Machiavellian Ron Ditches Public Option, And That Ain’t Good

One of the best supply-side-economic minds around today is Paul Hoffmeister, who writes for Bretton Woods Research. While Keynesianism seems to have much of the world in its thrall right now, Hoffmeister steadfastly and incisively rebuts Keynesian fallacies day in, day out. In the spirit of his late mentor Jude Wanniski, Hoffmeister keeps the supply-side flame burning bright. His commentaries help light the supply-side way home for wandering conservatives for the time when they rediscover the wisdom and once again screw up the courage to return to the economic agenda that helped Ronald Reagan rescue the United States from the Keynesian Cult that had captured its mind and was destroying its economy in the early 1980s.

Paul sent out a note Friday commenting on the Wall Street Journal Review and Comment editorial, Wyden Defects On ObamaCare, analyzing Washington State Senator Ron Wyden’s apparent change of heart on ObamaCare when he called upon the Governor of Washington State to exercise the state’s right to opt out of the individual mandate and set up a state-level public option. Paul, like the Wall Street Journal editors, took some encouragement in Wyden’s apparent defection from ObamaCare, and he penned the commentary below concluding:

“Mr. Wyden is essentially saying that what his party passed is not acceptable, and if such thinking builds, opponents may have a real chance to replace ObamaCare with something better.”

When I saw both the Wall Street Journal editors and Paul Hoffmeister letting their fondest hopes override their hard-knocks experience where politicians are concerned, I jotted Paul a note giving him my take on what Wyden was really up to and suggested to him that far from being an encouraging sign, Wyden’s effort to skip the individual mandate and proceed directly to 50 public options is a warning of Machiavellian machinations in play.

I have always contended that the Rube Goldberg Device we now know as ObamaCare, complete with an individual mandate and built-in price controls and rationing is an unstable way station to a public option and eventually flat-out socialized medicine like they have in Britain. I have long warned that far from designing ObamaCare to succeed, the Pelosi-Reid healthcare cabal intentionally designed this hideous contraption called ObamaCare to fail when they couldn’t get what they really wanted. In the process of failing, ObamaCare was designed to set off a hue and cry against the healthcare industry and to lead on to the next step along the way to socialized medicine, the public option.

The only surprise here is that Wyden’s preemptive flight from the individual mandate, which he voted for, even before it is implemented indicates that ObamaCare Ver. 1.0 is failing ahead of schedule—even before it is implemented. Wyden isn’t running after votes by running away from the individual mandate; he is using the public’s own flight away from ObamaCare (public opposition now running 51 percent to 39 percent against) as cover to run directly toward the public option. While the public is just running in circles waving their hands in the air against ObamaCare—and while Republican politicians are standing around stupefied watching them not knowing what to do—the smart liberal politicians such as Ron Wyden are running directly toward their next goal—public option.

Before conservatives get that warm and fuzzy feeling toward Senator Wyden, letting fond hope eclipse judgment based on experience, they better pay close attention to exactly where it is Wyden is running. It is not where they want to go, and it is a lot closer to socialized medicine than ObamaCare Ver. 1.0.

Here is how I put it in my note to Paul Hoffmeister:

“Paul,

“Actually, I suspect he [Wyden] is angling for states to impose a system closer to a public option. Remember, the individual mandate was always for the libs a gateway to a public option, which in turn is a gateway to a full-blown public system ala The National Health System in Britain. ObamaCare is a carefully constructed system designed to fail and in the process lead into a 'remedy' to the failure that is closer to the ultimate objective they seek—socialized medicine. ObamaCare is a three-step jump, very risky. Wyden prefers a two-step jump I suspect—just skip the whole individual mandate thing, get directly to a public option run by the states, which itself will collapse and require a federal rescue/bailout in the form of real socialized medicine.

“Hold onto your hat.

“L”

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Bretton Woods Research wrote:

Senator Ron Wyden advised Oregon's health authority director last week to seek ways to avoid Obamacare's health insurance mandates. Although he is so far polling well for his re-election run this fall, Wyden is likely attempting to moderate his liberal resume, for risk of becoming the next Barbara Boxer or Patty Murray (who, as yesterday's client letter explained, are both in virtual ties against their Republican opponents).

As we've mentioned, Democrats in the Senate and House are worried about the tax discussion this fall given the difficult political environment for them, and as a result are carefully considering how to craft a more growth-friendly tax bill going into the election. We don't think Wyden's slight departure from the President's healthcare reform is reflective yet of another larger defection within the party, but in the long-term, we bet that it will be seen as an important data point as others will surely join him.
BWR

You’ve probably seen the television ads featuring Andy Griffith extolling the virtues of Medicare. But Social Security Institute President Dr. Larry Hunter says the ad is a lie and the Obama administration and the AARP are using Griffith to lie to seniors and to distract them. So what are they distracting seniors from hearing? How is Andy Griffith a major tool in getting seniors to ignore major cuts in Medicare? And what’s the truth? We ask Dr. Hunter.

Listen to Dr. Hunter's Interview on the Frank Beckmann Show Here:
http://www.wjr.net/Article.asp?id=1938329&spid=6552

Listen to Dr. Hunter's Dateline Washington Radio Interview on August 20, 2010 Here:
http://dateline.radioamerica.org/podcast/8-20-hunter.mp3

A Republican House candidate in Florida, former Florida Senate majority leader Daniel Webster, wants senior citizens to “share the burden” of reducing the national budget deficit through cuts to Social Security benefits. The cuts Webster proposes would amount to approximately $100 a month for typical retirees.

