Serfdom

Roger Kimball, writing at Pajamas Media, ruminates on the road to serfdom the Obama administration is setting America on. For what it’s worth, he doesn’t think it is malevolence. He thinks it is incompetence and wishful thinking – which is even more dangerous.

Writing a couple of days ago in this space, I asked whether President Obama’s spectacular mishandling of the economy was a function of his incompetence or his malevolence.

For what it’s worth, I believe that the answer is (mostly) “incompetence.” I take little solace from that conclusion. For one thing, I also believe he is doing everything he can to capitalize on this crisis (hence the “mostly”), bludgeoning cautious lawmakers with the prospect of “catastrophe” if they don’t instantly fall into line with his eye-popping spending proposals.

Even more worrisome, however, is the fact that the President’s brand of good intentions is potentially more destructive than simple malevolence. In other words, although I believe that the President is endeavoring to “do good” after his own lights, his understanding of the good is unrealistic and utopian. And, as I observed yesterday, the combination of benevolence and moralism, which the President exhibits in an astonishing degree, is a union that regularly conduces to human unhappiness.

Perhaps you will remember that old advertisement for Teacher’s Scotch: “In life, experience is the great teacher. In Scotch, Teacher’s is the great experience.” Neatly phrased. Sadly, the first sentence is only intermittently true. Experience shows that experience is often a very poor teacher indeed. Hence the ghastly spectacle of a President of the United States in 2009 behaving like a shell-shocked socialist circa 1935.

Personally, I think the incompetence of the entire Obama administration is going to make things much, much worse for the economy and for Americans. The complete lack of any coherent plan to deal with failing banks and financial institutions is a disaster waiting to happen. Propping up zombie banks with taxpayer dollars – or just printing money to appear to do so, is rotten policy. Yet that is all Obama offers.

Obama’s blind push to enact his vision of America, the Dependent over America, the Free is, frankly, repulsive. It is a road to serfdom.

Go read the whole thing.