Obama vs. The Axis of Ignorance

One day, historians may recognize that George W. Bush achieved something for America after all: namely, he helped elect Barack Obama. That day is still a long way away. Thus far, President Obama has restored competency and rational decision-making to the executive branch, he has stabilized the financial disaster he inherited, and he has renewed a sense of hope and optimism regarding America’s leadership role on the world at large.

In addition, Barack Obama is poised to deliver on his promise to reform America’s healthcare system; his administration has made a key decision that tacitly acknowledges the efficacy of medical marijuana, which amounts to the first step towards dismantling the failed war on drugs; and the Obama administration has laid the legislative groundwork for a new national energy policy, one that acknowledges the reality of global warming and necessity of moving beyond hydrocarbons.

Obama recognizes he has the potential to be a transformational leader, a pivotal figure who has the skills, vision, and character to set his country on a new and productive course. There is an Axis-of-Ignorance (Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin), that is hell-bent on discrediting the reforms Obama has set out to implement.

In fact, Cheney, Limbaugh, and Palin represent a corrupt ideological movement that virtually bankrupted the country morally, financially, and spiritually during the eight years of the colossally failed Bush administration. Under Bush and Cheney, free market fundamentalism, imperial hubris, and anti-intellectualism nearly undid the Republic.

Free markets are not inherently wise, self-regulating, nor do they plan ahead. Imperial hegemonic ambitions bred universal resistance to a Pax Americana and social decay at home. And President Bush is exhibit A for why intellectual vacuity is not exactly a desirable quality to have in a leader responsible for managing wars and disaster relief efforts.

The mess the Conservative movement created was largely the result of blindly and rigidly clinging to an ideological system riddled with false ideas. The notion that deficits don’t matter, that global warming is a hoax, and that tax cuts for the wealthiest would spread prosperity belong in the annals of bad ideas.

Now, the architects and spinmeisters behind our current national decline have the audacity to misrepresent the policies and governing philosophy of the Obama administration. Simply put, Barack Obama is not a radical socialist bent on undermining America as we know it. Rather, Obama and his administration are confronting powerful interests in the financial, energy, and healthcare sectors, which if left unchecked would slowly but surely siphon off the country’s wealth. For example, in the next ten years it is estimated that healthcare spending will consume 20% of our nation’s GDP, an intolerably high ratio that diverts resources from other important areas such as education, infrastructure repair, and alternative energy development.

In an age of global warming and dwindling energy supplies, the United States desperately needs to move beyond fossil fuels. Solar-powered smart grids and hybrid vehicles have the potential to revolutionize our economy. However, interests invested in carbon-based energy sources are resisting the future in the same way slaveholders resisted the supplanting of a plantation economy by a more efficient industrial economy.

Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh are the mouthpieces of healthcare and energy interests that are fighting to maintain a profitable but unsustainable status quo. Rush Limbaugh collects more that $30 million a year in corporate compensation for delivering his venomous diatribes against Obama’s supposed socialistic schemes. In fact, insurance companies, the financial industry, and the energy sector have long been the beneficiaries of generous government subsidies and taxpayer largess that has fattened a system of crony capitalism and socialism for the rich.

Conservatives, I expect, are having an identity crisis. After all, their man – George W. Bush – presided over an administration that is universally regarded as an abject failure. In fact, under Bush’s “leadership” the Conservative movement virtually imploded because of gross corruption and incompetence. However, rather than acknowledge the movement’s ideological bankruptcy, Cheney, Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin are lashing out and stoking the anger and resentments of their disaffected base. The embers of the conservative movement are still smoldering hot and they will consume all who get too close before they entirely burn themselves out.

The Case for Keynes

Obama’s election has left the Conservative movement more deflated than a leaky air mattress. In truth, many of the ideas associated with conservatism have grown stale. For instance, the recent financial meltdown discredits the idea that free markets are self-regulating. Simply, put Keynesian economics is making a comeback, while the ideas of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek are in retreat.

There’s a certain irony in all this; the Chicago school was once viewed as a corrective to the excesses of Keynesianism, but now policy-makers recognize that Keynes’s thought explains how we got into the current crisis, and how we might get out of it.

In a nutshell, Keynes believed that a culture centered on the ‘love of money’ sowed the seeds of its own dissatisfaction and dissolution. Keynes viewed wealth as a means, not an end. The purpose of prosperity, Keynes insisted, was that it allowed individuals to embark on projects of ethical improvement.

Keynes viewed economics as a moral science, not a natural science. He continually questioned the assumptions economists made. He thought it inappropriate, for instance, for financial wizards to use the same risk-management tools that life insurers do. After all, insurers utilize actuarial data where the future invariably resembles the past. Insurance markets have seen failures, but they are rare. Business and politics, are different matters altogether; the future rarely mirrors the past and a single unforeseeable event, a Black Swan, can alter the economic landscape in unpredictable ways.

Uncertainty was a key idea for Keynes. He believed the future was unpredictable. Consequently, money was not a neutral store of value, but “a subtle device for linking the present with the future.” In times of crisis, individuals tend to hoard cash, which prolongs downturns. Money is an emotional repository; when optimism reigns, then economies thrive, but when fear dominates, they wither.

Keynes insisted that governments had an obligation to reduce uncertainty. ‘Cheap money, wise spending’ was his motto. He would approve of universal healthcare because a healthy workforce would be a more optimistic and productive workforce. Von Hayek viewed government programs as a prelude to serfdom, buy Keynes believed totalitarian movements were nurtured in the soil of uncertainty. Therefore, reducing uncertainty had a double virtue; less uncertainty allowed more scope for moral improvement and it reduced the appeal of political extremism. The case for Keynes is comparatively airtight.