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David Warren is pessimistic about Egypt’s future as a democracy.
…The rhetoric of the Bush administration took them in this way, fondly hoping that with the passage of time, “modern” attitudes would keep spreading, as they once did in Europe, and have done more recently in countries of the Pacific Rim. The “neo-conservatives” sincerely believed that once constitutional democracy is implanted, it will grow, until it can be sustained by habit. India, “the world’s largest democracy,” is the standard example of this sort of miracle.
…I tend to look at the world more darkly than the “neo-conservatives” did.
While I recognize that support for “democracy and freedom” is substantial, within each Arab national society — that the middle class is not a nothing; that each economy depends on it — I doubt this “faction” can prevail. Worse, I think we are watching its final, hopeless bid for power. …
Peter Wehner reminds us of what Bush 43 said about Middle East policy.
As popular unrest sweeps the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunisia to Yemen to Egypt, it’s worth recalling the words and warning of President George W. Bush – in this case, his November 19, 2003, address at Whitehall Palace in London, where Bush said this:
We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. …
As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found.
…The core argument Bush made, which is that America must stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity — the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance — was right. No people on earth long to live in oppression and servitude, as slaves instead of free people, to be kept in chains or experience the lash of the whip. …
In Contentions, Max Boot follows up on Peter Wehner’s comments.
…But whatever happens, one thing is already clear: as Pete Wehner has already noted, President Bush was right in pushing his “freedom agenda” for the Middle East.
…Turns out that Bush knew a thing or two. He may not have been all that sophisticated by some standards, but like Ronald Reagan, he grasped basic truths that eluded the intellectuals. Reagan, recall, earned endless scorn for suggesting that the “evil empire” might soon be consigned to the “ash heap of history.” But he understood that basic human desires for freedom could not be repressed forever. Bush understood precisely the same thing, and like Reagan he also realized that the U.S. had to get on the right side of history by championing freedom rather than by cutting disreputable deals with dictators.
Too bad he didn’t have more success in pushing the “freedom agenda.” If he had — if, for example, he had been willing to hold back American aid to force Egypt to make liberal reforms — the U.S. might possibly have averted the explosion currently seen on the streets of Egypt by engineering a more orderly transition to democracy. But in his second term, humbled by setbacks in Iraq, Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, charted a different course. They did little or nothing while Mubarak locked up liberal dissident Ayman Nour. Instead, they concentrated their energies on the vaunted Middle East peace process, which ended in a predictable failure.
Obama has essentially continued this policy, which he — and legions of like-minded thinkers — sees as the height of “realism.” But what’s so realistic about endorsing a sclerotic status quo? The answer is being delivered in the streets of Egypt. So having already endorsed the essentials of the Bush war on terror, Obama is now belatedly embracing the freedom agenda too. Does that mean we’re all neocons now?
Peter Schiff once again hits it out of the ballpark. Schiff explains how the Federal Reserve fueled the housing and financial crises.
…The government has been subsidizing housing since the Roosevelt administration, and we never had a bubble of this proportion. It was not until these guarantees were combined with a 1% federal funds rate that they became supercharged. It was the unfortunate combination of government guarantees and cheap money that produced such a toxic brew.
During the bubble, a large percentage of loans, particularly those in high-priced markets like California, had adjustable rates. These rates were popular as a direct result of the ultra-low fed funds rate, which made them significantly cheaper than traditional thirty-year fixed-rate mortgages. Some of the most popular subprime loans were of the “2/28″ variety, where borrowers enjoyed artificially low “teaser” rates for the first two years only. For conforming loans, Fannie and Freddie actually guaranteed mortgages based solely on borrowers’ ability to afford the teaser rate, even if they could not afford the resets. Therefore, without low rates from the Fed, most of these ARMs never would have been originated.
…Meanwhile, the low rates themselves created investor demand for mortgage debt. With Treasuries and CDs offering pitiful returns, investors were encouraged to look elsewhere for (seemingly) low-risk investments with higher yields. This created unprecedented demand for Fannie- and Freddie-insured debt as well as new varieties of mortgage-backed securities.
Since Wall Street needed additional mortgages to package, lending standards steadily eroded to meet the demand. Much of the demand came from foreign sources looking to recycle large trade surpluses, which would have been much smaller had the Fed not kept rates so low. …
George Will notes how many ways the government can waste your money, and discusses how some Michigan politicians want to spend more for you.
…On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, in the Utah Territory, a golden spike was driven to celebrate the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. In the 1960s, the United States sent men to the moon. Obama said: Today’s government should take more control of the nation’s resources so it can do innovative things akin to building the transcontinental railroad and exploring space.
The nation heard: You should trust the government whose recent innovations include the ethanol debacle that, four days before the State of the Union, the government expanded. And you should surrender more resources to the government whose recent innovations include the wild proliferation of subprime mortgages.
Obama spoke to a nation limping into a sixth year of declining housing prices (housing accounts for about one-quarter of households’ assets), with an additional 10 to 20 percent decline likely. With 5 million households at least two months’ delinquent on their mortgage payments and 5.5 million households with mortgages at least 20 percent larger than the value of their houses, more housing foreclosures will probably take place this year than the 1 million in 2010, when sales of new homes hit a 47-year low. It is indeed amazing what innovative government can accomplish. …
In the Corner, Rich Lowry takes us on an interesting digression generated from the Sputnik rhetoric.
…Here is a thoughtful e-mail in reply:
…Kennedy’s challenge was to accomplish the goal within the decade. His political motivations for choosing this date are well documented and do not require retelling. What is significant are the key decisions made by individuals within the program permitting NASA to hit the date. It is these decisions with constitute the ‘soul’ of Apollo and represent the power of combining enormous public funding with an almost religious conviction to get the job done.
I believe the two best examples of individuals assuming tremendous personal, professional and political risk in the interest of realizing on the objective are as follows:
1. George Mueller’s decision to adapt an ‘all-up’ testing regimen for the Saturn V booster 2. George Low’s decision to fly Apollo 8 in 1968…
Bob Dorigo Jones, in the Daily Caller, criticizes Congressman Dennis Kucinich for his lawsuit.
Did you see the report in The Daily Caller on Wednesday about Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich suing a cafeteria on Capitol Hill for $150,000 over a sandwich he purchased there nearly three years ago? Kucinich claims he hurt his tooth by biting into an olive pit that was part of his vegetarian sandwich, and now he wants to settle this in the courts. Ughh!
There is so much wrong with this lawsuit that I hardly know where to begin, but here are some of the reasons why Americans should care about this.
As taxpayers, we all pay for premium dental coverage for Kucinich and all members of Congress. Surely, it has to be some of the best dental care in the world. Has the congressman opted out of this coverage? Or, does he still have the coverage and want to reimburse taxpayers for the cost of his dental care?…
And as you can imagine, the President’s address provided inspiration to many cartoonists. Enjoy.