The President’s Speech

On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. Thirty-eight days later he would be dead, felled by an assassin’s bullet.

Although less than 700 words in length, it was a magnificent and charitable speech that has been the subject of several books. It was a speech spoken by a tired and humble man who personally felt the burden of a four-year long war even though he never fired a weapon or witnessed a battle. The personal toll of 600,000 casualties on both sides weighed on him as if he were responsible for them. In a little more than a month, although Lincoln did not know it at the time of his speech, General Lee would surrender at Appomattox, ending the war in the north. But Lincoln knew as he wrote his inaugural address that the South was beaten and the end of the war was only a matter of time.

The Union had been saved. Yet Lincoln’s speech contained no verbal strutting, no uncharitable accusations against the South, no vilification of the vanquished army. To the contrary, the speech said of both North and South,

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully…

As he grappled to give an explanation for the war to his inaugural audience, he recalled the role of slavery as its cause (though not the only cause) for the war.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

While Lincoln considered slavery immoral, he was no abolitionist. The widely misunderstood Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln authored, freed no slaves in the border states which were under Union control. Only the slaves residing in the states and counties in rebellion were emancipated, but since the Union Army was not in control of that territory to enforce the Proclamation, no slaves were freed and the edict was largely symbolic.

Normally, the victor in war assumes no responsibility for the war. The loser caused it. What is remarkable about Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is that it pins the blame for the war on slavery, and to that end, Lincoln believed, the North was as culpable as the South. He argued this point so subtly that it’s often overlooked in his speech.

The North had participated in the slave trade from the founding of this country and only ended its overt practice a few decades before the war. But Northern industrialists created the market demand for Southern cotton (as did abolitionist England), and while the North had discontinued the ownership of slaves, it perpetuated the institution by buying the product of the slave-owning plantations. Thus, Lincoln’ speech harks back to Matthew 18, quoting Jesus verbatim:

“Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”

The offense came not only from the slave owners but also their enablers – the North. Both should be punished for the woe of slavery and the war was the chastening rod.

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

This is lawyerly argumentation. Lincoln, hoping that four years was sufficient atonement for the sin of slavery, pined that the war would end. But he recognized the long history of slavery in this country – dating it 250 years to the time of the Jamestown Settlement – and reinforcing “the divine attributes which believers in a living God always ascribe to Him” by reaffirming David in Psalm 19 that God’s judgment is fair:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

The measure of the man is revealed in the concluding appeal for reconciliation among North and South:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural is a truly remarkable speech – introspective, free of vainglory, and devoid of corrosive blame.

Obama’s Second Inaugural last week stands in stark contrast to Lincoln’s, although he has strained mightily to create parallels between himself and the 16^th president since his 2008 election. He arrived in 2009 by train for his first swearing in as Lincoln did for his in 1861. Criticized during the 2008 primaries for his inexperience, Obama noted that Lincoln was inexperienced also. He took his second term oath on the Lincoln bible and asked to deliver the first State of the Union of his second term on Lincoln’s birthday. Aides say that he frequently goes to the Lincoln bedroom to look at the handwritten draft of the Gettysburg Address which hangs on the wall there. In an interview he boasted that he keeps a copy of Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best seller on the Lincoln cabinet – in the Oval Office.

But there the diaphanous and cosmetic likenesses end. Unlike Lincoln, people would hardly describe Obama as humble, possessed of a charitable spirit, or given to reconciliation. Lincoln was mercilessly criticized and caricatured in ways that could not be publicized today and shrugged it off. Obama once took to task a columnist for mentioning his Dumbo-like ears. His thin-skinned self-absorption is renowned. More than once he has reminded Republicans “I won.” While Lincoln took the initiative to invite critics to the White House to make their case so he could better understand their point of view, Obama ridicules his critics – often while he is negotiating with them. Obama may have come from the Land of Lincoln, but there the similarity stops.

The 2,100-word text of Obama’s Second Inaugural Address is amply posted on the Internet for those who wish to read it. I have neither the space nor inclination to parse it paragraph by paragraph. But, while it is not a particularly good speech – because its abundant platitudes and clichés are distracting – the speech is noteworthy in revealing how Obama intends to govern (or rule) in his final term.

