Home
In this issue
March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review August 23, 2009 3 Elul 5769

Obama's State Capitalism

By George Will


Printer Friendly Version

Email this article

Share and bookmark this article


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As memories of the Cold War fade, like photographs bleached by sunlight, few remember the Brezhnev Doctrine. It was enunciated by Leonid Brezhnev in Warsaw in November 1968 as a retrospective justification for the Soviet-led invasion of Prague the previous August by Warsaw Pact forces to halt Czechoslovakia's liberalization. The doctrine was supposed to guarantee that history would be directional, controlled by a leftward-clicking ratchet. It asserted a Soviet right to intervene to protect socialism wherever it was imposed.


We are already testing whether President Obama and other statists who have given his administration and this Congress their ideological cast have a doctrine analogous to Brezhnev's. Having aggressively, even promiscuously, blurred the distinction between public and private sectors with improvised and largely unauthorized interventions in the economy, will they ever countenance a retreat of the state? Or do they have an aspiration that they dare not speak? Do they hope that state capitalism will be irreversible — that wherever government has asserted the primacy of politics, the primacy will be permanent?


They say not, but they say many things that they probably do not believe. (That a government-run "public option" health insurance would not extinguish or even harm private insurance; that cap-and-trade carbon regulations will raise energy costs without injuring the economy; that taxing Peter to subsidize Paul's purchase of a new car is a sound basis for economic growth; that an 85 percent unspent stimulus has routed the recession, etc.) Two legislative proposals are revealing the administration's real intentions regarding government ownership of companies.


FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER

Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.

The Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act drafted by Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, would have required the Treasury Department to distribute to individual taxpayers — evenly, to the approximately 120 million who filed 2008 returns — all the stock the government holds in General Motors (61 percent) and Chrysler (8 percent). The legislation also would have prohibited using any more Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for GM or Chrysler. And the legislation would have prevented government from influencing corporate decisions for social, energy or environmental policy purposes.


Last month the Senate rejected this legislation 59 to 38. Only one Democrat voted for it.


There remains, however, the TARP Recipient Ownership Trust Act, introduced by Sen. Bob Corker, another Tennessee Republican, and Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat. It says that when the government owns more than 20 percent of a company (today, AIG, Citigroup and GM), that stake will be controlled by an independent trust administered by three unpaid trustees appointed by the president. The trust would have two primary responsibilities.


One would be to guarantee that the companies are run not as political pawns but as profit-making entities seeking to maximize shareholder value. As Alexander notes, "there are at least 60 congressional committees and subcommittees authorized to hold hearings on auto companies and most of them will, probably many times." Another responsibility would be to divest the government's ownership stake by Dec. 24, 2011, thereby giving friends of private enterprise a merry Christmas. That, however, would be a lump of coal in the stockings of many giddy people in today's Washington.


Even more than the New Deal and the Great Society, Obama's agenda expresses the mentality of a class that was nascent in the 1930s but burgeoned in the 1960s and 1970s. The spirit of that class is described in Saul Bellow's 1975 novel "Humboldt's Gift." In it Bellow wrote that the modern age began when a particular class of people decided, excitedly, that life had "lost the ability to arrange itself":


"It had to be arranged. Intellectuals took this as their job. …This arranging has been the one great gorgeous tantalizing misleading disastrous project. A man like Humboldt, inspired, shrewd, nutty, was brimming over with the discovery that the human enterprise, so grand and infinitely varied, had now to be managed by exceptional persons. He was an exceptional person, therefore he was an eligible candidate for power." So, shrewd and nutty people such as Rep. Barney Frank are brimful of excitement about arranging American life. What will stop them? The president accurately says Americans are "reluctant shareholders" of GM, AIG and Citigroup. But is he?


If the Corker-Warner legislation is defeated, as Alexander's bill was, on an essentially party-line vote, this will be redundant proof that Obama's professed reluctance is fictitious. If it is, then what is real is what the Democratic left desires, an Obama Doctrine that says the trumpet of state capitalism — capital increasingly controlled from Capitol Hill and the Treasury Department — will never sound retreat.


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

George Will's latest book is "With a Happy Eye but: America and the World, 1997-2002" to purchase a copy, click here. Comment on this column by clicking here.

Archives

© 2006 WPWG

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Froma Harrop
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works