Reagan Consensus - Part the Latest

The Reagan Consensus and History -

It is too easy, for we who lived through the Reagan Consensus' arrival and entrenchment or have always lived in accord with it, to believe that it is some sort of political and economic comet that just arrived to blaze in our skies and never left our orbit. Because most of us were not alive when there was a pre-Reagan Consensus or certainly were not adults, we have come to believe, whether friend or enemy of it, that the Reagan Consensus was a sudden development that came almost out of the blue.

The first hint that this is wrong is the fact that there was a previous Consensus that, in itself due to its more deleterious effects, helped bring on the Reagan one. Second, in turn, we then have to look at the broader sweep of history to see how inaccurate this "current events" driven narrative is. When we do this, we also see both how durable the Reagan Consensus is and that, in fact, it is part of a trend that began centuries ago and, despite many sometimes catastrophic bumps. moves majestically on its way.

In other words, the Reagan Consensus is nothing more than the most recent and decisive victory of the move towards human freedom, knowledge and prosperity that is often said to have started in what we usually refer to as the Age of Enlightenment. But indeed, the cultural and legal foundations for this overall consensus started much earlier. 

The legal documents that were part of what I call the Human Consensus we are familiar with: the Magna Carta, the Florentine Constitution, the Bills of Rights, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution and so on. What is often forgotten is that the documents also underpinned the growth of human prosperity by anchoring freedom for mankind. For example, the most important and enduring contribution of the French Revolution to this Consensus was not the often adulterated Rights of Man but the property rights given to the middle class of France. However, some will also argue that the Human Consensus began on the Cross but that it took almost 1800 years for us to listen.

This unleashing of Humanity was also of course supported by the writings of countless thinkers in the most influential nations, including Hume, Smith, Voltaire, Descartes, Goethe, Locke, Jefferson and Erasmus, all cleaving in one way or the other to the humanism that is central to the Human Consensus. The result of this, in tandem with the coming of the industrial revolution and the social progress that came in its wake both powered by innovation, was that the human being, who had been working for barely $100 per year in all history before 1800 usually under the jackboot of a brutal tyranny, saw their income soar to $18381 by 2019 or increased almost 184 times in just over two centuries. Meanwhile, there were two countries that could be bravely called "democracies" in 1800. There are now 74 which are rated by the Democracy Index as at worst "flawed" democracies. As well, the cornucopia that has flowed from this dual advance has lowered the Misery Index considerably by reducing poverty, disease, pollution, illiteracy and starvation drastically everywhere even compared to the 1980's levels of these scourges.

Again, it is easy to miss the human progress forest for the tyranny and war trees, particularly if you are on the Left. The 20th Century saw the coming of the bloodiest wars and the most brutal and total tyrannies in history. However they, for the most part (and China still may finally slip from its last human vestiges of tyranny due to the prosperity its people have imbibed from their experimentations with the market and property rights) were defeated in those bloody wars or (in the case of Vietnam, for example) adopted the ways of the Human Consensus economically after the war was over. 

But, it is also easy for those on the Right to imagine that Reagan and his acolytes somehow descended (no doubt in a plane piloted by Goldwater while reading the National Review) from the Political and Economical philosophical heavens and wrought all the change and groundbreaking consensus by their lonesome. Even before the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR abolished itself, for example, 22 nations became democracies while Reagan was POTUS. On top of this, most of the key reforms inaugurated by him and others were introduced in barely 20 years from the deregulations of the late 70's to the tax cuts and balanced budgets of the late 90's. What seemed like an ironclad consensus as to how the World would be organized, how trade and international finance would operate and what roles the state should perform in an economy were turned on their head and shattered in the space of one generation. And, as mentioned in previous chapters, the core underpinnings of the new consensus have not (yet) been seriously threatened.

The reality is that we must view the latest Consensus as simply the most recent albeit the most intense and dramatic installment of the Human Consensus, that is, that the Human Being should reign over their affairs first only guided by the Rule of Law and Logic. When we do that, we make two edifying conclusions. One - the Reagan Consensus, far from being a phenomenon of our times, is part of a Great Movement of literally billions of people, millions of entrepreneurs, thousands of thinkers and statespeople going back to Christ. It burst forward in the Middle Ages, birthed the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment and finally truly launched for all practical intents and purposes in 1800.  It fought to fly and soar through the Industrial Revolution, the World Wars and the great totalitarianisms. Now we live amidst its glorious jubilee of triumphant fireworks from the 1970's forward and still going on today. The birth pangs and fits and starts of this Movement can be frustrating, such as when we see on the wonderfully unexpected eruption of democracy in Belarus but the almost ignored suppression of it in Hong Kong. One tax is cut here, one tax is raised there. A market we thought would always be controlled is deregulated here, another proves absurdly immune to reform there. 

But, the key, the Northern Star, that leads us to the second conclusion, that this Consensus will take, is clear when we see that it is but a part of the not inexorable or inevitable but generally victorious movement in favour of people liberating people. Reagan was right to warn us that the freedom built up over centuries can be lost by one generation. However, if we are vigilant, patient  and imaginative, we will have had the privilege and benefit of building upon and reinforcing not only the Reagan Consensus but the Human Consensus.