When one reads accounts like this he can’t help but wonder whether the Democratic Party has successfully infiltrated the ranks of Republican public officials and candidates for higher office with agents provocateur. Or, the GOP could simply be living up to its well-earned moniker of TSP, “The Stupid Party.”

Republicans seem to have a death wish where Social Security is concerned. It’s a kinda woulda, coulda, shoulda syndrome with Republicans where Social Security is concerned. If only we had never created Social Security in the first place; if only we had gotten the federal tax system right from the beginning; if only we had gotten economic policy correct after the Great Depression, THEN everything would be a lot better. Well yeah, they would be. But we didn’t, and they aren’t so get over it Republicans.

If Republicans insist on imposing the logic “we should not have created Social Security therefore we should undermine it”—all in the name of the greater good, of course—they not only will turn average people over the age of 50 against the Republican Party, they will harden the divide and make it impossible to cut other parts of the budget that do far more fiscal harm and far less social good than Social Security. Moreover, suicidal pursuit of the Republican Social-Security Death Wish will blow back on the few bright lights and truly smart people in the party, such as Congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin.

One can see the way liberals manipulate the crack-pot ideas of Republican agents provocateur in the Huffington Post article reporting Webster’s suicidal proposal, hanging Webster’s proposal around Ryan’s neck like a millstone:

“Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the House GOP's point man on the budget, introduced legislation that would partially privatize Social Security and would ‘modernize’ the retirement age, but his proposal has won only 13 cosponsors.”

Far from cutting back on retirees’ retirement income, Ryan’s comprehensive Social Security Reform proposal increases it and provides current retirees and those close to retirement an iron-clad guarantee that they will receive at least as much retirement income as they have been promised by Social Security. But those facts will be lost in the heat of the moment as congressional liberals and their mouthpiece AARP stoke seniors’ fear and spread the word, “Republicans are at it again trying to cut your Social Security benefits.”

The only question remaining is, have Republicans lost their minds or are they really that stupid? It really doesn’t matter which though; either way, these are the kinds of ideas that reverse political fortunes in a heartbeat. Somewhere in California, Nancy Pelosi is smiling today.

**  UPDATE  **

Glenn Greenwald says this is what collapsing empire looks like:  Closed public schools in Hawaii, shut-down public transit systems in Georgia, dark streets in Colorado.  Looks more to me like the Washington Monument Strategy in full swing as bureaucrats apply maximum pressure to public services that affect the widest swath of citizens to coerce people into accepting higher taxes.  

Greenwald provides just a few more examples of today's government maxim:


If politicians and bureaucrats were serious about restoring fiscal sanity to government without curtailing traditional public services, they would drastically reduce the number of public employees and cut their salaries, the greatest drain on public treasuries, and selectively eliminate programs that only a relatively small percentage of citizens utilize.  There is no reason on earth governments cannot lay off at least 20 percent of their work force without curtailing traditional essential public services.  In an era when the compensation package of public employees is twice that of comparable workers in the private sector, it is time for massive layoffs and drastic salary cuts.  

Original Post
August 6, 2010 

So, I see the Washington Monument Strategy is alive and well in Camden, New Jersey. Faced with budget shortfalls, the city fathers have elected to strike at a staple of city services in Camden since 1904, public libraries.

Camden’s library board is playing a game of chicken with city officials threatening to close all three branches of its public library at year's end and donate, sell or destroy its collections, including 187,000 books unless a financial rescue is engineered.

When economic times get tough and bloated government budgets come under stress, the tried and true reaction of public officials and their bureaucrats is to chop away at the most valued services enjoyed by the greatest number of people whether it be national monuments and museums, libraries, parks or other public services readily available to everyone.

They used to call it blackmail and extortion; today’s it's the standard operating procedure of American government. The motto of government in America today is:

“Hurt Taxpayers First; Protect Public Employees At All Costs.”

For example, in Boston last spring when the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (Pike) was facing bankruptcy, it chose to turn off the lights on the Zakim Bridge overlooking Bunker Hill to save $60,000 a year rather than laying off a single toll-taker, which would have saved more. The toll taker, however, is part of the public-sector employees’ faction protected by unions that hold the public hostage whenever layoffs are considered. Unlike private companies that must adjust quickly to economic downturns by reducing their labor forces—many private firms have laid off 20 percent or more of their work forces during this recession—featherbedding public employees are exempt from economic hard times.

Illustrative of how the public-employee union mafia operates, consider the Mass Turnpike Authority’s effort in the fall of 2008, before deciding to turn off the lights, to lay off toll-takers to help restore Pike to financial soundness. When it was announced that the Turnpike Authority intended to lay off 100 toll-takers, it was stymied by the Teamsters contract with Pike that requires toll-takers be given 18 months notice before they are laid off. Then in May 2009, two new administrators earning a combined $211,000 were added to the Pike payroll.

Abraham Lincoln, call your office.  This isn't "government of the people, by the people, for the people;" it is government of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats," and it stinks.

AARP Shills for White House on ObamaCare

For most of last year, AARP was the White House’s designated huckster with lawmakers to pass ObamaCare through the Congress. Today ObamaCare is the law of the land, and AARP has become the White House shill with older Americans, hawking ObamaCare like some kind of midway carnie to convince seniors that AARP and ObamaCare work for them.

In fact, AARP works for the White House and on behalf of its own high-paid staff, not its members. ObamaCare works for the liberal politicians and the government-corporate-nonprofit healthcare complex, which is comprised of big government bureaucracies, labor unions, AARP, Big Pharma and big insurance companies. ObamaCare is a bait-and-switch snare designed to distract old people with token benefit enrichments while the structural changes to Medicare will ration healthcare to old people, put them out in the cold and into an early grave.

