Will socialism get free pass?

The News Virginian
Published: October 20, 2008

Henry David Thoreau, whom leftists embrace, disdained what leftists cherish, government, a primary mean of which in a fortnight leftists expect to acquire control absolutely. “Governments show ... how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose upon themselves, for their own advantage,” Thoreau wrote in “Civil Disobedience.” “... Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way.” Government is in the way of everything else, and is about to plunge further, and so the imposition, at the people’s behest, stands ready to deepen.

If polls are to be believed, Democrats will seize the White House and with it a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and possibly the same in the House, the latter in defiance of approval ratings so anemic in Congress as to draw a faint smile even from President Bush. The swift thump to the heads of Republicans, Bush principally and the party generally, has been earned doggedly by a group that raced to bury conservative ideals eight years ago and since has forgotten where. But voters who seek to punish could find they have unsparingly turned the rod upon themselves.

Among those who say so, Sen. Joseph Biden, Democratic running mate to presidential frontrunner Barack Obama: “Mark my words,” he told a well-heeled partisan crowd Sunday at a Seattle fundraiser, “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.” Later he admonished Obama’s deep-pocketed supporters to “gird their loins” for decisions that will stir unease because “they’re not likely to be as popular as they sound.”

Biden, in accordance with his wont, went on, disturbingly: “I promise you, you all are going to be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls, why is the polling so down, why is this thing so tough?’ We’re going to have to make some incredibly tough decisions in the first two years. I’m asking you now, be prepared to stick with us. Remember the faith you had at this point because you’re going to have to reinforce us.”

So what can this mean? The suddenly lucid Biden did not elaborate. “I probably shouldn’t have said all this because it dawned on me that the press is here.”

Those disinclined to worship Obama dutifully might hope that lucidity similarly dawns on the electorate.

Twice before – in 1932 and 1964 – Americans have provided Democrats with the executive branch and a filibuster-proof Senate. The product of the first handover was the New Deal, which slammed the brakes on recovery and brought a recession, and of the second, the welfare state which Democratic President Clinton, at conservatives’ urging, ended as we knew it.

In both eras, the philosophical gaps were dramatically narrower than they are today. Presidents Roosevelt and Johnson alike battled conservative forces in their own party as well as Republicans to push through measures that did not go so far as otherwise they might have.

Our hopes for the same efforts to dilute are fainter for three bills likely to come next year that President Obama surely would sign: The revival of the Fairness Doctrine, which would crush conservative free speech on the radio; the Employee Free Choice Act, which would end secret ballots for union elections and thus destroy free choice; and the Freedom of Choice Act, which would mandate government funding of abortions and overturn parental notification laws.

Each of these would replicate programs under Obama that would remove the bridle from socialism, which already pulses in the American system. Voters who give government authority to impose should not be surprised when that power is exercised to the detriment of all, whether they cherish liberty or not.