Next, I will  suggest ways that we can contribute to the Consensus.

Why Erin O'Toole MUST be Leader of the Conservative Party and then Prime Minister

There are some surface reasons to want Erin O'Toole to be the next Leader of the Conservative Party, the Official Opposition and then PM.

First, he has a seat in Parliament. This is no small thing when we live in this desperate environment where we are facing a PM who is serially corrupt and has no compunction about bending and breaking the Rule of Law and shutting down whole branches of our government, that is, our only democratic tool for oversight of the government and even less compunction about making the new leader wait to take a seat (as he made Jagmeet Singh wait 15 months in far less dire circumstances). While we face a literally unprecedented assault by an unprecedented prime ministerial dictator and his advisors and ministers on our Constitution in the midst of the worst challenge we have faced as a Nation in 25 years (yes, that was in 1995 when we came 50,000 votes away from losing Quebec PRE-Clarity), we simply cannot afford the bump of a byelection. Is this still a relatively ephemeral reason for choosing O'Toole? Yes, if you believe that we will be getting a vaccine for the virus that has unleashed these oppressive forces upon us by September 21, when Parliament is finally due to re-open after almost 6 continuous months of darkness. Even if the virus recedes, we will still be facing a rogue PM who will stop at nothing, including a snap election if need be, to get his way. (BTW, Sloan is an MP but cannot possibly win so he is out)

The next reason is also a relatively negative one but must be said: as a human being, like many Red Tories, Peter Mackay is a nice enough father and husband but, as a politician, he is simply not to be trusted. He is to be depended on to promise the conservative moon while running and then abandon those heights the minute there is any sign of trouble and even while winning. His career is devoid of achievement or principle followed except that set out by the Focus Group and the pollster. He is governed, as so many of his ilk are, by fear which he is afflicted by in determining any course of action and will inflict on others who get in his way. In that sense, most disturbingly, he resembles the PM in a rather casual attitude about basic values of democracy and the Rule of Law. Witness for instance, his seeming to endorse the PM's plans for regulating free speech on the internet or his infamous "stinking albatross" comment on some fellow Tories.

For a man like Mackay, who has to be the youngest "Man of the Past" in history, everything is "relative"even out most cherished ideas if they threaten one's political rear. Such a sanguine outlook might have remotely had some value in a time of perfect peace and tranquility or at least could have been tolerable. But he is one of the people who has helped the Party to lose its way intellectually under Harper and his outlook is not only ill-timed but downright dangerous in a political world where the Conservative Party appears to be the only alternative to the overwhelmingly liberal and socialist third parties and the Government. That critical choice will be weakened and may be negated under a Mackay leadership.

Now, the positives. As a person who is deeply and personally concerned with our Defence, I like that O'Toole will be the first Leader since Pearson to have any military background. This is critical in light of the neglect and lack of vision shown by both main parties in defence affairs since the 90's (including the failure owned in part by Mackay to finish the purchase of new fighters). Is this a narrow reason for liking him? No. Defence is one of the few areas of complete Federal state responsibility and is still one of the biggest parts of the Budget. We need a man in leadership and hopefully in the PMO who finally understands the need for reinforcement and reform of this department and has the brains and guts to carry it out.

Speaking of brains, I am impressed by Erin O'Toole's intellectuality. I once watched him conduct a policy seminar themed on China ( one of the greatest threats to our defence and security today and in the foreseeable future) and saw his mind working in front of me as he carefully dissected the octopus-like challenge of China. No one running for the leadership and no one in leadership of a federal party today shows anything like the depth of mind, seriousness, experience and knowledge, and ability to articulate it to people, that he has. In a word, we have a chance with O'Toole and O'Toole alone to bring an adult back to the OLO and the PMO. But that leads me to the most important reason for supporting him.

He is a man of the people. Yes, his father was an MPP. But he served 12 years in the Forces and rose to be a top lawyer with hard work and application. It is no insult to point out thus that, with relatively minor resources and not great natural talent, he has acquired and built up a remarkable career. In this way, he relates to millions of Canadians who are not necessarily Tories but believe in hard work, honesty and freedom as the passport to a better life. He thus can relate in a way that Mackay cannot, who took relative privilege and deeded opportunity and built a bridge to nowhere. He has both a tactical and strategic political vision and instinct that few, except maybe the scoundrels advising Trudeau, possess.

How did he demonstrate this to me most vividly? During one of his online seminars with Conservative Party members, he made the almost offhand but incredibly astute comment that working class voters in places like Hamilton and Windsor (areas we have written off for almost 50 years now) are no longer represented by the Liberals or the NDP, that is, their own MP's. We should therefore go after them by pointing out that we are the only Party that fights for their interests as consumers, taxpayers and above all workers who often earn their bread in politically incorrect industries like energy, auto or steel. A man with such an original, elegant and broad breadth of mind (and who reflects that he can learn from the recent success of conservatives in jurisdictions like Ontario, the UK and Australia thereby) needs to be in power, first as the Leader of the Opposition, then as, God willing, our PM.