The best evidence of AARP’s treachery toward its members was their full-throated support of ObamaCare’s $500 billion cuts to Medicare. According to Heritage Foundation research by Bob Moffit, “Medicare Advantage plans, which currently attract almost one in four seniors, will see enrollment cut roughly in half over the next 10 years”— this despite repeated assurances by President Obama that, “No matter what you’ve heard, if you like your doctor or your current healthcare plan, you can keep it.”

Far from being able to keep their current healthcare plan, many senior citizens will be forced to leave their Medicare Advantage plans and become more dependent on traditional Medicare. That is to say, seniors will have less generous benefit packages, fewer healthcare choices, and they will be herded into less desirable Medicare Supplemental Insurance plans, which not coincidently are the staple of AARP’s billion-dollar insurance empire. AARP’s Medicare Supplemental Insurance products have had an increasingly difficult time competing with Medicare Advantage plans in recent years. So, in the name of “working for seniors,” AARP worked with the White House to feather its own corporate nest by using the power of the federal government to destroy its Medicare Advantage competitor.

AARP’s propaganda campaign to snooker the elderly into compliance while they are driven unceremoniously into AARP’s insurance sweet spot is brazen and deceptive. For example, AARP’s communications director in Ohio has been vocally insisting, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the changes taking place in Medicare under ObamaCare are only to benefit seniors:

“This new law gives seniors and their families greater savings, better benefits and higher-quality health care. That’s why it ensures accountability throughout the system so that seniors have greater control over the care that they receive. And that’s why it keeps Medicare strong and solvent – today and tomorrow.”
The facts are exactly the opposite. With an unfunded liability of at least $86 trillion, Medicare is insolvent today by any standard measure of financial soundness, and it only gets worse under ObamaCare; With the destruction of Medicare Advantage and the new rules to limit care and restrict doctor reimbursement, seniors will have fewer choices and less control over their healthcare; and the quality of healthcare will inevitably deteriorate, not improve, under the enormous pressures on doctors and healthcare providers that will be set in motion under ObamaCare. While AARP attempts to lull seniors into placid compliance with the new healthcare regime, healthcare rationing looms ominously out of sight just around the bend.

In fact, the prospect of healthcare rationing and restricted choice is not merely an abstraction looming in the future; the injurious effects of ObamaCare on seniors already are being felt.

Doctors already are fleeing Medicare because of the anticipated fee-reimbursement squeeze they will face under ObamaCare. As Galen Institute healthcare expert Grace-Marie Turner reports, there is a flood of physicians hiring financial planners to restructure their finances so they can retire in 2013, the year before ObamaCare’s main provisions take effect. Why? Because come January 2011 physician reimbursement under Medicare is scheduled to be axed by 30 percent. Since Medicare payments hardly cover doctors’ costs now, many physicians will end up losing money on every patient they treat. The American Osteopathic Association, for example, reports that only about 40 percent of their physician members will continue seeing their current Medicare patients if these cuts occur.

In the past, when AARP spoke, senior citizens and Members of Congress listened carefully because everyone thought AARP worked for and spoke on behalf of its members. Today we know better. When AARP president Barry Rand moves his lips to speak, it’s President Barack Obama pulling the strings and throwing his voice.

One of the recurring themes of this blog is there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the Establishment Democratic and Republican Parties. Both parties boil down to tax, spend, regulate and make war.

Each party has its own style, different rhetoric and different emphasis but when all is said and done, both parties are parties of government and war—two peas in a pod trying to bamboozle the American people into believing they are vastly different and the fate of the nation depends on keeping the other out of power.

Senate Campaign Committee Chairman John Cornyn illustrated just how similar both parties are in Sunday's appearance on Meet the Press. As the Alter Politics blog put it in summing up Cornyn’s inability to distinguish Bush fiscal policy from Obama fiscal policy:

“In other words, they [Obama Administration] intend to resume Bush’s policies of increasing the national debt to pay for deeper tax cuts for the rich, to bail out Wall Street fat cats, and to wage more endless and unnecessary wars.”

Independence Day, which used to be a joyous celebration of individual liberty and freedom from the shackles of oppressive government, has morphed for too many conservatives into a maudlin celebration of the state under the guise of rage against the politicians in power.

“Freedom,” in an Orwellian twist, is now defined as “security”—“national,” “homeland” and other similar derivatives—i.e., freedom from attack by the Evil Other, freedom from conquest by predator states, freedom from crime now defined so extensively that everyone is a criminal and thus a threat to everyone else, freedom from want of all sorts and. . .well you get the gist.

Independence Day galas have gone from celebrations of colonial militias and the rag-tag army of volunteers George Washington commanded to drive out what had come to be a foreign presence in our midst to a nationalistic jubilee in praise of Spartan militarism in which we are the uninvited and unwanted foreign presence in the midst of other countries; a celebration of professional soldiers (which we have taken to calling “our hero warriors”) spreading Empire America through the barrel of a gun to the four corners of the globe; to rapturous swooning over our militarized police and policified bureaucrats—a gun for every bureaucrat and an arsenal for every cop.

Respect for the symbolism of the American Flag and reverence for the principles for which it stands have morphed into an idolatrous worship of the banner complete with politically correct ritual that must be honored at the risk of public disapprobation, reproof and censure if not carried out in proper pc fashion.

But rather than go on at length about how the celebration of liberty has been transformed into a celebration of the military-police state, how the republican freedom of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson has metamorphosed into the democratic fascism of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, I will use the rest of this space to offer up this paean to freedom and liberty by Nobel Lauriat F.A Hayek, “Why I Am Not A Conservative.”

