Barack Obama — VOICES for REASON

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling, which struck down restrictions on certain kinds of political speech by corporations, was a profoundly important decision. Not only did it eliminate the most odious parts of McCain-Feingold, but it did so largely for the right reasons. In particular, the Court recognized that a corporation is an association of individuals, who retain their First Amendment right to free speech. I highly recommend reading the decision in its entirety.

The decision couldn’t have been more timely. The purpose of the First Amendment is to protect our ability to communicate our views without interference by the government. Politically, it is, as James Madison called it, “the only effectual guardian of every other right.” By enabling us to freely criticize our leaders, it is the best and last defense against the threat of unlimited government power.

As this blog has argued at length, Obama has been making an alarming grab for power since the day he entered office. He has shown nothing but contempt for economic freedom and limited government–and now he is seeking to silence those, corporations in particular, who challenge him. Read the rest of this entry »

We need to rise above fear, hesitation, and partisan politics–to give the government all the power it needs to solve all our problems.

That was the message of President Obama’s State of the Union address, which named dozens of problems in America and not once suggested that individual rights, liberty, or freedom were the solution.

From a quick reading of the speech, some statistics:

• Number of times President Obama said “I”: 105–mainly pushing for the government programs he seeks to pass.
• Number of times President Obama said “individual rights”: 0.
• Number of times President Obama said “liberty”: 0.
• Number of times President Obama said “freedom”: 1–but it was freedom for Afghanistan.

flickr: Darwin Bell

Last week President Obama claimed that “our intelligence community failed to connect those dots” signaling a plot to blow up Flight 253. But ritual flogging of the intelligence community has diverted attention from a larger failure — this one belonging squarely on Obama’s shoulders.

Zoom out from the plentiful red flags outlining what we already know about the Christmas Day attack. Now observe the connection between it and two (of many) other “dots”: the suicide bombing by a double agent at a U.S. base in Afghanistan; and the (latest) failed assassination attempt on Kurt Westergaard, who drew the Mohammad-with-a-bomb-in-his-turban cartoon.

On the face of it, these have little if anything in common. Unlike the Nigerian bomber on Flight 253, the bomber in Afghanistan used an explosive-packed vest; the assassin in Denmark wielded an ax. The Nigerian was a recent college graduate, scion of a wealthy family; the killer in Afghanistan was a doctor of Jordanian descent; the Danish assassin, an immigrant from Somalia. Not their origin, not their specific targets, not their choice of weapon, not their age or income-level — none of these are the same. Nor is there any evidence that they ever met.

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The clerics in Iran have led crowds in chants of “death to America” for 30-plus years, but now protesters in Iran are reportedly shouting “death to Khamenei.” Bear in mind that the cleric Ayatollah Khamenei is the supreme leader in a regime predicated on the supremacy of religious law. Not only have the protesters dared to defy the government, to risk death while resisting the security forces sent to disperse them; they’re (again) challenging the legitimacy of the Iranian theocracy.

Could 2010 be for Iran what 1989 was for the USSR?

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One of the worst foreign policy developments of 2009 was also one of the most underreported—the Obama administration’s decision to do away with the official use of the term “global war on terror” in favor of “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The term “global war on terror” was awful, to be sure—it named our enemy vaguely and evasively. But instead of correcting that mistake by a clear identification of the enemy that threatens us with terrorism and nuclear attacks, President Obama’s new designation denies the existence of any enemy. We went from worse to worser.

Correctly defining the enemy is indispensable in any war. In Chapter 4 of Winning the Unwinnable War, Alex Epstein and Yaron Brook write:

To fulfill the promise to defeat the terrorist enemy that struck on 9/11, our leaders would first have to identify who exactly that enemy is and then be willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat him.

Who is the enemy that attacked on 9/11? It is not “terrorism”—just as our enemy in World War II was not kamikaze strikes or U-boat attacks. Terrorism is a tactic employed by a certain group for a certain cause. That group and, above all, the cause they fight for are our enemy.

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President Obama has sought to buy off Iran with concessions and talks, so that Tehran will agree to end its nuclear program. This policy of so-called engagement (in reality, appeasement) has quite predictably shipwrecked (the administration is admitting as much). I have been arguing that Obama’s policy of appeasement works to galvanize Tehran in its belligerence, including notably its nuclear program. That appears to be an intensifying trend.

Secretary of State Clinton starts making noises that the time has come to “pressure” Iran with the additional sanctions. Iran scoffs at a bill in Congress that would sanction its fuel supply. And it successfully test fires an enhanced long-range Sejil 2 missile.

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The scene: an ostensibly civilized White House gathering between President Barack Obama and executives from the nation’s largest financial institutions. The subject? According to President Obama:

My main message in today’s meeting was very simple: that America’s banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry, and now that they’re back on their feet we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy . . .[this] starts with finding ways to help creditworthy small and medium-sized businesses get the loans that they need to open their doors, grow their operations and create new jobs . . . we expect them to explore every responsible way to help get our economy moving again.

A hallmark of dictatorship is the view that individuals, including market institutions, are incapable of making rational decisions for themselves, and thus must be compelled to act rationally by some higher authority. Obama’s latest meeting illustrates that he holds this view of banks, and that he is more than happy to be the higher authority that tells them when to lend and whom to lend to.

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When accepting his Nobel Peace Prize — a ludicrous, debased award also bestowed on murderers like Yasser Arafat — President Obama spoke about his foreign policy. Pervading his Nobel speech there was a peculiar undertone of contrition. If translated into words, it would go something like this: “Ideally, we would behave like Gandhi, never resorting to the use of force in asserting our rights . . . but alas, as commander-in-chief of the United States, I’m duty-bound to protect the lives of Americans, and that now means having to fight. Sorry about that.”

This apologetic drift flows naturally from the substance of Obama’s foreign policy.

A key point in the speech is that America must uphold — but has lately fallen short of — the standards set by “just war” doctrine. Summarizing this widely held view of morality in war, he explains that a war is justified only “when it meets certain preconditions: if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the force used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence.”

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In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the economy is being strangled to death by government spending and controls. And yet its leading economic official, Wesley Mouch, prescribes more government intervention as the solution: “I need wider powers!” he yells repeatedly. Besides the yelling, President Barack Obama sounded an awful lot like Wesley Mouch at his recent “jobs summit,” which was intended to address our 10%+ unemployment.

Consider the context of the summit. The Bush and Obama administrations warned us that if we didn’t fall into line with their trillion-dollar bailouts and industry takeovers, we would be punished by unemployment over 10 percent. We fell into line. Unemployment is over 10 percent.

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“[I]f countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Barack Obama suggested, nearly a year ago. Since then the Iranian regime has found itself inundated by the administration’s cordial invitations (to a July Fourth barbecue; to talks over its nuclear program; etc.) and unctuous affirmations of our good will (see this video). Even after the mass protests in Iran challenging the theocracy’s legitimacy, Team Obama declined to lend its support to the protesters and thereby endorsed the regime that was gunning them down in the streets. By the logic of Obama’s policy, all this should have induced Tehran to put aside its “decades of mistrust” (of us), and halt its nuclear program and its patronage of Islamist terrorism.

So how’s this working out?

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