How do we know we can trust him? We do not. We only know that we cannot trust Mackay, except perhaps to complete the Red Tory takeover of our Party, and we cannot accept another term of Trudeau and his gang in office. Erin O'Toole is most likely to preserve the Party's critical choice for Canadians and oust arguably the worst government in our history as soon as possible. Thus, he wins our provisional trust because of what he has said, done, and prioritized so far (such as his unswerving loyalty to Scheer after losing the last leadership and his promise to respect the views of all conservatives, including the stinking albatrosses) and because we have no sound other choice save neophytes or the Old Prince of Red Torydom.

 A perfect example of how and why I feel that I can lend my trust to him: in one of his ubiquitous videos (another reason I like him BTW), he appeared on a particularly hot day in Ottawa with the Parliament buildings as a backdrop. As he went through his peroration on Parliamentary democracy being under threat and why he was best to defend it, he was obviously sweating like a pig. Instead of soldiering on and dysfunctionally pretending everything was fine or editing it as no doubt a Trudeau or a Mackay would have done, he wiped his face and said words to the effect of,"Well, this was a hot one for me to do this today, wasn't it!" Any man who is that secure about himself may just deserve our loan of confidence.

Erin O'Toole has proven he is a hardworking, earnest, smart and decent man with superb political skills which his predecessor and opponents signally lack and which this country imperatively needs to defeat Trudeau and the Liberals and restore sanity, the right and respect to our governance again. He has earned and deserves my and all other voting members' vote on August 21. He must be thrust into the heart of our national affairs as soon as possible.

The Reagan Consensus - part 6

The Reagan Consensus and its Enemies -

Another threat to the Consensus is the Debt. No, not consumer debt, which is usually paid off without taxes and, after all, represents spending done voluntarily billions of times for the things we want or often need. No one worries about whether the "shelf" of private debt will overwhelm the economy even a year from now precisely because most of us will have paid it off or completely secured it (in the case of real estate or automobiles) as soon as our next credit card statement comes in. The Great Recession of 2008 was not caused by conventionally secured commercial or consumer debt. It was caused by profligate mortgage policies that many of us warned would hurt the economy and that were legislated and enforced by government (e.g.: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Carter Urban Loan programs).

For the first time in living memory and before COVID, the US and other nations were racking up enormous deficits and thus piling up debt without the excuse of an emergency or a war and, in  the case of the US, in the midst of a lengthy economic recovery and then a two year long Trump boom. Yes, Trump did not promise to balance the budget or reform entitlements (except for Obamacare, which received no GOP support in Congress) which, as we saw in the last installment, are a double threat to the Consensus. But, it is still a fact that, despite ushering in an unprecedented economic boom, despite having no Cold or Hot War and despite there being no other emergency until COVID, Trump has seen trillion dollar deficits racked up every year of his presidency.

The fact that his predecessor was at least as bad (after excoriating his predecessor as "unpatriotic" for compiling half the debt he amassed) is not an excuse for this record. However, it should be noted that quirks in the US political system established not so long ago, like the Senate's appropriations filibuster and the Budget Act of 1974, have made it hard for any POTUS to tackle this problem. The rules and laws brought in referred to have taken away his power of impoundment, his pocket veto (where one can kill one bad bit of spending without vetoing the whole budget) and his ability to avoid a government shutdown even when he holds majorities in both Houses of Congress. For example, even when the GOP controlled Congress, they refused proposed budget cuts Trump made and voted higher spending than he asked for. 

Why is all of this important? Many point out that, despite all, the US level of debt is not as bad as other countries in the West and not as bad as others in history, including the US. How is this a threat to the Consensus? The primary problem is that this overhang of debt will one day need to be paid off in the form of taxes which would afflict future generations' standard of living and discretionary income disastrously and, in turn, impair and derange the virtuous circle of the Consensus.

But there is also what can be called the "crowding out" effect. As the state borrows more, it denies the private sector the capital it needs to grow, to innovate and develop, all critical ingredients of the Consensus. The opportunities lost by this effect are countless and also often irretrievable.

Finally, the larger the public debt just as the larger the state, the more the state is able to extend its tentacles into business and even the lives of individuals that squashes not only economic promise but also personal freedom and ultimately the Rule of Law. A perfect example of this (which also harkens back to the danger to the Consensus of the cynical political use of the big Crisis) is when President Obama bullied the Car Companies' creditors into surrendering their right to sue to protect their financial interests in those companies. (Here in fact we have an example of three of the threats to the Consensus all wrapped in one: Dependency, in the form of subsidy and bailout for two enormous companies, the use of Debt to create that Dependency through TARP and, of course, the Big Crisis that set off the "need" to intervene to "save" two of the Big Three rather than just let them fail like is the rule in other industries when a company is anemic and losing.) In this case, the freedom of the creditors to run their business affairs as they deem fit was sacrificed for "the greater good", ill-defined and narrow as it was, while the Rule of Law was trampled in denying them their rightful legal remedies (and, even worse, resulted in a payoff to the very unions who had helped to ruin the companies in the first place).