* * * *

Why I Am Not a Conservative
By F. A. Hayek

In The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960)

"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition.

1. At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty,[1] those who cherish freedom are likely to expend their energies in opposition. In this they find themselves much of the time on the same side as those who habitually resist change. In matters of current politics today they generally have little choice but to support the conservative parties. But, though the position I have tried to define is also often described as "conservative," it is very different from that to which this name has been traditionally attached. There is danger in the confused condition which brings the defenders of liberty and the true conservatives together in common opposition to developments which threaten their ideals equally. It is therefore important to distinguish clearly the position taken here from that which has long been known – perhaps more appropriately – as conservatism.

Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called "liberalism" was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense.[2] This already existing confusion was made worse by the recent attempt to transplant to America the European type of conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character. And some time before this, American radicals and socialists began calling themselves "liberals." I will nevertheless continue for the moment to describe as liberal the position which I hold and which I believe differs as much from true conservatism as from socialism. Let me say at once, however, that I do so with increasing misgivings, and I shall later have to consider what would be the appropriate name for the party of liberty. The reason for this is not only that the term "liberal" in the United States is the cause of constant misunderstandings today, but also that in Europe the predominant type of rationalistic liberalism has long been one of the pacemakers of socialism.

Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a "brake on the vehicle of progress,"[3] I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake. What the liberal must ask, first of all, is not how fast or how far we should move, but where we should move. In fact, he differs much more from the collectivist radical of today than does the conservative. While the last generally holds merely a mild and moderate version of the prejudices of his time, the liberal today must more positively oppose some of the basic conceptions which most conservatives share with the socialists.

2. The picture generally given of the relative position of the three parties does more to obscure than to elucidate their true relations. They are usually represented as different positions on a line, with the socialists on the left, the conservatives on the right, and the liberals somewhere in the middle. Nothing could be more misleading. If we want a diagram, it would be more appropriate to arrange them in a triangle with the conservatives occupying one corner, with the socialists pulling toward the second and the liberals toward the third. But, as the socialists have for a long time been able to pull harder, the conservatives have tended to follow the socialist rather than the liberal direction and have adopted at appropriate intervals of time those ideas made respectable by radical propaganda. It has been regularly the conservatives who have compromised with socialism and stolen its thunder. Advocates of the Middle Way[4] with no goal of their own, conservatives have been guided by the belief that the truth must lie somewhere between the extremes – with the result that they have shifted their position every time a more extreme movement appeared on either wing.

The position which can be rightly described as conservative at any time depends, therefore, on the direction of existing tendencies. Since the development during the last decades has been generally in a socialist direction, it may seem that both conservatives and liberals have been mainly intent on retarding that movement. But the main point about liberalism is that it wants to go elsewhere, not to stand still. Though today the contrary impression may sometimes be caused by the fact that there was a time when liberalism was more widely accepted and some of its objectives closer to being achieved, it has never been a backward-looking doctrine. There has never been a time when liberal ideals were fully realized and when liberalism did not look forward to further improvement of institutions. Liberalism is not averse to evolution and change; and where spontaneous change has been smothered by government control, it wants a great deal of change of policy. So far as much of current governmental action is concerned, there is in the present world very little reason for the liberal to wish to preserve things as they are. It would seem to the liberal, indeed, that what is most urgently needed in most parts of the world is a thorough sweeping away of the obstacles to free growth.

This difference between liberalism and conservatism must not be obscured by the fact that in the United States it is still possible to defend individual liberty by defending long-established institutions. To the liberal they are valuable not mainly because they are long established or because they are American but because they correspond to the ideals which he cherishes.

3. Before I consider the main points on which the liberal attitude is sharply opposed to the conservative one, I ought to stress that there is much that the liberal might with advantage have learned from the work of some conservative thinkers. To their loving and reverential study of the value of grown institutions we owe (at least outside the field of economics) some profound insights which are real contributions to our understanding of a free society. However reactionary in politics such figures as Coleridge, Bonald, De Maistre, Justus Möser, or Donoso Cortès may have been, they did show an understanding of the meaning of spontaneously grown institutions such as language, law, morals, and conventions that anticipated modern scientific approaches and from which the liberals might have profited. But the admiration of the conservatives for free growth generally applies only to the past. They typically lack the courage to welcome the same undesigned change from which new tools of human endeavors will emerge.

This brings me to the first point on which the conservative and the liberal dispositions differ radically. As has often been acknowledged by conservative writers, one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such,[5] while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead. There would not be much to object to if the conservatives merely disliked too rapid change in institutions and public policy; here the case for caution and slow process is indeed strong. But the conservatives are inclined to use the powers of government to prevent change or to limit its rate to whatever appeals to the more timid mind. In looking forward, they lack the faith in the spontaneous forces of adjustment which makes the liberal accept changes without apprehension, even though he does not know how the necessary adaptations will be brought about. It is, indeed, part of the liberal attitude to assume that, especially in the economic field, the self-regulating forces of the market will somehow bring about the required adjustments to new conditions, although no one can foretell how they will do this in a particular instance. There is perhaps no single factor contributing so much to people's frequent reluctance to let the market work as their inability to conceive how some necessary balance, between demand and supply, between exports and imports, or the like, will be brought about without deliberate control. The conservative feels safe and content only if he is assured that some higher wisdom watches and supervises change, only if he knows that some authority is charged with keeping the change "orderly."

This fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two other characteristics of conservatism: its fondness for authority and its lack of understanding of economic forces. Since it distrusts both abstract theories and general principles,[6] it neither understands those spontaneous forces on which a policy of freedom relies nor possesses a basis for formulating principles of policy. Order appears to the conservative as the result of the continuous attention of authority, which, for this purpose, must be allowed to do what is required by the particular circumstances and not be tied to rigid rule. A commitment to principles presupposes an understanding of the general forces by which the efforts of society are co-ordinated, but it is such a theory of society and especially of the economic mechanism that conservatism conspicuously lacks. So unproductive has conservatism been in producing a general conception of how a social order is maintained that its modern votaries, in trying to construct a theoretical foundation, invariably find themselves appealing almost exclusively to authors who regarded themselves as liberal. Macaulay, Tocqueville, Lord Acton, and Lecky certainly considered themselves liberals, and with justice; and even Edmund Burke remained an Old Whig to the end and would have shuddered at the thought of being regarded as a Tory.

Let me return, however, to the main point, which is the characteristic complacency of the conservative toward the action of established authority and his prime concern that this authority be not weakened, rather than that its power be kept within bounds. This is difficult to reconcile with the preservation of liberty. In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule – not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them.[7] Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.

When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them. I have little doubt that some of my conservative friends will be shocked by what they will regard as "concessions" to modern views that I have made in Part III of this book. But, though I may dislike some of the measures concerned as much as they do and might vote against them, I know of no general principles to which I could appeal to persuade those of a different view that those measures are not permissible in the general kind of society which we both desire. To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends.

It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits. I sometimes feel that the most conspicuous attribute of liberalism that distinguishes it as much from conservatism as from socialism is the view that moral beliefs concerning matters of conduct which do not directly interfere with the protected sphere of other persons do not justify coercion. This may also explain why it seems to be so much easier for the repentant socialist to find a new spiritual home in the conservative fold than in the liberal.

In the last resort, the conservative position rests on the belief that in any society there are recognizably superior persons whose inherited standards and values and position ought to be protected and who should have a greater influence on public affairs than others. The liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people – he is not an egalitarian – but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are. While the conservative inclines to defend a particular established hierarchy and wishes authority to protect the status of those whom he values, the liberal feels that no respect for established values can justify the resort to privilege or monopoly or any other coercive power of the state in order to shelter such people against the forces of economic change. Though he is fully aware of the important role that cultural and intellectual elites have played in the evolution of civilization, he also believes that these elites have to prove themselves by their capacity to maintain their position under the same rules that apply to all others.

Closely connected with this is the usual attitude of the conservative to democracy. I have made it clear earlier that I do not regard majority rule as an end but merely as a means, or perhaps even as the least evil of those forms of government from which we have to choose. But I believe that the conservatives deceive themselves when they blame the evils of our time on democracy. The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.[8] The powers which modern democracy possesses would be even more intolerable in the hands of some small elite.

Admittedly, it was only when power came into the hands of the majority that further limitations of the power of government was thought unnecessary. In this sense democracy and unlimited government are connected. But it is not democracy but unlimited government that is objectionable, and I do not see why the people should not learn to limit the scope of majority rule as well as that of any other form of government. At any rate, the advantages of democracy as a method of peaceful change and of political education seem to be so great compared with those of any other system that I can have no sympathy with the antidemocratic strain of conservatism. It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem.

That the conservative opposition to too much government control is not a matter of principle but is concerned with the particular aims of government is clearly shown in the economic sphere. Conservatives usually oppose collectivist and directivist measures in the industrial field, and here the liberals will often find allies in them. But at the same time conservatives are usually protectionists and have frequently supported socialist measures in agriculture. Indeed, though the restrictions which exist today in industry and commerce are mainly the result of socialist views, the equally important restrictions in agriculture were usually introduced by conservatives at an even earlier date. And in their efforts to discredit free enterprise many conservative leaders have vied with the socialists.[9]

4. I have already referred to the differences between conservatism and liberalism in the purely intellectual field, but I must return to them because the characteristic conservative attitude here not only is a serious weakness of conservatism but tends to harm any cause which allies itself with it. Conservatives feel instinctively that it is new ideas more than anything else that cause change. But, from its point of view rightly, conservatism fears new ideas because it has no distinctive principles of its own to oppose them; and, by its distrust of theory and its lack of imagination concerning anything except that which experience has already proved, it deprives itself of the weapons needed in the struggle of ideas. Unlike liberalism, with its fundamental belief in the long-range power of ideas, conservatism is bound by the stock of ideas inherited at a given time. And since it does not really believe in the power of argument, its last resort is generally a claim to superior wisdom, based on some self-arrogated superior quality.

The difference shows itself most clearly in the different attitudes of the two traditions to the advance of knowledge. Though the liberal certainly does not regard all change as progress, he does regard the advance of knowledge as one of the chief aims of human effort and expects from it the gradual solution of such problems and difficulties as we can hope to solve. Without preferring the new merely because it is new, the liberal is aware that it is of the essence of human achievement that it produces something new; and he is prepared to come to terms with new knowledge, whether he likes its immediate effects or not.

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it – or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. I will not deny that scientists as much as others are given to fads and fashions and that we have much reason to be cautious in accepting the conclusions that they draw from their latest theories. But the reasons for our reluctance must themselves be rational and must be kept separate from our regret that the new theories upset our cherished beliefs. I can have little patience with those who oppose, for instance, the theory of evolution or what are called "mechanistic" explanations of the phenomena of life because of certain moral consequences which at first seem to follow from these theories, and still less with those who regard it as irrelevant or impious to ask certain questions at all. By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position. Frequently the conclusions which rationalist presumption draws from new scientific insights do not at all follow from them. But only by actively taking part in the elaboration of the consequences of new discoveries do we learn whether or not they fit into our world picture and, if so, how. Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would hardly be moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge facts.