One cannot read the text of the address without being struck by how often Obama directly and indirectly impugns individualism and by inference glorifies government. Note the frequent references to “together” in this part of his address:

We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. Together we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Together we resolve that a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Curiously this follows a reference to the founding documents – the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution – both of which stressed individualism and the latter of which expressly limited the role of government. Rather than partnerships of government and private initiatives which Obama claims built this country, history plainly shows individual and small group achievements engaged in private enterprise largely created it while government is benignly insignificant. The Founders never envisioned American achievements as a duopolistic enterprise between government and private parties.

Obama’s enchantment with government was highlighted in a speech he gave in Roanoke VA last year in which he asserted that nobody could claim credit for their individual achievements because in almost every respect their achievement was made possible by government. The laughable caricature of Julia created by the Obama campaign last year portrays a woman who is dependent on government virtually from cradle to grave – apparently without help from family, friends, church, or society. The hijacking of the US healthcare system, done under the cloak of cost management, was in fact founded on the belief that government can manage a complex enterprise better than free, profit-motivated citizens can – despite the stark contrary examples of the US Postal Service and Amtrak.

Obama continues his collectivistic vision for America:

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future. Or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.

Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This is Julia on a national scale, a modern-day rehash of Soviet philosophy. “The American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone” … is he kidding? Tell that to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and countless millions of individuals who didn’t need the government or a village to “meet the demands of today’s world.”

The word “than” is meant to introduce a comparative proof. How is American individualism made impotent because American soldiers couldn’t “have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias?” Nor could they have used fly swatters and nunchucks! What kind of logic is this? That we have to do things collectively – implicitly partnering with, if not directed by, activist government – because soldiers can’t fight with obsolete and inadequate weapons? I would have gotten an “F” in logic class for that kind of reasoning.

And look at the sentence beginning, “No single person can train all the math and science teachers,” etc. What a banal argument. Does he really expect someone to show up and say, “Hi, I’m Bill. I’m here to train all of the math and science teachers.”? The issue isn’t how many people are required, the issue is does government do it, manage it, or participate in it. I say no. Obama says yes.

Asked in 2009 if he believed in American exceptionalism, Obama answered "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Yet early in his speech he states:

What makes us exceptional, what makes us America is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident …

So, it’s hard to know if Obama believes Americans are exceptional or not because he’s such a master of weasel wording. But apparently, Americans aren’t exceptional enough to take care of their own affairs:

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing. That while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on earth.

Self-executing? That’s a term I’d expect to find in a user’s manual. I suspect what Obama meant in the context of his government panegyrics is that God gave the gift but not the means to secure our liberty. For that we need more government. Because of …

… the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall …

This is the fallacy of argumentum ad antiquitatem – because something was done in the past we ought to do it today. This comes hard on the heels of having said above that, “For we have always understood that when times change, so must we.” Does this guy ever read his speeches before delivering them?

Nonetheless, appealing to history Obama veers off into the politics of gender, race, and sexual preference. For that he called up images of the Seneca Falls Convention, the Selma civil rights marches, and the Stonewall Inn riots. While the audience undoubtedly knew about the 1965 Selma marches, I doubt that many knew the meaning of Seneca Falls – an 1848 women’s suffrage meeting in the state of New York – or Stonewall, which I had to Google to learn that it was a gay bar in Greenwich Village. In 1969 Stonewall Inn was regularly raided by the police and arrests were made because it was owned by the mafia and had no liquor license and male prostitution was openly for sale. On one occasion a riot broke out during a raid and continued for several days. The raids ended and were outlawed, and marches for Gay Pride Day throughout the nation are held today to celebrate the Stonewall riots.

While I would hardly call people who participated in events in 1965 and 1969 “our forebears” as Obama does, Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall were seminal events in three social movements whose rights are protected in law today. A fact that Obama conveniently failed to mention is that the suppression of these rights in their day were sanctioned by government – not protected by it. So in using these examples as a rationale for more government to protect the liberty of specific groups is nothing more than pandering.

Like most of his speeches, the inaugural was conspicuous for its straw man arguments and false choices. Here is a sampling:

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.

The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few, or the rule of a mob.

We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.

… for our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.

Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.

We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.

I could comment on each of these non-existent injustices, inequities, and forced choices but you get the point. These circumstances exist only in Obama’s quixotic mind. He is the knight-errant in a world of non-functioning windmills. The psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” In like manner, if you are selling activist government, you see every social ill as inadequate federal intervention.