Debt makes government MORE powerful not less powerful. It helps to crush the entrepreneurial spirit both morally (as in the absent "Moral Hazard" rule in bailing out the Big Banks in 2008 as "too being too big to fail" despite their authoring the disaster themselves in tandem with the Federal Government) and materially as the Debt shuts off more and more credit that could have been used to breathe life into private initiatives and ventures. Indeed, an ironic impact of the Bank and Consumer Credit "Reform" and "Protection" laws passed in response to the Great Recession was that, even as the Government and the Federal Reserve respectively incurred more and more public debt and expanded its portfolio of investments in the economy, credit became harder to get for business and individuals.

The net impact of too much debt (as a moderate level of government debt for necessary or "consensus" elements of state activity such as defence, education and infrastructure, is tolerable and even desirable and useful) is thus severely deleterious to the strong enterprising dynamics of the Consensus that makes it such an elixir for an economy. It needs to be controlled or paid off if already ruinously incurred. How to deal with what may be seemingly an insurmountable fiscal mountain? There are two approaches conservatives must take - one for the short term, one for the long term. (And here, despite the Obama and liberal propaganda to the contrary, you can cite Hamilton as your authority for deploring high levels of debt!)

In the short term, the answers include modest spending cuts. I say modest when I look at two examples. First, the Chretien government's finance minister, Paul Martin, balanced the budget of Canada by simply freezing spending despite the belief of many that it could never be done without severe spending cuts and force majeur laws to reduce public entitlements and benefits. Mike Harris balanced a budget deficit twice as large as the enormous one faced by Ontario today by cutting spending by 10% while cutting taxes by 20%! Further, Senators Lee and Paul recently demonstrated that the huge US federal deficit could be eliminated by only a 1% cut in spending per year for 5 years. A systematic outside audit of government spending can also be undertaken to reduce those infamous triplets, Waste, Fraud and Abuse. The sale of state assets and more privatization can also be good one time boosts to revenue. But, in the end, general spending must be controlled (and soon in light of the COVID Bubble of Debt that has recently ballooned).

Conservatives can also cite supply side economics and the Laffer Curve to show that the budget can and should be balanced not just by spending cuts (and repeat many times that spending is the culprit behind mounting public deficits, not lack of revenue) but by revenue from economic growth from tax reduction and reform. But, in the long term, they must also propose new statutory rules to control against the return of out of control spending and soaring debt and deficit levels. For instance, the removal of baseline budgeting that literally makes it illegal to actually cut spending levels from where they were the year before. Further, balanced budget laws and constitutional amendments with reasonable bands for the fluctuation of spending especially in well-defined emergencies. As well, tackling a big source of government debt (and of natural opposition to the Consensus) - the far too generous pay, benefit and pension arrangements for public sector workers. (Yet, beware "statutory rules" as a panacea - in 1999 as part of setting up the Euro currency Zone, the EU set "convergence" guidelines for the level of debt and deficits acceptable relative to GDP as a condition of membership in the Zone. Today only a handful of mostly small members of the EU have complied and the non-compliant are still allowed to remain in the Zone! Without the political will, there is no way.). Finally, a Sinking Fund based on a portion of any new revenues can be set up to start to reduce the Debt.

Reagan once said that a nation cannot long thrive where 37% of its product is the tax collector's share. The average Canadian now sends 43 cents on the dollar to tax. It was 33 cents when Reagan said those words, in 1964. The mushrooming of public debt, despite tax increases and the addition of several major taxes (including Capital Gains, the GST/HST and the Carbon Tax), since then proves that the answer to combating this threat to the Consensus Reagan helped to forge is to control spending. If this is not done, the economic miracle wrought by the Reagan Consensus will be constantly vulnerable to that fiscal grim reaper of hope, promise and creativity, excessive public debt. If it is not controlled and reduced, it will enable a new financial and political tyranny that may extinguish our freedom and the Rule of Law that protects our liberty.

In the next installment, I will look at where the Reagan Consensus fits into the sweep of History.

Errata and addenda with one big errata, indeed

The selection of Senator Kamala Harris proves that Biden will NOT do anything to be POTUS (even if only for a year? By his impossibly narrow criteria, it should obamiously have been Michele Obama) but it DOES prove that Harris will. Way back in January, she called Biden a racist segregationalist (who can forget her fake tears over "being bussed" when it was actually impossible for that to have happened to her personally?). Now she carries his name with pride and in the second most important political harness in the World (hopefully never to be the most with all the disaster that that implies +). Suffice it to say that Harris, after denouncing her own record as an AG in CA, will be the perfect black female complement to Biden who has spent most of his campaign denouncing what paltry achievements he was able to cobble together in just 45 years. She is the African American XX chromosomed classic example of Vidal's evil Senator Cantwell ("Bad character in a man is tragedy enough; but for a Nation it is a disaster.") or...Hilary. "God bless America, Land that I love, stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above."

THIS JUST IN!...Patrick Brown is a stupid asshole. Search: "Mayor Patrick Brown's Hockey Bag" to see what a truly dumb scumbag those of us not living in Brampton really dodged.