Connected with the conservative distrust if the new and the strange is its hostility to internationalism and its proneness to a strident nationalism. Here is another source of its weakness in the struggle of ideas. It cannot alter the fact that the ideas which are changing our civilization respect no boundaries. But refusal to acquaint one's self with new ideas merely deprives one of the power of effectively countering them when necessary. The growth of ideas is an international process, and only those who fully take part in the discussion will be able to exercise a significant influence. It is no real argument to say that an idea is un-American, or un-German, nor is a mistaken or vicious ideal better for having been conceived by one of our compatriots.

A great deal more might be said about the close connection between conservatism and nationalism, but I shall not dwell on this point because it might be felt that my personal position makes me unable to sympathize with any form of nationalism. I will merely add that it is this nationalistic bias which frequently provides the bridge from conservatism to collectivism: to think in terms of "our" industry or resource is only a short step away from demanding that these national assets be directed in the national interest. But in this respect the Continental liberalism which derives from the French Revolution is little better than conservatism. I need hardly say that nationalism of this sort is something very different from patriotism and that an aversion to nationalism is fully compatible with a deep attachment to national traditions. But the fact that I prefer and feel reverence for some of the traditions of my society need not be the cause of hostility to what is strange and different.

Only at first does it seem paradoxical that the anti-internationalism of conservatism is so frequently associated with imperialism. But the more a person dislikes the strange and thinks his own ways superior, the more he tends to regard it as his mission to "civilize" other[10] – not by the voluntary and unhampered intercourse which the liberal favors, but by bringing them the blessings of efficient government. It is significant that here again we frequently find the conservatives joining hands with the socialists against the liberals – not only in England, where the Webbs and their Fabians were outspoken imperialists, or in Germany, where state socialism and colonial expansionism went together and found the support of the same group of "socialists of the chair," but also in the United States, where even at the time of the first Roosevelt it could be observed: "the Jingoes and the Social Reformers have gotten together; and have formed a political party, which threatened to capture the Government and use it for their program of Caesaristic paternalism, a danger which now seems to have been averted only by the other parties having adopted their program in a somewhat milder degree and form."[11]

5. There is one respect, however, in which there is justification for saying that the liberal occupies a position midway between the socialist and the conservative: he is as far from the crude rationalism of the socialist, who wants to reconstruct all social institutions according to a pattern prescribed by his individual reason, as from the mysticism to which the conservative so frequently has to resort. What I have described as the liberal position shares with conservatism a distrust of reason to the extent that the liberal is very much aware that we do not know all the answers and that he is not sure that the answers he has are certainly the rights ones or even that we can find all the answers. He also does not disdain to seek assistance from whatever non-rational institutions or habits have proved their worth. The liberal differs from the conservative in his willingness to face this ignorance and to admit how little we know, without claiming the authority of supernatural forces of knowledge where his reason fails him. It has to be admitted that in some respects the liberal is fundamentally a skeptic[12] – but it seems to require a certain degree of diffidence to let others seek their happiness in their own fashion and to adhere consistently to that tolerance which is an essential characteristic of liberalism.

There is no reason why this need mean an absence of religious belief on the part of the liberal. Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. That this is not essential to liberalism is clearly shown by its English ancestors, the Old Whigs, who, if anything, were much too closely allied with a particular religious belief. What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different sphere which ought not to be confused.

6. What I have said should suffice to explain why I do not regard myself as a conservative. Many people will feel, however, that the position which emerges is hardly what they used to call "liberal." I must, therefore, now face the question of whether this name is today the appropriate name for the party of liberty. I have already indicated that, though I have all my life described myself as a liberal, I have done so recently with increasing misgivings – not only because in the United States this term constantly gives rise to misunderstandings, but also because I have become more and more aware of the great gulf that exists between my position and the rationalistic Continental liberalism or even the English liberalism of the utilitarians.

If liberalism still meant what it meant to an English historian who in 1827 could speak of the revolution of 1688 as "the triumph of those principles which in the language of the present day are denominated liberal or constitutional" [13] or if one could still, with Lord Acton, speak of Burke, Macaulay, and Gladstone as the three greatest liberals, or if one could still, with Harold Laske, regard Tocqueville and Lord Acton as "the essential liberals of the nineteenth century,"[14] I should indeed be only too proud to describe myself by that name. But, much as I am tempted to call their liberalism true liberalism, I must recognize that the majority of Continental liberals stood for ideas to which these men were strongly opposed, and that they were led more by a desire to impose upon the world a preconceived rational pattern than to provide opportunity for free growth. The same is largely true of what has called itself Liberalism in England at least since the time of Lloyd George.

It is thus necessary to recognize that what I have called "liberalism" has little to do with any political movement that goes under that name today. It is also questionable whether the historical associations which that name carries today are conducive to the success of any movement. Whether in these circumstances one ought to make an effort to rescue the term from what one feels is its misuse is a question on which opinions may well differ. I myself feel more and more that to use it without long explanations causes too much confusion and that as a label it has become more of a ballast than a source of strength.

In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use "liberal" in the sense in which I have used it, the term "libertarian" has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.

7. We should remember, however, that when the ideals which I have been trying to restate first began to spread through the Western world, the party which represented them had a generally recognized name. It was the ideals of the English Whigs that inspired what later came to be known as the liberal movement in the whole of Europe[15] and that provided the conceptions that the American colonists carried with them and which guided them in their struggle for independence and in the establishment of their constitution.[16] Indeed, until the character of this tradition was altered by the accretions due to the French Revolution, with its totalitarian democracy and socialist leanings, "Whig" was the name by which the party of liberty was generally known.

