Obama attacks the results of "Progressivism" and offers the solution of: More Progressivism | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

    Barack Obama made a speech the other day in Osawatomie, Kansas declaring that capitalism and a free market economy have failed and we need to redefine the American system. His definition is more and bigger government. He premises this on what he argued was the necessity for the government to insure that all Americans get a "fair share" of the economic pie.

    The reason Obama went to Osawatomie was to associate himself and his new order with former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt you will recall (if you had a good U. S. History teacher) was the standard bearer of the Progressive Era in America. But as he has done with so many other things Barack Obama misinterpreted Progressivism. Regardless of whether you like him or not, Glenn Beck has done the best job we've seen in explaining the fallacies of historical Progressivism.

    The point both Beck and Rush Limbaugh make, in response to Obama's call for a "New Nationalism," is that the fundamental difference between the America of Roosevelt's day and today is that what Roosevelt was attacking was lassiez-faire capitalism of the Gilded Age. But what Obama is attacking when he says that America is not working right for the Middle Class today is something entirely different from the way things were in 1900.

    Simply put, we do not have a capitalistic system in the United States today and we have not had such for a long, long time. Rather, what we now have is what Teddy Roosevelt advocated for...Big Government and strong regulation of, and forceful intervention by government in, the economy. Thus, the irony of Obama's position is that he attacks the very results of what he advocates for.

    Essentially Obama argues that the government should insure equal results. He advocates the government insuring that every person will receive an equal portion of the economic pie and that none should get much more than anyone else gets. That is his rationale for "redistribution of wealth."

    The problem is that the idea of equality of results is contrary to natural law--human nature, if you will. Achievement is motivated by the expectation that you will benefit from your efforts. But the problem with the Progressive oriented government that we now have is that you benefit only if the government chooses to allow you to benefit. The fundamental problem with today's system is that it is Progressive. Obama whines about the results the current system has produced but his solution is to double down on the Progressivism that produces the results of which he complains.

    You can see no better example of his false ideas than in his "stimulus" approach to unemployment. After throwing billions of dollars at unemployment he found that unemployment went up, not down. So his response is to pour more stimulus money into the system rather than getting government off the backs of the people who create jobs.

    The same is true for his approach to the housing problems. It was Progressivism that led to the idea that the government should determine who got a home loan and there have never been any more "progressive" bureaucracies than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The government created a housing market bubble by insuring that people who could not afford to pay for a house got a home loan anyway. And when the housing bubble burst the progressive idea was simply more government control and manipulation of the housing market.

    And while we consider the state of our economy now, let us not forget that much of what is wrong with our economy now and what will only get worse is caused by the policies of the Federal Reserve (of just printing fiat money). But recall, the creation of the Federal Reserve was a hallmark of the Progressive Era.

    And of course there is health care. Obama claimed the health care system was broken. (And to be sure it is.) It is clear to most objective people that what is wrong with health care is the massive government intrusion into the system with regulations that are counter productive and the fact that the health care system is not capitalistic. So Obama's solution? More regulation, more government and strong government controls. The current health care system is the epitome of progressivism. The cause of the problem is not going to be the solution of the problem.

    The list is endless. But the essential issue remains: How do we create and maintain an economic system that is fair and just? Obama's formula is: A is unjust because of B so what we need to do is multiple B rather than saying: A (the current economic system) is unjust so what we need is less B.

    Obama's approach to the economy is much like the story of a group of Chinese agriculture commissars (i.e., government bureaucrats) who came to America to learn how American farmers produced four times as much corn per acre as did the Chinese collective farms. They visited a corn farm in Iowa and learned that the farmer plowed his rows twice as deep as they did in China. So they went back home and mandated that all Chinese corn farmers plow their rows four times as deep as they had been doing. Production of corn fell dramatically. They soon learned that one reason the production had tanked was that all the plows and tractors were broken and they could no longer plow even as deep as they had been doing before "government intervention."

    If Barack Obama were in charge of corn production he would want to spend billions of dollars building new plows that could plow eight times as deep.

    And you may be interested to know that a few years later the corn production in China skyrocketed. Why? Because the government allowed the farmers to keep half of all they produced to sell for their own purposes. Because production more than doubled, the government ended up with more corn also.

    What we need is less progressivism, not more of it. What we need is a smaller government that takes less "corn" from us and a government that protects our natural right to benefit from the fruits of our labor.

    Click here for a more thorough discussion of Progressivism.