Insurance Can Do It! -

 Are there too many horses out of the Barn for us to consider the idea I had at least 3 months ago and was reminded of again by a caller on talk radio in the States? Might the thieving monopolist assholes that comprise the Placid Gold-filled Lake we call our "Insurance" Industry have been conscripted to underwrite a National/Provincial COVID Insurance Plan? Any surplus or bankrupting liabilities could have been underwritten in turn through a Re-Insurance Program that would have cost the taxpayer a fraction of the cost of the COVID stimulus SO FAR. The cost to a business (beyond maintaining local authority standards and PPE) would have been the premiums (which the state would no doubt insist be nominal or at cost) and some stationery would be nothing compared to being closed down.

It would work this way: If you want to go to visit any hard business site anywhere, you must sign a release to the effect that you will not sue the business if you get COVID unless you can prove gross negligence (like not complying with mask requirements). This release would be posted at the main entrance of the business or organization (church or school) with a petition style name section that would also require a name and phone number in print so follow-up could be effected if there was an outbreak. (Hell, use the lists for marketing if you want!)

In the end, the customer or parent or student or worker or parishioner would have a choice. After all, there is only one reason for not going to a business:: fear of dying from COVID or giving it to someone who dies. If you can prove that happened (or temporary disability) due to gross negligence, your estate or family can claim damages accordingly. If you do not want to go, do not. Choice: I like the sound of that! Making the Insurance companies do their patriotic duty without more obscenely huge profits - priceless!! It's never too late for our benighted and beknighting "leadership" to prove they are more than medical stenographers and give us a chance to live with some sort of modicum of normalcy again.

The Reagan Consensus - Part 5

The Reagan Consensus and its Enemies -

The next great threat to the Reagan Consensus is Dependency. No, I do not refer to the danger of being turned into a colony by some foreign power (though that is more likely when the population is taking more than it gives) nor the possibility of substance abuse (although, addiction to alcohol and/or drugs is often a result of such a life). I refer to the increasing dependency of Americans and peoples of other nations on state aid. This dependency is most classically manifested in welfarism. A person lives no life but that that is supported by government assistance of some kind. The most obvious examples of public welfare in the US and which increased all of their client loads dangerously during the Obama presidency, are welfare ("Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), food stamps and Medicaid. 

After the historic bipartisan Welfare Reform in 1996, surely one of the best examples of building on the Consensus, tens of millions were lifted out of poverty, including some 20 million children. But, over the years, just as medicaid was expanded to cover more and more children and adults and pharmacare given to even the wealthiest aged, the program was chipped away. The Federal Govt., rather than encouraging the States to make people work for welfare from an "envelope" of Federal funding, the core concept behind the reform, turned this on its head as now the US encouraged states to drop work requirements and gave incentives for bureaucrats to get more people on food stamps.

This aggressive effort to roll back (or ratchet back?) welfare reform created a new, growing and dangerous dependency on government which stifled enterprise, hard work and the incentive to retrain to get into the workforce again. For instance, jobless benefits given out in the Stimuli of 2008 and 2009 were often more lucrative than working at even a job above the minimum wage. We are now seeing this phenomenon again with the ill considered, profligate, badly aimed and largely unnecessary COVID stimuli. 

Worse, so-called "industrial policy" also known as Corporate Welfare is also apparently making a comeback. Through myriad tariffs, loan programs, deductions, monopolies, regulations and subsidies, companies at all levels, but most conspicuously and shamefully big business, are receiving state support. This has the same effect on the corporation as it does on the individual - it crushes the incentive or need for competitiveness, innovation, efficiency, service and fair pricing. This effect of dependency on both company and individual is fatal to the magic circle of work ethic, creativity and opportunity married to labour and capital that the Consensus needs to continue to grow and sustain.

The loss to a society's morale of such a constant institutionalized and general dependency in a population and its commercial sector can be witnessed in Europe. There, especially France, Spain and Italy but to some extent most of the rest of Western Europe, the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions never really took complete hold. Large sectors of their economies, aided, abetted and compounded by the bureaucratic monstrosity known as the EU, are still much more regulated by the State in great detail, particularly labour but also in quid pro quo heavy subsidy and trade protections for the corporate sector. France especially never privatized large parts of its economy such as banks. The result - horrific economic stagnation, lack of innovation and modernization as well as chronic joblessness and underemployment. 

This, too, almost took hold in the US under Obama, who was openly hostile to business, re-regulated large parts of the economy especially health care and health insurance, interfered in the auto industry, launched welfare expansion and discouraged or outright shut down energy exploration and exploitation. The result was an historically slow recovery despite massive deficit spending that doubled the national debt and repeated stimulus and monetary quantitative easings. This was only arrested by the coming of Trump's presidency and his economic and tax reforms, deregulations and determination to again "roll back" the attempt of Obama to turn back the ratchet on welfare reform. It remains to be seen whether COVID will provide a new excuse and opportunity for welfare theorists and advocates to get their way and apply this deadly opiate of the Consensus again as they did in 2008-2013 (when an estimated 47% of Americans were taking some state benefit).  The Trump Tax Reform also eliminated the ludicrous state and local tax deduction for the rich and the Obamacare mandate while Trump tried to allow consumers to have some ability to buy health insurance across state lines, among other practical, free market and cost control steps for health care.)