The name died in the country of its birth partly because for a time the principles for which it stood were no longer distinctive of a particular party, and partly because the men who bore the name did not remain true to those principles. The Whig parties of the nineteenth century, in both Britain and the United States, finally brought discredit to the name among the radicals. But it is still true that, since liberalism took the place of Whiggism only after the movement for liberty had absorbed the crude and militant rationalism of the French Revolution, and since our task must largely be to free that tradition from the overrationalistic, nationalistic, and socialistic influences which have intruded into it, Whiggism is historically the correct name for the ideas in which I believe. The more I learn about the evolution of ideas, the more I have become aware that I am simply an unrepentant Old Whig – with the stress on the "old."

To confess one's self as an Old Whig does not mean, of course, that one wants to go back to where we were at the end of the seventeenth century. It has been one of the purposes of this book to show that the doctrines then first stated continued to grow and develop until about seventy or eighty years ago, even though they were no longer the chief aim of a distinct party. We have since learned much that should enable us to restate them in a more satisfactory and effective form. But, though they require restatement in the light of our present knowledge, the basic principles are still those of the Old Whigs. True, the later history of the party that bore that name has made some historians doubt where there was a distinct body of Whig principles; but I can but agree with Lord Acton that, though some of "the patriarchs of the doctrine were the most infamous of men, the notion of a higher law above municipal codes, with which Whiggism began, is the supreme achievement of Englishmen and their bequest to the nation"[17] – and, we may add, to the world. It is the doctrine which is at the basis of the common tradition of the Anglo-Saxon countries. It is the doctrine from which Continental liberalism took what is valuable in it. It is the doctrine on which the American system of government is based. In its pure form it is represented in the United States, not by the radicalism of Jefferson, nor by the conservatism of Hamilton or even of John Adams, but by the ideas of James Madison, the "father of the Constitution."[18]

I do not know whether to revive that old name is practical politics. That to the mass of people, both in the Anglo-Saxon world and elsewhere, it is today probably a term without definite associations is perhaps more an advantage than a drawback. To those familiar with the history of ideas it is probably the only name that quite expresses what the tradition means. That, both for the genuine conservative and still more for the many socialists turned conservative, Whiggism is the name for their pet aversion shows a sound instinct on their part. It has been the name for the only set of ideals that has consistently opposed all arbitrary power.

8. It may well be asked whether the name really matters so much. In a country like the United States, which on the whole has free institutions and where, therefore, the defense of the existing is often a defense of freedom, it might not make so much difference if the defenders of freedom call themselves conservatives, although even here the association with the conservatives by disposition will often be embarrassing. Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been.

The need for a clear distinction is absolutely imperative, however, where, as is true in many parts of Europe, the conservatives have already accepted a large part of the collectivist creed – a creed that has governed policy for so long that many of its institutions have come to be accepted as a matter of course and have become a source of pride to "conservative" parties who created them.[19] Here the believer in freedom cannot but conflict with the conservative and take an essentially radical position, directed against popular prejudices, entrenched positions, and firmly established privileges. Follies and abuses are no better for having long been established principles of folly.

Though quieta non movere may at times be a wise maxim for the statesman it cannot satisfy the political philosopher. He may wish policy to proceed gingerly and not before public opinion is prepared to support it, but he cannot accept arrangements merely because current opinion sanctions them. In a world where the chief need is once more, as it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to free the process of spontaneous growth from the obstacles and encumbrances that human folly has erected, his hopes must rest on persuading and gaining the support of those who by disposition are "progressives," those who, though they may now be seeking change in the wrong direction, are at least willing to examine critically the existing and to change it wherever necessary.

I hope I have not misled the reader by occasionally speaking of "party" when I was thinking of groups of men defending a set of intellectual and moral principles. Party politics of any one country has not been the concern of this book. The question of how the principles I have tried to reconstruct by piecing together the broken fragments of a tradition can be translated into a program with mass appeal, the political philosopher must leave to "that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs."[20] The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same."[21] In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments.

Notes

The quotation at the head of the Postscript is taken from Acton, History of Freedom, p. 1.

1. This has now been true for over a century, and as early as 1855 J. S. Mill could say (see my John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor [London and Chicago, 1951], p. 216) that "almost all the projects of social reformers of these days are really liberticide."

2. B. Crick, "The Strange Quest for an American Conservatism," Review of Politics, XVII (1955), 365, says rightly that "the normal American who calls himself 'A Conservative' is, in fact, a liberal." It would appear that the reluctance of these conservatives to call themselves by the more appropriate name dates only from its abuse during the New Deal era.

3. The expression is that of R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 209.

4. Cf. the characteristic choice of this title for the programmatic book by the present British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, The Middle Way (London, 1938).

5. Cf. Lord Hugh Cecil, Conservatism ("Home University Library" [London, 1912], p. 9: "Natural Conservatism . . . is a disposition averse from change; and it springs partly from a distrust of the unknown."
6. Cf. the revealing self-description of a conservative in K. Feiling, Sketches in Nineteenth Century Biography (London, 1930), p. 174: "Taken in bulk, the Right have a horror of ideas, for is not the practical man, in Disraeli's words, 'one who practices the blunders of his predecessors'? For long tracts of their history they have indiscriminately resisted improvement, and in claiming to reverence their ancestors often reduce opinion to aged individual prejudice. Their position becomes safer, but more complex, when we add that this Right wing is incessantly overtaking the Left; that it lives by repeated inoculation of liberal ideas, and thus suffers from a never-perfected state of compromise."

7. I trust I shall be forgiven for repeating here the words in which on an earlier occasion I stated an important point: "The main merit of the individualism which [Adam Smith] and his contemporaries advocated is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid." (Individualism and Economic Order [London and Chicago, 1948], p. 11.)