After the straw man assertion noted above that “the patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob,” neither of which has ever existed, Obama went on to say:

They gave to us a republic, a government of and by and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

This is undeniable. It is also undeniable that Obama’s first term is marked with attempts to subvert the “founding creed,” most recently losing an appeals court unanimous decision for unconstitutionally, and therefore illegally, making recess appointments (about which I blogged in January 2012.)  Why should we expect he will “keep safe our founding creed” in his second and final term when the restraint of running for reelection no longer exists? I don’t.

This is germane because, near the end of his speech, he says:

Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.

I absolutely disagree. A good deal of mischief by the Obama administration and administrations going back to Franklin Roosevelt, if not beyond, is due to the unsettled debate about the role of government, especially the federal government.

Obama admits that the Founders “gave to us a republic, a government of and by and for the people.” Yet this very president ignores of, by, and for the people, forcing them to buy government-specified insurance and forcing organizations and businesses to violate their religious beliefs and pay for procedures and medications that are morally repugnant to them. The Founders would be shocked.

The Obama inaugural speech is peppered with references to citizens and citizenship. He doesn’t understand the meaning of those words. Though he off-handedly states that Americans are exceptional, he is on record for impugning American exceptionalism. A republic that has endured for 225 years, albeit in an increasingly eroded form, is exceptional in the history of the world’s governments. Citizenship means something in a 225-year constitutional republic that is different from its meaning in other countries and governments. It is exceptional!

Yet Obama says we can ignore debates about the role of government and that the lack of consensus is not an impediment to moving ahead – an attitude, to paraphrase Admiral Farragut, like “damn the disagreement, full speed ahead!”

With the role of government unsettled, can a government force its citizens to violate their conscience in the name of insurance reform or not? Can it restrict the gun ownership of its citizens or not? Can its agents touch or image its citizens in humiliating ways in the name of airline security or not? Are the President and Congress restrained by the Constitution and the Enumerated Powers of the Bill of Rights or not? May the government mortgage the incomes of unborn generations to avoid taxing the current generation for their expanded benefits or not? May the government divert taxes from paying its bills and into social engineering programs or not?

Many important questions are unanswerable without a consensus on the role of government.

Obama is no Lincoln. If his speech last week said anything, it said that he is committed to replacing “We the People” with “We the Government.”

It will be a long four years.

Gun Politics

Ten days before Christmas last year, 20-year old Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother in their home before driving her car to the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut where he fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members. When first responders arrived at the school, Lanza committed suicide. The school shootings at Sandy Hook were the second deadliest in US history. Only the 2007 Virginia Tech killings by Seung-Hui Cho, a student in the university, injured more – 32 people killed and 17 wounded before killing himself.

When I heard the news about Sandy Hook, my heart grieved for the parents who lost children and for the families of the staff members. I’m a parent of four, now adult, children and I guarded them like a hawk when they were young. The age of the victims, the time of the year, and the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible.

Still, when Obama used four children as props for his photo-op last week, spearheading his agenda for more gun restrictions, it bordered on repugnant exploitation. Its purpose was to posture for the anti-gun advocates in this country and show that he was a man of action. In the face of the Sandy Hook tragedy, he essentially said that he would by-pass the Constitutional due process of co-governing with Congress to issue 23 gun-related executive orders – something he didn’t feel compelled to do after the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting or the 2011 Gabby Gifford shooting in Tucson or the government Fast and Furious scandal about which I blogged last year. No, all of these events occurred before the 2012 election, which he wanted desperately to win. The firestorm following his April 2008 remark about bitter Pennsylvanians and mid-westerners who hold on to their guns and religion rather than defer to government-engineered solutions from all-wise Washington politicians taught then-Senator Obama a thing or two about guns and Americans – both Democrat and Republican gun owners.

On balance, Obama’s anti-gun performance on January 16 was all theater. He was introduced by Biden who spoke emotionally about the Sandy Hook shooting. During his comments, Biden recognized the staged presence of Colin Goddard, who was in the audience. Goddard was among the wounded in the Virginia Tech shooting. He was the target for four bullets from Seung-Hui Cho, the Tech shooter who used a handgun, I might add, not an assault rifle which Obama wants banned. After the Biden introduction, Obama took the podium and spoke, which included reading letters he’d received from the four children on stage with him, exhorting him to action. Not bad for kids aged 8 to 11. When I was their ages I didn’t have the insight their letters revealed. I’d be interested in learning how they gained it.

And then, as he stared phlegmatically at the invited audience, he intoned that “their [the letter writers’] voices should compel us to change.” While he recognized the gun-owning rights of citizens in a free society – rights he wants to curtail with his form of governing (or is he ruling?) – he dramatically said, “OK, let’s sign these orders.” I saw him sign his name two, possibly three times, not 23. The transcript of his teleprompter-aided speech says, “(The executive orders are signed)” but where are they? They are nowhere posted on the White House website. Do they even exist?

