A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Markets, Sanctions, and North Korea

Writing in The South China Morning Post last week, Dr. James Dorn (of the libertarian think-tank The Cato Institute) discussed the economic situation in North Korea.

After US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's announcement that new economic sanctions would be placed on North Korea, one headline read: "US tightens the screws on North Korea's economy." Yet, Pyongyang has already tightened the screws on its own economy.  The chaos created by last year's currency "reform" and by the crackdown on market activities is evident in food shortages, spiraling prices and discontent.

Small traders had taken advantage of opportunities for profitable exchange following a relaxation of economic controls after the famine of the mid-1990s. Private markets developed and cross-border trade grew. The existence of private markets along with the "sunshine" policy of the South brought new opportunities, as workers moved into the non-state sector and consumers could purchase goods outside the state distribution system.

And yet with this small glimmer of success in an otherwise devastated country, the totalitarian government that rules North Korea with an iron fist did not care for the free trade that was taking place.

Not surprisingly, the communist elite feared the market. Moreover, the South, under domestic and US pressure, departed from a policy of engagement. By 2005, Pyongyang had begun to restrict small traders. The currency reform — and an end to the use of foreign currencies in the informal, dual economy — was a signal that further liberalization was anathema.

Instead of learning from the natural experiments that demonstrated the superiority of markets, Kim Jong-il and his cronies preferred to maintain their power. By making people dependent on the state for their livelihood, government officials regain power lost to the market.

But Dr. Dorn believes that brighter days lay ahead for the impoverished nation.  His solution seems to be to lessen economic sanctions on North Korea.

After more than 50 years of North-South tension, it's time to end the socialist fantasy and restore markets and freedom to the North. The US foreign policy of economic sanctions and war games has failed to change the North. A policy of economic engagement would be more productive, with support from both China and South Korea. China's "peaceful development" is the result of economic liberalization, not isolation.

The transition from central planning to a market economy in the North should be of utmost importance. Massive war games and economic sanctions will only play into the hands of the North's propaganda department, and the US will become the scapegoat for Kim's attack on market liberalism.

The North was once richer than the South. Restoring markets and instituting a rule of law would give North Koreans the possibility of improving their lives.

What do you think about this proposal?  Will helping to strengthen the economy of the Communist regime prolong their control of the country?  Have sanctions worked against dictatorial enemies like Cuba?

Newt Defends His Controversial Comments

Newt Gingrich's latest book, To Save America, has taken predictable flack from the mainstream media and liberal Democrats everywhere.  Here is part of the interview he gave on Fox News Sunday last weekend, in defense of his claim that the modern secular-progressive Left (typified by the current Obama-Pelosi-Reid leadership in Washington D.C.) poses as great a threat to the traditional American way of life as did our foreign enemies of the past century.

I have ordered Speaker Gingrich's book and will be writing up a short review on it at some point in the next few weeks.

Spend Less, Washington

Spending is THE problem in Washington D.C. (and most state capitals).  Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) understands that, and explains why on MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Spending money that doesn't belong to you, and more to the point, we don't have, is immoral. Taxes and spending are moral issues. There's no way around it.

Mark Steyn: Fiscal Responsibility Is So “18th Century”

Columnist of the world, Mark Steyn, sees problems with the "fuzzy" math our president employs to promote his progressive economic agenda:

Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, described current deficits as "unsustainable." So let's make them even more so. The president tells us, with a straight face, that his grossly irresponsible profligate wastrel of a predecessor took the federal budget on an eight-year joyride, so the only way his sober, fiscally prudent successor can get things under control is to grab the throttle and crank it up to what Mel Brooks in "Spaceballs" (which seems the appropriate comparison) called "Ludicrous Speed."

Steyn continues:

Obama's spending proposes to take the average Bush deficit for the years 2001-08, and double it, all the way to 2020. To get out of the Bush hole, we need to dig a hole twice as deep for one-and-a-half times as long. And that's according to the official projections of his Economics Czar, Ms. Rose Colored-Glasses. By 2015, the actual hole may be so deep that even if you toss every Obama speech down it on double-spaced paper you still won't be able to fill it up. In the spendthrift Bush days, federal spending as a proportion of GDP averaged 19.6 percent. Obama proposes to crank it up to 25 percent as a permanent feature of life.

You really must understand something: Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank deeply believe in top-down socialism.  Barack Obama isn't a bad guy; he's just flat-out wrong when it comes to economic policy.

Steyn later quotes from an Associated Press news story that does its best to defend that same counter-intuitive policy the president insists on employing:

"WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.83 trillion budget on Monday that would pour more money into the fight against high unemployment, boost taxes on the wealthy and freeze spending for a wide swath of government programs."

What language is that written in? How can a $3.83 trillion budget "freeze spending"? And where's the president getting all this money to "pour" into his "fight" against high unemployment? Would it perchance be from the same small businesses that might be hiring new workers if the president didn't need so much money to "pour" away?

Bingo, Mark.  Bingo.

CNN reporter not a big hit at Tea Party

When you ignore people like the Tea Party protesters as long as CNN has, don't expect to be welcomed with open arms when you do finally show up.

Kathleen Sebelius teaches us how to cough (and laugh)

You can't make this stuff up...

From the Associated Press:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius demonstrates how to cough while making remarks before President Barack Obama's national broadcast address to students, at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009.

Afghanistan is important

Bret Stehpens of the Wall Street Journal reminds us all the stakes involved for the United States in Afghanistan:

Withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a Taliban takeover in Kandahar and perhaps Kabul, would plunge Afghanistan into another civil war infinitely bloodier than what we have now. Withdrawal would force Islamabad to abandon its war on terror and again come to terms with its own militants, as it did in the 1990s. Only this time, it wouldn't be clear who is patron and who is client. Withdrawal would give Pakistan's jihadists the freedom to shift fronts to India, with all the nightmare scenarios that entails. Withdrawal would invite the al Qaeda remnant in Iraq—already on an upswing—to redouble its efforts, and do so with the confidence that the U.S. has permanently soured on Middle Eastern interventions.

This is a partial list. The alternative is a winding and bloody struggle to defend and improve a hapless and often corrupt government in a godforsaken land of often (though by no means pervasively) ungrateful people. This is not the noblest fight, and no sane nation would wage it by choice. But we did not choose it and, if we keep our nerve, we can win it. Otherwise, the consequence will be ashes flying again in our own streets, something to remember on the eve of another 9/11 anniversary.

Read the full article here.

Obama’s litany of bad ideas are catching up with him

Mark Steyn filled in for Rush Limbaugh two different days this week, and for my money, it was the best six hours of radio since the last two Michael Jordan-led Bulls Championship games in 1998.

Now Mr. Steyn has followed that performance up with a fantastic column on the problem President Obama keeps running in to: himself.

The president’s strategy on January 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall — stimulus, auto nationalization, cap’n’trade, health care — and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. Unfortunately, the American people aren’t finding it quite so charismatic, and they’re beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting prosperity-throttling future-beggaring big-government policies.

No wonder the poor chap’s running out of material. At the time of writing, one of his exercises for America’s schoolchildren is to suggest what you’d like him to do in his next speech. Here’s mine: Call in sick, sir. You’ll be doing your presidency a favor.

The president is not our ruler but our representative, a citizen-executive drawn from the people. It is unbecoming to a self-governing republic to require schoolchildren to (to cite another test question) select the three most important words in the president’s speech.

Here's a perfect example of the spectacular work Steyn does when filling in for El Rushbo: