Senator Ted Cruz’s citizens’ arrest

America just had a horrible experience with Florida’s single-minded George Zimmerman, who caused mayhem allegedly to keep other Americans safe.

Senator Ted Cruz is trying to convince Republicans to act like vigilantes in Washington and with the same righteous zeal. A nation asleep must be saved from itself as well as from suspicious young men in the neighborhood.

Indeed, fear of young people also drives his nightmare.

 

Conservative pundit George F. Will captures Cruz’s case for doing whatever it takes to stop the implementation of universal health insurance:  

“It is two minutes until midnight. On Jan. 1, the ACA’s insurance subsidies begin, like a heroin drip, making Americans instant addicts. The Obama administration knows that no major entitlement, once tasted, has been repealed.”

The heroin that’s been cooking in Washington for three generations, of course, is fine for veterans, the disabled, children of the very poor, Congressmen and Congresswomen, most public servants, and anyone over 65. They can manage it; and, anyway, those individuals who overdose, after all, were doing something for America before they grew old.

Ted Cruz proves again that you can be brassy, Ivy School–educated, called a conservative populist and not understand your civilization’s history or trust the people you’re paid to represent.

The word “entitlement” is being thrown around now with the same promiscuous dread that “greedy,” “inattentive,” and “shiftless” were whispered by aristocrats to express their unease about the mischievous idea of extending the vote to the wider population.

The aristocrats, at least, were afraid of a new idea.

After more than a century of experience with wide-open mass democracy, however, the Cruzes and Ryans of Washington still believe that although they can learn from their mistakes and live within their means, the insatiable, myopic masses cannot.

It’s easier to recommend an icy shower than take one.

Still, in Canada, Europe, and the United States, popular public services are reformed and replaced by governments that survive and go on to get re-elected. With a compelling case against business as usual, people will accept weekly garbage collection, user fees, de-control of rents, less protection for labor-intensive industries, elimination of electricity rate subsidies, and, for instance, tighter conditions on unemployment, pension, and health benefits.

Universal health insurance needn’t limit the freedom of future national governments to make fiscally responsible decisions and should make America a healthier place to live.

A democracy that can manage nuclear weapons, Senator Cruz, will survive Obamacare.  

Politics of hard choices making democracy in US look bad

American federal government may have a basic management problem—its leaders today don’t seem to know how to make painful decisions. This has driven Fareed Zakaria to wonder whether American style democracy is the problem.

“It's not that our democracy doesn't work; it's that it works only too well. American politics is now hyper responsive to constituents' interests. And all those interests are dedicated to preserving the past rather than investing for the future. There are no lobbying groups for the next generation of industries, only for those companies that are here now with cash to spend. There are no special-interest groups for our children's economic well-being, only for people who get government benefits right now. The whole system is geared to preserve current subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes. That is why the federal government spends $4 on elderly people for every $1 it spends on those under 18. And when the time comes to make cuts, guess whose programs are first on the chopping board. That is a terrible sign of a society's priorities and outlook.”

—Fareed Zakaria, “Are America’s best days behind us?” Time U.S., March 2, 2011

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2056610,00.html#ixzz1FYhWaotV

This may accurately capture how Washington has drifted into a crisis but, thankfully, doesn’t explain how it usually gets out of trouble. Historically, danger has been met by leadership. Leaders—not great teachers, but great doers—have assumed their responsibilities. That is still possible today.

In quiet times, Zakaria has it right: politicians deliver what they’re told their people want—and the wants of the richest, most diverse democracy on earth are daunting. However, the vast majority of people still elect their leaders to decide—to know better what’s got to be done and to consider wider interests.

In fact, people do expect their representatives to respect the interests of children and future generations, not just vested interests and likely voters.  If this was not so, budgets would never be balanced, taxes would never be raised  and child labour and slavery would still exist in North America.

There is no question about our politicians—including Washington’s—having a mandate to do adult things to entitlements and taxes. There is nothing in the polls to suggest that American democracy—and civil order—can’t sustain tax reform or an extension of the retirement age.

The underlying problem is very unflattering: too many Democrats and Republicans are not yet willing to stop using the big budget items against each other.

However, if they don’t settle down and lead, there will be consequences. France’s 4th Republic from 1946 to 1958 thought it would last forever. It was also full of intellectuals, amateurs, cynics and zealots. It played politics day and night, but couldn’t tackle France’s untenable colonial policy. In short order, it was replaced by President Charles de Gaulle. He once said: “When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.”

Spare America our tears on November 2 election night

Two years ago, Canadians secretly found themselves envying Americans, who were lining up at polling stations to make history—while we watched.  Today, we’re free of that. Through the dead of winter, many will be indulging in our safest sport: thrilling at the decadence of American democracy and purring about how we grew up so straight and sure.

After the mid-term congressional elections, Canadian border watchers and embattled American Democrats will titillate us with grim scenarios about our neighbour and pronouncements about the superior Canadian ways of doing politics. Other than silence and hockey, there are a few points that we could keep at hand to protect one’s sanity and hold up the case for change in Canada.

(1) American democracy is loud, expensive, and unpredictable. However, each American party is open. Their candidates and leaders must first win the votes of grassroots partisans and mediocre incumbents face their own parties as well as the electorate. Canadian parties don’t have primaries. (Our incumbent Liberal leader won his job at an uncontested leadership convention.)

(2) The constitutional checks and balances in the US legislative system lead to delay and compromise on major strategic issues. However, during the last two years, the US Congress passed a universal health care package far more expensive and intrusive than the Canada Health Care Act. And it launched a stimulus package that ensured the prompt end of the recession in the US and, to a great extent, its end in Canada and in other major American importing nations.

(3) American dominance of the world economy is over so Canada should chart its own course with those emerging powers that will drive the future. However, the United States is diversifying its exports as fast as we are and has the means to be a winning trader in the future. It is the home of three-quarters of the Nobel Prize winners in science. And its manufacturing sector remains nearly one-quarter more productive than ours. Americans are reluctant to pay higher taxes, but they do have the means—substantially higher incomes—to pay for new infrastructure and other national objectives, when they choose.

When our side wins, we celebrate the resiliency and idealism of American democracy. When our side loses, some of us wonder whether the paler democracies of Europe had it right. Whether Canadian democracy further evolves along more populist American lines or not, we should not delude ourselves about our neighbour: it will carry on arguing and engaging the future as a demanding, classical liberal, mass democracy.