Conservatives must fight this first by listening to and advocating for the warnings of economists like Arthur Laffer (and a key architect of the Consensus) that government dependency coming in the form of so-called "stimulus" is wolf bane for the dynamic economy of the Consensus. Then the conservative, if successful in delaying, hobbling or at least blunting the impact of such dependency-fostering programs, must then offer an alternative - self-reliance and choice. A good example of this was the proposal by conservatives to grant a payroll tax holiday and the Bush scheme to allow young people to invest their Social Insurance premiums. 

The problem with these ideas on both occasions was follow through and the simple political will to do what they proposed. At the first sign of political trouble, the conservative political parties backed down on ideas like this. Yet, the tax reform by Trump, which amongst other things allowed American parents to invest for their child's primary and secondary education tax-free, welfare reform and the Harris Ontario government's abolition of corporate subsidies and "workfare program" all show that, when conservatives are united and strong and remain committed to tangible reform of entitlements and welfare despite the often absurd and demagogic opposition to patently sensible policies, they can win.

If the Reagan Consensus is to dodge the insidious bullet of welfare dependency on the state, conservatives must not just talk about programs of more freedom and independence for people, they must do the hard work of researching about, presenting and arguing for these ideas and stick to them through thick and thin. Ideas like auto-investment of government benefits or premiums, school choice and vouchers, broadly lower taxes and regulations to get business off the government bread line and lower and tougher welfare in return for on the job training, daycare and other benefits (not least of which is the dignity of working or building a business of your own under your own direction) are all ideas that can reduce state dependency, restore the work ethic and business ethics and build on the Reagan Consensus. 

Conservative Idiots, the Good Old Days, Dr Fauci and the Ump, and Judge Sullivan in the Alfred Hitchcock Hour

The image is immortal - the Baseball Manager kicking dirt in the face of an Umpire who he believes has made the wrong call. Often, his beef is that the Ump called exactly the same play against his team but for the other team in the same situation. Dr. Fauci, a keen baseball fan (whose mask has the Washington Nationals on it) would be familiar with this iconic scene of the Greatest American Pastime. That situation is precisely what Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) was getting at when he questioned Fauci about his positions on congregate events AKA gatherings.

Since the good doctor has told us to stay away from bars and not fly (even though he has done the same things recently) and not go to church or funerals, would he also admonish people from attending protests?, he asked. The Doctor would not say yes. The Doctor does not seem to understand that many people cannot understand how the virus apparently may have chosen "favourites" as to which congregations it will infect and which not. In this case, it only affects law-abiding citizens who just want to live and mind their own business but not people who gather to hate on America or do worse. It makes many millions of people feel just like that baseball manager.

________

Will the same Republicans who never predicted Trump would win; made fun of Reagan; believed we would never ever hold the Senate or the House or both or ever win the presidency again after 1996, 2008 or 2016; and never believed the conservative movement might come to win anything; and now counsel despair, surrender and retreat again at every turn, poll or soundbite, possibly take a deep breath and acknowledge that this is actually an historically great time for the GOP by any measure?

From 1930 to 1994, the GOP held the House for 8 years. From 1930 to 1980, it held the Senate for 8 years. After 1980, it held the Senate for 24 years and after 1994, it held the House for 20 years (of which it held both houses for 14 years). It has swept the South for the first time since the Civil War and taken over most state houses and assemblies for the first time since the 1920's. It has held the White House for 24 of the past 40 years. It is an historically good time for the GOP and conservatives.

SO why so much sturm and drang from the usual GOP suspects? The answer is "conservative idiots". A little background. I was once called a conservative idiot by a staffer at the then National PC HQ (who still didn't mind using my services as a volunteer). By that he meant that I put my principles (which I also think means my country, too) before my Party. I wore and still wear that title like a badge of honour.

However, I have discovered a different sort of conservative idiot altogether who should wear that title with shame. That is, the conservative who usually ends up in one of two camps. First, they call for conservative change like Trump has wrought these past few years more relentlessly, prolifically and checklist-like than any president in living memory, including many things that these self same conservative idiots have been telling us for generations needs to happen for the good of the Nation and the People, our allies and our posterity. But then, when it actually does happen, they decide that there's a "nice" way to do conservative change and a nasty way to do it. Or, they turn out to have not really believed in these things after all or thought they could never happen and are shocked and even resentful that an actual officeholder carried it out, get cold feet and turn on him. "It's all great 'on paper' but you really don't think I was SERIOUS about doing THAT?" By contrast, I know I am not the type of idiot who would ever look the gift horse of conservative policy actually becoming law in the mouth and would be too busy dancing in the streets to complain.