After high-fiving and hugging each child Obama promptly left the stage and the show was over. Thus far, the 25 executive orders may be MIA because the congressional GOP said they would be challenged in court if attempted. So the child-hugging charade was pure theater.

Two children not present for the White House staged performance were Donnie and Melinda Herman’s 9-year old twins whose mom put five of six .38 caliber bullets into Paul Slater, a recently released con with a bad-guy rap sheet. Slater had rung the doorbell of the Herman’s suburban Atlanta home several times before breaking in, believing the family was gone. Melinda retreated with her twins to a crawl space off of the master bedroom taking her husband’s revolver and a cell phone in order to call her husband for help who in turn called the police. Donnie told Melinda if the intruder opened the crawl space door to shoot – which she did missing once. Slater somehow managed to remain conscious and was able to run to his SUV, crashing it within a block. He will be a guest of the Georgia penal system for a long time if he survives his wounds. Despite past jeers and ridicule from the Left, Executive VP of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, proved prescient in at least the Herman case when he said that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” except Slater had a crowbar instead of a gun.

As Obama exploited the Sandy Hook tragedy for his ends, pushing measures that he says will protect children in the future, I couldn’t help wonder why he wasn’t equally concerned about the $52,345.87 of national debt per child that his policies have incurred and the fact that he is further mortgaging their future at a rate of $3.83 billion per day. That the debt must be repaid by children now in elementary and secondary schools is far more certain than the reoccurrence of another school shooting.

I further wondered why his agenda didn’t include the movie violence created by his Hollywood buddies who contributed so generously to his two political campaigns. Killings and explosions in their films occur almost every minute. Why ignore movie violence? Because, for example, the blood-soaked B-movie "Django Unchained" returned $125 million to its Democrat contributing producers in the first three weeks. And here comes another “Die Hard” movie, as if we needed another, which no doubt is all special effects and no plot if the TV ads are any indication. Films, video games, and extreme experiences like these desensitize their consumers to violence and destruction. Along with his calls for reinstatement of the assault weapon ban, why not ban violent media content? Such a ban probably collides with the First Amendment, but Obama isn’t concerned about violating the Second Amendment with his gun restrictions.

Obama’s anti-gun agenda, entitled “Now is the Time,” would ban assault rifles, limit magazine capacity, require even more rigorous background checks and their compliance costs (including private gun sales), and require interstate and federal information sharing to learn where are all of the 350 million guns in this country and who are their owners. None of these measures would have prevented the Sandy Hook killings, the Aurora killings, the Tucson killings, which injured Gabby Gifford, nor would it have prevented any of the other horrific shootings that have occurred in this country – because those crimes weren’t committed by law-abiding citizens. No matter. That’s not the issue. Obama and his Attorney General Holder are openly opposed to the Second Amendment and have tried relentlessly to disarm America since first taking office.

During his Solomonic White House presentation, Obama said the “assault rifle” used in the Aurora shooting is designed “for the theater of war” which enabled the killer, James Holmes, to shoot so many people. Untrue. Holmes used three weapons in the shooting – a semi-automatic rifle that is unsuited for modern combat, a shotgun not used in war, and a semi-automatic pistol used only for personal security in a combat theater. Before the shooting, Holmes tossed two smoke grenades into the audience to create confusion before he started shooting. The guy was on a mission. I’m not defending Holmes’ act. I’m refuting Obama’s misleading explanation of it.

An automatic weapon is one which will continue to fire, like a machine gun, as long as the trigger is compressed. Their sale and purchase is illegal in this country. A semi-automatic weapon fires each time the trigger is pulled – like the ancient M-1 rifle of World War II vintage. They are legal and are used more for sport shooting than hunting.

But let’s be clear that the term “assault rifle” is intentionally used by the Left to conjure up emotional images of a weapon Rambo might use. There is no functional difference in an assault rifle and a hunting rifle. “Assault” relates to use rather than function and what the Left calls an assault rifle would never be used in military combat. Rifles with certain assault-like cosmetic features – pistol grips, folding stocks, flash suppressors – were once banned for their look rather than their functionality until the ban sensibly expired under its sunset provision in 2004 having had no effect on gun crimes. One percent of shooting crimes is committed with an “assault” rifle. Even while the ban was in effect, it didn’t prevent the Columbine Massacre in 1999, which was carried out with two shotguns, a carbine, a semi-automatic pistol, and improvised explosives.

