Politics and Culture

Let's look at the worst possible scenario from a conservative perspective: An Obama presidency and Democratic congress- the national equivalent of California's Gray Davis years.

1. Supreme court.

If two liberals get on the court, at least a few new "rights" will occur to our nation's judiciary and, in a 50-50 country, there's not a whole lot conservatives can do about it. The court will discover that James Madison wanted gay marriage all along. Things like gay marriage don't cause people to spontaneously combust, the only criteria for not trying a social experiment for many reformers, but does lead to national decline in many small ways.

2. Health care:

Does anybody want to repeal the prescription drug benefit? It's almost a rule of politics that once people become invested in a government program, it's very hard to go back. What happens is that people become completely dependent on the program and people that can do without it (including some people that can, but are convinced that they can't) adjust and move on to working and producing. Anyways, once we get something like a "right" to health care, we'll never say anything like "maybe people should pay for their own insurance." Instead, we'll get endless articles called, "How to fix the health care crisis?" a la public education opinion today.

3. A loss of freedom/independence.

I was talking to a mother who had her child in Head Start, a program everybody knows is a total waste except for those kids raised by the most irresponsible parents (or parent, mostly). She said how Head Start was great because her kid already learned the names of colors and the letters. She was hopeful that soon, they'd teach the children to write their own names. Of course, this exchange prompts the question: "Why don't you teach your kid how to write her own name? You can write it, yes?"

People familiar with communism and fascism either through books or personally know that separating children from the tyranny of the family has always been a goal.

4. Emboldened enemies:

The worst example is Jimmy Carter, an endorser of Obama. I'm not as worried about this since terrorism has a random quality that nobody can completely stop and Obama has shown a complete malleability on issues like Iran. He'll do what seems the popular thing at the time. All of his "talking to countries" stuff is merely to contrast with Bush for the loony haters in his party.

He's backing away from his Iraq withdrawal stuff too (He'd keep a "strike force?" Hilarious.) Remember the last time we lost on purpose, Vietnam, our military had already left. This time we're still there.

5. The economy.

As he's already indicated, I don't think Obama will really re-negotiate NAFTA and things like that. He'll raise taxes, but we can lower them again.

6. Global warming.

Again, even Euro-crazies don't really do anything to stop global warming. Obama might say something, but won't really hurt the economy just to impress fourth graders.

Anyways, that's the way I see it. The Obama effect will mostly be a slow degeneration into Eurodom.