejected the Constitution and replaced it with…nothing.  And the reason we are in such dire economic straits is that we have rejected free market capitalism and replaced it with…nothing.  We elect bad lawyers to high office and they just make it up as they go. 

The President has made his contempt for the Constitution plain to the American people in recent weeks.  He has made appointments without consent of the Senate while in session, ignored the Georgia court in the matter of his eligibility to appear on the ballot, he has taken the authority to indefinitely detain without charge, and he has scoffed at the separation of powers, taunting Congress in their chambers at his State of the Union address – justifying any executive action solely on the basis that Congress did not take it. 

Democrats cheering their guy on for such bold leadership should take pause and remind themselves that each new power ceded to President Obama will be wielded by the next President Bush, or President Palin, or someone even less tolerable. 

Will you guys still be doing your touchdown dance when President Santorum tells the Supreme Court he has banned abortions by decree since they didn’t act?   When President Scott Walker enacts nation-wide Right-To-Work by executive order, will Mr. Obama’s king-for-a-day precedent still seem like such a good idea?   

Of course we need infrastructure.  Of course we need a viable public sector to provide needed services that all Americans benefit from.  But those things make up a small fraction of the government budgets that are now consuming our national wealth and cannibalizing our private sector.  

The President’s “you didn’t act” doctrine removes the protections of separated and limited powers that enabled this nation to flourish.  That Constitutional constraint of government is the real infrastructure which set the stage for wealth creation in this country, not the public universities or the innumerable departments of good intentions that permeate government.   

And the “giving back” that is really needed to restore American greatness is simply the giving back of our Constitution and the restoration of our economic liberty that have been taken from us bit by bit over a century of socialist progressivism. 

The University of Michigan’s fight song is “Hail to the Victors”, not “Hail To Everybody Who Lives In Michigan And Votes Occasionally.”  Well, not yet, anyway. 

    
“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order Tim’s new book, “BRING IT!”