All of the weapons Holmes used in the Aurora shootings were legally obtained. Holmes legally passed two background checks. Adam Lanza’s Sandy Hook shooting was unpreventable in a free society, including Connecticut, which has assault weapons laws that are among the strictest in the nation. Lanza never had a background check because he stole the guns he used from his mother who bought them legally and she passed a background check. The Virginia shooter also legally passed a background check. Obama’s tougher background checking wouldn’t have prevented these crimes. However, his measures would  include checking the background of the owner of a stolen weapon before returning it to him or her. So long Fourth Amendment.

Obama wants weapon clips limited to ten rounds. Melinda Herman had six rounds in her revolver, and even firing at point blank range, she missed once. What if Melinda Herman had missed five times or all six times?What if a second criminal had been in the house?

Apparently Obama thinks mass murderers commit their crimes only with assault rifles and a single magazine of ammunition. In fact they have carried multiple weapons and multiple ammunition clips with them. The Aurora and Sandy Hook killers had so many guns, they had to leave some in their cars. So we limit magazine clips to ten rounds. What’s to prevent a killer from reloading several such clips? One of the two Columbine shooters had thirteen 10-round magazines to reload the carbine he carried.

As Obama postured for the anti-gun lobby during his stage show, he told reporters, “If there is a step we can take that will save even one child from what happened in Newtown (Sandy Hook), we should take that step.” Okay, let’s train and arm two or three staff members in every school. There are 55 million students in 133,000 K-12 schools in the nation. If killers knew that possibly three people in every school had a gun, they’d likely pick another target. Obama’s solution? One thousand security officers in schools. Now if we can only figure out a way to get killers to go only to those schools … No. The Left is opposed to training and arming school staff as we did with airline pilots after 9/11. The Left wants to disarm people, not arm them.

The American people were behind him (in gun control), Obama claimed in his January 16 pontification. No they aren’t. A Rasmussen survey released last week showed that 57% thought the government should enforce the gun laws we have rather than pass more laws as Obama wants from Congress. Prior to making his recommendations to Obama, Biden interviewed experts in gun control, one of whom told him that 2010 data showed 77,000 identifiable people tried to get through the NICS system to illegally buy a gun. That’s a crime. How many of them have been prosecuted? Seventy. No interest from the government in improving the prosecution rates. Attorney General Holder said he didn’t have the time or people to be going after these violators. But he and his boss have time to restrict the gun rights of law-abiding citizens.

Full disclosure. I do not own a gun and have never owned a gun in my life. Moreover, I have two sons. One is currently a police officer and the other was a police officer before leaving to start a business that takes him into a mean part of our city. I worry about their safety even though they are constantly armed. Unlike Obama my sons and my family aren’t surrounded by armed security. Therefore by all rights I have more interest in seeing gun violence reduced, if not eliminated, than Obama does. But I want to see real solutions, not the penny ante solutions that Obama proposes.

Over the past three decades 543 people have been killed in 70 mass shootings – about 18 per year. Too many, but three times as many people die from lightning strikes annually. FBI statistics report 352 people were killed last year with rifles. In a nation of 311 million people, the chances of being killed with a rifle  therefore are about one in a million. In contrast, 33,000 people died in car crashes and 100,000 died from hospital medical errors – enough to fill four jumbo jets every week of the year. I cite these statistics to put gun deaths in perspective. Every death is significant whether due to guns or autos or tobacco use or medical mistakes. But if gun control was the answer to gun violence, why were more people (including children like Sandy Hook’s) killed in Chicago last year than the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan? Chicago and New York have some of the toughest gun laws in the nation and also have the highest crime and murder rates.

Several years ago, a city in Georgia required all its residents to own a gun. It was a silly unenforceable law, but home invasions and violent crimes decreased. A Harvard study showed that countries with high rates of gun ownership experienced fewer violent crimes than countries with low gun ownership. Norway has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, but that didn’t prevent the 2008 shooting spree by a lunatic who killed 69 children and attendees at a youth camp.

Rational criminals don’t do their mischief where victims may be armed. But most criminals aren’t rational. Look at Sandy Hook, Aurora, Tucson, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and mass shootings of similar ilk; the common thread is mental illness. Someone who is mentally ill and wants to kill someone will do it with guns, knives, rocks, fists, or a truck full of fertilizer as we’ve seen done by the demon-possessed Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer the cannibal, Aileen Wuornos, the Florida prostitute who killed seven men “who tried to rape her,” and the yet unidentified woman who pushed a stranger in front of a New York subway train last month as she talked to voices in her head.

