Liberalism’s unwashed last stand

Liberalism is dying before our eyes, not with a whimper or a bang, but with a grand unbathed and so apropos whine-fest. The central tenets of statism are in free-fall, and its benefi- ciaries, namely those who live off the fruits of other people’s labor, are in a panic for one last round of government handouts before they completely bankrupt the nation.

Consider for a moment the tortured psyche of today’s American liberal. The 2008 election promised that “the smartest guy ever to become president” would “fundamentally transform the United States of America” into some liberal utopia. Wars would end. Seas would calm. And Barack Obama would spread the wealth. Instead, all he spread was misery as he unleashed the twin terrors of redistributionist economics and government-controlled health care. Hope and change became despair and more of the same.

The failed Obama presidency, however, is just the beginning. The most liberal president in history, with an assist from his predecessor, has unmasked the structural flaws of liberalism itself. All told, nearly $5 trillion of government bailouts and stimulus spending between the two presidents failed to rescue our economy. Their $5 trillion bought the most expensive lesson in human history: Government cannot create wealth, and an overtaxed and overregulated private sector can’t, either.

Keynesian economics, as it has evolved, is the debunked belief that government can stimulate, direct, regulate and bail you into prosperity. This failed religion is now so thoroughly disproved that it simply cannot survive the collapse of the Obama presidency, except perhaps on the calcified pages of the New York Times. After all, if $5 trillion isn’t a large enough stimulus, what is? And if the smartest guy ever to become president can’t manage liberalism, who can?

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