The second reason for conservative idiocy is more particular and personal and has to do with of course, the Donald. The Donald is not a real conservative. He never held office. He never went to the right schools or was in the right clubs. He's married to that woman. He's a sex fiend. He has that accent. He's got that hair. I wish he would STOP tweeting! I am SO embarrassed! Even though I never supported him anyway (at least not at any crunch time), I cannot bear the burden of supporting him anymore. No one from that nice thinktank invites me to their gabfests anymore, you know the one with 20 different wines and 100 types of cheese that Roberts always VIP's at? How dare those evangelicals support him, don't they see how unChristian that is?!, etc., etc. For my part, I could care less if my conservative saviour was a golf pro who wore loud pants, a grocer's daughter with funny teeth, a drunken inkstained wretch who fancied red cowboy hats or a second rate actor who used a lot too much brill cream wore ties that were much too wide: if they deliver the goods, I sign the bill of sale with pleasure and back them all the way. I backed Ted Cruz until May, 2016 when he had clearly lost the nomination fight and then backed Trump all the way.

The only thing that is good about conservative idiots is that they are a vanishingly smaller and smaller (although very loud) demographic of the electorate even in the GOP and (and this is another reason they hate Trump, Gingrich and others who have really built what success the practical and conservative movement has had these past 40 years) they have had little to do with or cannot claim the credit for the historic success of the movement they claim to lead.

From 1962, The Alfred Hiitchcock Hour tells us and the infamous Federal Hanging Judge Sullivan a parable of justice. Martin Landau plays a top criminal defence lawyer who just got Frank Gorshin off of a horrible murder rap only to be told by him that he is guilty. The tormented Landau wants to report the client to the DA but he is told by his senior partner and by the trial judge that, of course, he can't do it because of double jeopardy and a perjury case would go no where. Meanwhile, he would be reported to the ABA for breaching his solicitor-client confidentiality privileges. The wise and decent judge (who doesn't even break a sweat when told by Landau that he presided over this apparent injustice) also points out that, if you think he should get the chair, the accused would likely have been found criminally insane by the jury anyway and the judge would then send him to an asylum (and it turns out he is insane). Bottom line - the defence lawyer should have done and said nothing (sadly too late for the vigilante-style hit he calls down on his client!).

Now, Landau, the seasoned criminal lawyer, should have figured all of this out in the first act of the show. Similarly, Judge Sullivan should have saved the People, the Justice Department, Sidney Powell, the Appeals Courts and, above all, General Mike Flynn, a lot of trouble by figuring out from the start that, in our system, once the prosecutor decides not to proceed with a matter and no matter how bad the accused may be and even if he has already entered a plea of guilty (which Flynn has resiled against) and even if there was not ample evidence of prosecutorial and police misconduct and abuse of Flynn's rights, he must dismiss. He may rail for hours in open court about how bad Flynn is (although surely not as bad as the many accuseds Judge Sullivan dismissed for that he knew to be terrorists, druglords, mafiosi and other predators) and refer him for a perjury beef and the DOJ staff to the ABA. But then he must do nothing else or simply compound the injustice done to an American Citizen who, until this matter, served his country as dutifully if not more than Judge Sullivan. 

Sadly, it would appear that the esteemed Judge's friends on the Appeal Court prefer to give us a Hitchcockian twist ending and make us and Flynn wait until the last frame of this too longrunning show to get justice. 
--
John M. Farant

The Reagan Consensus - Part 4

The Reagan Consensus and its Other Enemies

The other chief threats to the above are three: the Big "Crisis", State Dependency and Debt.

First, the "Big Crisis". The chief recent examples of this are COVID and Climate Change. But the Opposition has used past crises like the Great Depression, the Cold War and The Great Recession to too much effect to advance their assault on economic liberty and, frankly, our general freedom as well and to expand the state. The most memorable iteration publicly of this Left wing strategy is Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel's infamous assertion that,"You should never let a good crisis go to waste." In other words, the Left will use a mortal or severe usually "unprecedented" emergency to drive through projects that normally the people would never democratically approve in the normal course but can be scared into doing by the crisis or distracted enough and disempowered enough to let happen anyway even if it has nothing to do with the crisis. For example, Social Insurance was inaugurated by the US during the Great Depression even though it had nothing to do with the chief problem of that era - younger (18-35 year old) workers being jobless. Obamacare was introduced and passed in the midst of a recession caused by bad mortgages not high medical bills. Again, the combination of fear and ignorance is irresistible especially when you can depict those on the Right as "heartless" for not agreeing with measures that generally are irrelevant and may even make things worse but seem humane.

Today, the twin examples of this are clearly COVID and Climate Change, although the latter has been around for three decades and the other obviously more acute and recent. They have one thing in common, the use of a crisis to gain more control of and reduce the freedom and choices of people and expand the powers and freedoms of the state. They (as to some degree the other crises also did) have another even more disturbing thing in common - PC wrath. In other words, there appears a "consensus" especially in media and academe and politics that one must feel only one way about the issue (that is, it is urgent and must be dealt with at all costs) or pay the price of being suppressed or even oppressed in the form of firing, shaming or worse. A similar trend is seen in the Race Riots of the past two months. Not just politicians but business and schools and communities are being bullied into complying with the BLM view of the World. There is but one consolation from the last example - it is unlikely to directly affect the Reagan Consensus but it is still a striking and chilling example of the Big Crisis strategy of public advocacy on the Left.