The mental illnesses of many who kill were previously known or suspected by others. But five decades ago the courts made it almost impossible to institutionalize people and in fact released many who are a danger to themselves and innocent people. Many live on the streets; most are harmless, some aren’t. They should be on medication, which means putting them in a custodial environment. But the courts won’t allow it and our treatment facilitates lack the capacity. The US mental health system is totally dysfunctional. If we really want to solve the violence problem in this country, we’d start by solving that problem. Had society done so, the victims of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Tucson, and Aurora would be alive today. But since the mentally ill have strong advocates in the courts, in Congress, and in public/private organizations that shield them from institutionalization and treatment, the next best way to prevent their demonic behavior from harming us is with a gun.

Obama has repeatedly shown a disregard for the Constitution. But the Second Amendment stands on a sound rationale.

The Founders of this country as well as its 18^th century citizens were a suspicious lot, especially suspicious of power entrusted to a central government. In order to get the Constitution ratified, the Bill of Rights with its ten amendments had to be added. In them, after writing the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law” restricting freedom of speech and religion, our most fundamental freedom, the Founders next ordered that “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” as the Second Constitutional Amendment. Why? Because they were students of governments going back to the ancient Greek democracies and they worried that when government loses its fear of the people, it will trample underfoot their freedom. Thus it was essential that the people be able to bear arms to defend themselves from their political leaders. The Founders were that concerned about the corrupting affect of power.

Look at the rights that they reserved after fretting about free speech, assembly, religion, and the right to bear arms.  The Fourth Amendment gave protection against search and seizure. The Fifth Amendment protects the right of due process and prevents double jeopardy. The Sixth Amendment guarantees trial by jury, and the Eighth prevents cruel and unusual punishment. These were the threats they believed required explicit prohibition to prevent future administrations from exploiting them.

Like the Founders, I believe government is the greatest threat to our liberty. Those in power would never succeed in stealing our liberty in one fell swoop. And that’s not government’s way. Instead it nibbles away at the edges, until one day we wake up to the fact that we aren’t really free anymore. That’s why Ronald Reagan warned,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

As a student of history, I don’t have to look far to find examples of what happens when citizens are stripped of the ability to defend themselves against their own government. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy happened in my lifetime. Millions are buried in unmarked graves around the world who believed their government would reliably act in their interests. Always.

Do I trust our government, especially the federal government, and most particularly the Obama government, to reliably confine itself to a benign mender of roads, keeper of domestic peace, dispenser of welfare, and protector of our borders?

Not for a heartbeat.

How the “Cliff Deal” Was Done

As I argued in last week’s blog, this country is facing a life-threatening spending problem that has piled up a national debt exceeding the value of goods and services we produce annually. There is no painless way out of this mess. The American people’s addiction to government services will make it very difficult for self-serving politicians to ignore constituent whining, put their careers at risk, and do the right thing for the country not just their home districts and states. Since the core of the American addiction is entitlements it’s hard to be sanguine that this mess can be cleaned up before an economic Armageddon compels it.

Entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare and other entitlements – represent 62% of federal spending, programs. They have always been taken off the table in previous spending negotiations. Obviously no meaningful reduction in spending can happen without shrinking entitlements significantly. Add in defense spending (19%) and interest on the national debt (6%), and a total of 87% can’t be cut immediately or without shrieks and howls from citizens and their Washington representatives. Solutions exist, like privatizing all or part of Social Security, giving Medicare recipients greater choices and incentives to be wiser healthcare buyers, and allowing states more flexibility to manage Medicaid delivery. But these programs have strong advocates who are curiously less concerned with their unsustainability in the long term than with continuing them in their original and outdated incarnations.

Couple the impending entitlement spending train wreck with Obama’s my-way-or-the-highway negotiating style and it’s hard to see how the current congressional make-up and White House could agree on anything regardless of the consequences. The art of political negotiation must involve some degree of compromise so that a win/win outcome is possible even if neither side is particularly happy with it. In Obama’s world, only he is allowed to win. A Wall Street Journal op-ed this week summarized its writer’s interview with Speaker Boehner after the cliff deal was inked sans spending cuts. Boehner revealed that during his negotiations with Obama, at one point Boehner made an $800 billion new tax concession and asked Obama, "What am I getting?" Obama responded, "You don't get anything for it. I'm taking that anyway."

