Victor Davis Hanson: Obama & Co., Growing Up Fast
[NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.]
Old laws predicated on human nature cannot so easily be discarded — even by utopians who think they have the power to cool the planet and stop the rising seas. Borrowed money really has to be paid back. Governments cannot operate without confidentiality. Nations perish if they cannot protect themselves from existential threats. Watching a therapeutic Barack Obama grow up and learn these tragic lessons is as enlightening as it is sometimes scary.
When they are out of power, modern leftists advocate massive government spending and large deficits. They applaud when Republicans and conservatives sometimes prove as profligate as any big-government liberal. But when invested with the responsibility of governance, they come to understand that Keynesian “stimulus” must eventually cede to the same unhappy logic as the private household’s indebtedness....
Here in America the same fiscal rules have not disappeared. In California, Governor-elect Jerry Brown will have few choices in January 2011. Since he cannot raise taxes much in a state that already has the nation’s highest income and sales taxes, he can only find a way to cut expenditures. He must then either finesse such reductions with a sort of green philosophy of “small is better” or plead that his reactionary predecessor gave him, a compassionate liberal, no choice. Either way, the creditors and bondholders must be paid. Even Barack Obama, after spending $1.3 trillion more this year than the government took in, now seeks to save a few billion dollars by freezing federal wages.
In short, from Sacramento to Athens the world is reminded that obligations, despite in-vogue euphemisms like “stimulus” and “Keynesian,” really do have to be met. There is an iron law that transcends politics and limits the application of fiscal liberalism: Print more money and money becomes less valuable; default just once and all future credit is lost or intolerably expensive....
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Old laws predicated on human nature cannot so easily be discarded — even by utopians who think they have the power to cool the planet and stop the rising seas. Borrowed money really has to be paid back. Governments cannot operate without confidentiality. Nations perish if they cannot protect themselves from existential threats. Watching a therapeutic Barack Obama grow up and learn these tragic lessons is as enlightening as it is sometimes scary.
When they are out of power, modern leftists advocate massive government spending and large deficits. They applaud when Republicans and conservatives sometimes prove as profligate as any big-government liberal. But when invested with the responsibility of governance, they come to understand that Keynesian “stimulus” must eventually cede to the same unhappy logic as the private household’s indebtedness....
Here in America the same fiscal rules have not disappeared. In California, Governor-elect Jerry Brown will have few choices in January 2011. Since he cannot raise taxes much in a state that already has the nation’s highest income and sales taxes, he can only find a way to cut expenditures. He must then either finesse such reductions with a sort of green philosophy of “small is better” or plead that his reactionary predecessor gave him, a compassionate liberal, no choice. Either way, the creditors and bondholders must be paid. Even Barack Obama, after spending $1.3 trillion more this year than the government took in, now seeks to save a few billion dollars by freezing federal wages.
In short, from Sacramento to Athens the world is reminded that obligations, despite in-vogue euphemisms like “stimulus” and “Keynesian,” really do have to be met. There is an iron law that transcends politics and limits the application of fiscal liberalism: Print more money and money becomes less valuable; default just once and all future credit is lost or intolerably expensive....