Of COVID or Climate Change, clearly it is Climate Change (as an issue) that has the most potential for damaging the Reagan Consensus. While COVID's impact on economics generally has been historically damaging, it is unlikely to be a factor in the long term. Although, it must be said that the unprecedented assault on civil liberties to defend against a not especially deadly virus could be a useful example for the Left to use to justify future more permanent damage.

Climate Change programs of Carbon Emission control and management have already cost the World's major economies (except of course Russia, China, India, Brazil and most of the so-called "developing countries" like world class ocean polluter, Vietnam) trillions, the lost opportunity of which cannot be measured, millions of jobs and 1000's of businesses actual or potential for little apparent proven benefit. But the most important result has been the restriction of people's freedom to make their pwn lifetstyle and business and financial choices thus undermining the genius of the Reagan Consensus and its proven ability to grow economies and lift people out of poverty and generally improve the Standard of Living. All of these schemes, even the tortured and proven failures, the Carbon Pricing systems, have expanded state power and reach and presumption into our lives and business in a way we would never normally tolerate if we were not convinced by the Opposition that the Earth was going to fry in 12 years (as AOC, Greta and others with greater pretensions than them have told us as they told us 20 years ago).

This use of Climate Change must be fought and contained before it does the kind of damage its policy thrust can do, especially, the United States, which has led the Reagan Consensus since at least 1981. How to do it? First, you fight it with the best weapon you have that the other side claims they own - the Science. Keep pointing out that the Earth has not significantly warmed since 1997. That the "Hockey Stick" is a fraud. That many fine climatologists are on your side in this regard. This is important above all because it attacks the fear and ignorance on this matter that is so crucial to the Opposition succeeding on this issue.

However, as we have seen in the past, the Opposition's friends in the Media and Academia will suppress or bully sources contrary to the "Cult" of Climate Change. For example, despite predicting in 2003 that Manhattan would be underwater by 2012 in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore is still celebrated as a CC Hero even as he lives in a house that creates more Carbon Emission than a whole village. You are liable to be labelled a crackpot for trying to fight this only by attacking what the Press practically has made it Style Guide material not to dispute..

What is also needed is an approach which at once solves the "problem" posed by Climate Change but also builds on the Reagan Consensus. This should never mean selling out to the imperative of Climate Change or even admitting it is anthropogenically caused. It means proposing a solution that reinforces the free markets that are the core of the Consensus but at the same time proposing an idea that the moderate non-partisan voter will perceive as constructive. Indeed, this approach would truly help to reduce pollution in general not just carbon emissions. It is a proposal to reduce or eliminate income taxes in favour of consumption taxes. The conservative does not have to worry about what to call it but can use whatever moniker they think will curry favour with the average voter, the Press and even the Green Lobby. Call it the Carbon Tax, the  Pollution Tax, the Garbage Tax or the BBQ tax. It only matters that conservatives be seen to fight the "crisis" at hand while at the same time not just protecting the Consensus but adding to it. 

The Boon from such tax reform (which to help with another danger to the Consensus, the Debt, should be as revenue-neutral as possible) would be as incalculable and myriad as the damage from CC programs have, to this point, been. Such an approach does not just protect one's freedom but expand it. For, after all, most of us have no choice but to earn a living but we can choose whether or not to buy most things except the staples. A world of consumption tax leaves the consumer free to expand their income and whether to invest it (without tax) or spend it on some extra bauble and pay the (relatively high) tax for doing so.

A country that goes to such a model (as only too few and relatively small nations have shown) would become a magnet for capital and see its economy roar, per capita income explode, innnovation blossom and its jobless disappear. All of the benefits of the Consensus thus would be trebled. And, yes, it would be just by dint of its great prosperity (studies show the richest nations are the freest and the cleanest) but also due to its punishing polluting activity via taxation be much cleaner still than  before.

By this strategy, the conservative statesperson both sees off one of the most pervasively dangerous and damaging enemies of the Reagan Consensus and takes that Consensus to new heights. As in the old phrase, we can make chicken salad out of the chicken doodoo of politics and the issues of the day. A way to compound this virtuous effect - recall it was Reagan and Mulroney who got rid of Acid Rain and call for any surplus revenues from the Consumption Taxes to be paid towards building new plant for water and sewage treatment. We can be the Green (blue) Party in reality (as opposed to the radical marxist one that talks a good game but hasn't cleaned a damn thing in its whole existence) that cleaned up our harbours, lakes and rivers and conserved them for generations to come. Thus we also demonstrate we know that money is not everything but it can help with the rest.

This approach can also work with COVID - for instance, tax holidays and suspending (in a lovely intersection of two Crises) the Ontario Hydro "Feed-in" contracts for renewable energy that have so damaged the economy in the name of CC. Whenever an Emmanuel says that a Crisis is too good a thing to waste, we need to agree and then propose the urgently needed conservative ideas for expanding freedom and the Consensus that the Crisis demands!

More on the Debt and Dependency tomorrow.