While negotiations were going on between Boehner and White House aides, Obama relentlessly demagogued Republicans in his speeches. He mocked their proposals for spending cuts, asserting that the country had no spending problem, as Republicans claimed, and that they were just trying to protect their rich friends from higher taxes. Boehner told Obama that “… we have a very serious spending problem,” to which Obama replied, "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that." Aside from his abrasive negotiating style, by denying that a spending problem exists, the man apparently believes in an alternate universe.

Obama’s remarkable lack of conciliation has won him no friends among Republican Senators and Representatives who see him as a partisan extremist. This is going to make any agreement in resolving our fiscal crisis almost impossible as long as he occupies the White House.

At some point during their Christmas negotiations it became apparent to Boehner that he couldn’t make a deal with Obama. The Maximum Leader’s round trip back from Hawaii cost taxpayers $3 million and all he contributed to the negotiations was to say “no” to every Boehner proposal. In hindsight everyone would have been better off if he’d stayed in Hawaii and had the final cliff deal FedEx’d for his signature. Negotiations with the White House were broken off when it became apparent that there would be no spending cuts.

Negotiating with Senate Majority Leader Reid wasn’t much different. As the clock wound down and the cliff approached, Boehner made repeated offers to Reid who, instead of responding promptly as the urgency of the situation demanded, often took 24 hours before sending a counter offer. Finally, Reid’s aides called Boehner’s aides to tell them Reid would not be sending a counter offer. Reid seemed to work harder at poisoning their relationship than reaching an agreement. After learning that Reid had given a Senate speech in which he called Boehner a dictator and other uncomplimentary terms, the Speaker became so frustrated that the next time he saw Reid at a White House meeting he told him to “go f--- yourself.”

Only when Minority Leader McConnell became concerned that going over the cliff could roil the US economy, if not the world’s, did he decide to contact Joe Biden directly and ask if he wanted to do a deal. The two veteran negotiators were able to hammer out an agreement in one day. The baby was ugly but McConnell was able to get all but eight Senate Republicans to vote for it. Reid sent the Senate bill to Boehner with a note that the House could make no changes to it. Most of the House Republicans balked at Reid’s take-it-or-leave-it decree and its absence of spending cuts. Only 85 Republicans voted for the Senate-crafted bill and were joined by 172 Democrats. The majority of Republicans – 150 of them – voted against the bill joined by 16 Democrats. Ryan and Boehner voted for the bill. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor voted against it. Over on the Senate side Marco Rubio voted against the bill setting up an interesting conflict between Ryan and Rubio – two likely Republican presidential contenders in 2016.

The House vote occurred two days before Boehner would stand for reelection as Speaker. His nominal opponent was Nancy Pelosi, but several Republicans were waiting in the wings to put their names forward if Boehner failed to get a first ballot win. He needed 214 votes, a simple majority, to win. He got 220 with 12 Republican defections for other candidates. It was originally thought that there would be 30 defections, which would have forced a second ballot. Pelosi got 192 votes. Boehner’s reelection was the closest first ballot win since Newt Gingrich’s close win in 1997 which followed his ethics wrist-slapping.

The passage of the “cliff” bill gave Obama bragging rights that he increased taxes on the rich. His original definition of “rich,” however, included couples making $250,000 or singles making $200,000. The deal that passed has thresholds for couples of $450,000 and $400,000 for singles. To that end, instead of increasing taxes on the “top 2%” as Obama had boasted his proposal would do, the deal he signed is in fact a tax increase on only the top 0.6%.

However, taxpayers will see their deductions capped beginning at the $250,000 and $200,000 thresholds which raise their effective tax rates. This stealth tax was accomplished by restoring the Personal Exemption Phase-out and the Pease provision, which expired in 2010. Obama resurrected it during negotiations for the tax increases. The personal exemption had been $3,800 per family member. Absent it, a married couple with two kids and a joint income above $250,000 will see an effective marginal tax increase of 4.4%. With four kids, that increases their marginal rate by 6%. Itemized deduction limitations add another 1% starting at the $200,000 and $250,000 thresholds.

Taxes on capital gains increased from 15% to 23.8% for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples earning more than $250,000, which includes the new 3.8% ObamaCare surtax on investment income. Capital gains haven’t been taxed this much since the first Clinton term. Taxes on dividends also increased from 15% to 23.8% for high earners, including the new 3.8% ObamaCare surtax on investment income.

