The End of Liberalism?

[bonnie]

December 17, 2009

The end of liberalism?

Danny Huddleston

From the very beginning of the Obama presidency Democrats have been acting like kids in a candy store - doubling down on the TARP bailout and the $787 billion stimulus/slush fund. The most recent 1.1 trillion spending bill and now the health care bill which, with a little accounting sleight-of-hand, comes in at under one trillion, the Democrats are spending like there are no more tomorrows.

What will be the results of all of this out of control spending?

The consequences will be many but one of the most surprising results could be the end of liberalism. At least that's the opinion of this editorial in the Washington Examiner. Which begins with this extraordinary statement: " With its most vigorous advocate in memory presiding in the White House and commanding Democratic majorities in Congress, it's difficult to believe that the end of liberalism may be within sight."

The Examiner piece goes on to explain how out of control spending may bring about the end of liberalism:

The Petersen-Pew Commission on Budget Reform has produced a new report warning that "[o]ver the past year alone, the public debt of the United States rose sharply from 41 to 53 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Under reasonable assumptions, the debt is projected to grow steadily, reaching 85 percent of GDP by 2018, 100 percent by 2022, and 200 percent in 2038."

Long before the debt reaches such stratospheric levels, the commission warns, "Fears of inflation and a prospective decline in the value of the dollar would cause investors to demand higher interest rates and shift out of U.S. Treasury securities. The excessive debt would also affect citizens in their everyday lives by harming the American standard of living through slower economic growth and dampening wages, and shrinking the government's ability to reduce taxes, invest, or provide a safety net."

In other words, within the lifetimes of the vast majority of living Americans, government as we have known it since the New Deal will become paralyzed, unable to deliver even basic services, let alone the myriad of entitlements that politicians had promised would last forever. Liberalism will owe its undoing to its blind faith that government could forever be the inexhaustible provider of ever more spending, more benefits and more prosperity, with nary a day of reckoning.

Obama and the liberal Democrats in congress have inadvertently implemented a top down Cloward-Piven strategy where liberal entitlement programs sow the seeds of their own destruction by being too ambitious. If America survives this experiment in socialism it could well be the end of liberalism as we know it today.