8. Cf. Lord Acton in Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone, ed. H. Paul (London, 1913), p. 73: "The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class."

9. J. R. Hicks has rightly spoken in this connection of the "caricature drawn alike by the young Disraeli, by Marx and by Goebbels" ("The Pursuit of Economic Freedom," What We Defend, ed. E. F. Jacob [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942], p. 96). On the role of the conservatives in this connection see also my Introduction to Capitalism and the Historians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 19 ff.

10. Cf. J. S. Mill, On Liberty, ed. R. B. McCallum (Oxford, 1946), p. 83: "I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilised."

11. J. W. Burgess, The Reconciliation of Government with Liberty (New York, 1915), p. 380.

12. Cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, ed. I. Dilliard (New York, 1952), p. 190: "The Spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." See also Oliver Cromwell's often quoted statement is his Letter to the Assembly of the Church of Scotland, August 3, 1650: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." It is significant that this should be the probably best-remembered saying of the only "dictator" in British history!

13. H. Hallam, Constitutional History (1827) ("Everyman" ed.), III, 90. It is often suggested that the term "liberal" derives from the early nineteenth-century Spanish party of the liberales. I am more inclined to believe that it derives from the use of that term by Adam Smith in such passages as W.o.N., II, 41: "the liberal system of free exportation and free importation" and p. 216: "allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice."

14. Lord Acton in Letters to Mary Gladstone, p. 44. Cf. also his judgment of Tocqueville in Lectures on the French Revolution (London, 1910), p. 357: "Tocqueville was a Liberal of the purest breed – a Liberal and nothing else, deeply suspicious of democracy and its kindred, equality, centralisation, and utilitarianism." Similarly in the Nineteenth Century, XXXIII (1892), 885. The statement by H. J. Laski occurs in "Alexis de Tocqueville and Democracy," in The Social and Political Ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Victorian Age, ed. F. J. C. Hearnshaw (London, 1933), p. 100, where he says that "a case of unanswerable power could, I think, be made out for the view that he [Tocqueville] and Lord Acton were the essential liberals of the nineteenth century."

15. As early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, an English observer could remark that he "scarce ever knew a foreigner settled in England, whether of Dutch, German, French, Italian, or Turkish growth, but became a Whig in a little time after his mixing with us" (quoted by G. H. Guttridge, English Whiggism and the American Revolution [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942], p. 3).

16. In the United States the nineteenth-century use of the term "Whig" has unfortunately obliterated the memory of the fact that in the eighteenth it stood for the principles which guided the revolution, gained independence, and shaped the Constitution. It was in Whig societies that the young James Madison and John Adams developed their political ideals (cf. E. M. Burns, James Madison [New Brunnswick, N.J.; Rutgers University Press, 1938], p. 4); it was Whig principles which, as Jefferson tells us, guided all the lawyers who constituted such a strong majority among the signers of the Declaration of Independence and among the members of the Constitutional Convention (see Writings of Thomas Jefferson ["Memorial ed." (Washington, 1905)], XVI, 156). The profession of Whig principles was carried to such a point that even Washington's soldiers were clad in the traditional "blue and buff" colors of the Whigs, which they shared with the Foxites in the British Parliament and which was preserved down to our days on the covers of the Edinburgh Review. If a socialist generation has made Whiggism its favorite target, this is all the more reason for the opponents of socialism to vindicate its name. It is today the only name which correctly describes the beliefs of the Gladstonian liberals, of the men of the generation of Maitland, Acton, and Bryce, and the last generation for whom liberty rather than equality or democracy was the main goal.

17. Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History (London, 1906), p. 218 (I have slightly rearranged Acton's clauses to reproduce briefly the sense of his statement).

18. Cf. S. K. Padover in his Introduction to The Complete Madison (New York, 1953), p. 10: "In modern terminology, Madison would be labeled a middle-of-the-road liberal and Jefferson a radical." This is true and important, though we must remember what E. S. Corwin ("James Madison: Layman, Publicist, and Exegete," New York University Law Review, XXVII [1952], 285) has called Madison's later "surrender to the overwhelming influence of Jefferson."

19. Cf. the British Conservative party's statement of policy, The Right Road for Britain (London, 1950), pp. 41–42, which claims, with considerable justification, that "this new conception [of the social services] was developed [by] the Coalition Government with a majority of Conservative Ministers and the full approval of the Conservative majority in the House of Commons . . . [We] set out the principle for the schemes of pensions, sickness and unemployment benefit, industrial injustices benefit and a national health scheme."

20. A Smith, W.o.N., I, 432.

21. Ibid.

October 26, 2005
Copyright 1960 by the University of Chicago Press

Hillary Clinton says the rich are not paying their fair share of taxes.  The facts say differently:

According to the Tax Foundation, using the most recently available data:

“In 2007, the top 1 percent of tax returns [AGI over $410,096] paid 40.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes [and]. . .The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $66,532). . .paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.6 percent). . .That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.”

 

According to the IRS, almost half of Americans (47 percent) pay absolutely no federal income tax and a significant number of those people who don’t pay actually receive welfare payments back through their income tax filings in the form of refundable tax credits: 

“In fact, the IRS paid out more than $72 billion in these refundable tax credits in 2008, a higher amount than the employee share of payroll tax obligations of everyone who earns under $30,000.”

 

One must conclude the following:  Either Hillary Clinton knows the facts and is a barefaced liar or she is woefully misinformed and running her mouth about something she knows absolutely nothing.  I’m not sure which is worse for the United State’s top diplomat.