Whereas Obama wanted an inheritance tax exemption of only $1 million, the exemption was increased to $5 million and indexed for inflation. However, the tax rate on inheritances above the exempted amount increased from 35% to 40%. Republicans wanted the inheritance tax – aka the “death tax” – eliminated. It is a hateful symbolic tax. Tax receipts from inheritance make up only a third of one percent of total tax receipts. People with potentially large estate tax liabilities avoid them through legal estate planning techniques so there is no economic argument for retaining the Estate Tax.

The Alternative Minimum Tax was created in 1969 because 155 high income households paid no income tax. At the time of its passage, the geniuses in Washington didn’t think to index it to inflation, thus in time this “class tax” became a “mass tax” as more middle class taxpayers were ensnared by it.  In recent years, Congress had to pass stop gap measures to set the threshold above middle class incomes. The cliff deal permanently patches the AMT and indexes it to inflation, rescuing 26 million taxpayers from it unless another temporary stop gap was passed this year. The AMT is the poster child for reforming the federal tax code.

The cliff deal didn’t extend the 2% payroll tax reduction that has been in place for the past two years. Therefore, despite Obama’s protestations that the middle class will not see tax increases, and that only the top 2% would see their taxes increased, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center announced that 77% of taxpayers will be paying more taxes. Households earning between $40,000 and $50,000 will have an average tax increase of $580 and household incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 will average tax hikes of $820.

However, the cliff deal did extend unemployment benefits for another year, arguably reducing the incentive to aggressively look for work or accept a job whose pay is comparable to the unemployment benefit. Now, let me see if I’ve got this correct … we are going to reward unemployment and penalize employment (by increasing taxes 2%.)

Although it was not part of the cliff deal, the 2.3% medical device tax goes into effect this year. The rationale for ObamaCare was to bring down healthcare costs, but to pay for it medical devices are taxed, raising healthcare costs. By golly, I believe Obama really did discover an alternate universe!

Oh, and ObamaCare added 20 new taxes, so in combination with the “cliff taxes” 2013 should be an interesting year for the economy.

Negotiations over the debt ceiling, the deferred sequestration spending cuts, and getting a budget passed in the Senate loom in the near future. It’s hard to see how the Republicans can win any of these fights. Their leaders are inept if not cowardly. They can’t seem to muster the courage or competence to take their message to the people. If they fail to raise the debt ceiling and the government shuts down, they will get blamed, so why not get something for it – like budget passage by the Senate before agreeing to raise the ceiling? It ought to be easy to convince Americans that the country hasn’t had a budget since 2009 because Harry Reid won’t bring it to a vote, while the House Republicans have passed a budget every year since taking control.

Another tack would be to tie ceiling increases to entitlement reform – incrementally. The sequestration battle isn’t going to produce any sweeping spending cuts, certainly not in entitlements which are what must be reformed. Obama will just dig in his heels and let the automatic cuts occur as across the board cuts in domestic and defense spending, knowing that the Republicans will walk the plank to avoid defense cuts. So here’s the deal: conform Medicare eligibility to the Social Security retirement age which is 67 for people born after 1960 and Obama gets the equivalent of one month of spending in the debt ceiling increase. Raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 and the early retirement age from 62 to 67 over the next decade and he gets another month’s spending added to the debt ceiling. The price of another month is, for example, means-testing food stamps recipients, or block granting Medicaid to the states, or reducing unemployment benefits, or any of a long menu of quid pro quo spending reductions that get traded for offsetting incremental increases in the debt ceiling. Such a strategy is far more workable than haggling over sweeping spending reforms. It’s a message that can be taken to the people that they might understand: “We offered to raise the debt ceiling for X months’ worth of spending in return for Y and they turned us down.”

Obama will ask for more taxes in the coming negotiations. He saw Boehner’s near-death reelection, McConnell’s loss of eight in his caucus, and the almost two to one Republican vote against the McConnell-Biden bill. If he can continue getting the Republican leaders to buy into bad deals, he can divide and conquer their caucus and possibly regain the House majority in 2014. With Pelosi back in control, the last two years of his presidency would have smooth sailing as he completes his transformation of America into a welfare state.

Obama won Round One of the cliff deal. As he walked to Air Force One on New Year’s Day, he must have thought to himself, “Not a bad return for giving up a few days of my Hawaii vacation. And all I had to do was say ‘no’ repeatedly.”