History shows us that civil rights can exist as nothing more than legal fiction. Take, for example, the right to vote. Although suffrage was extended to African-Americans under the Constitution in 1870, that right was little more than a nice idea until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. With many activists and politicians calling for America to recognize the “right” to health care, it is well worth looking at what this means. Making promises that cannot be met is a betrayal of the public trust, and the integrity of the government depends on its ability to hold to its word. In many other economically-developed countries, the “right” to health care coverage exists, and nearly everyone is enrolled in some sort of insurance or public plan. Unfortunately, coverage is not the same as health care procedures. Many governments insure nearly everyone, but cannot deliver the health care that those insured people need. These governments leave a broken promise in the place of the right that exists in their laws.

Read more on The Right to Health Care is Wrong…

The argument from federalism: One of the great benefits of federalism is that the states can act as the laboratories of democracy. If a new public policy is tried in the states and works (as happened with welfare reform in Michigan and Wisconsin), then a similar program has a good chance of succeeding at the national level. The welfare reform went national and proved to be one of the most successful public policy initiatives of the last half century. On the other hand, major governmental healthcare initiatives have been tried in Tennessee and Massachusetts. Neither of those have panned out. That should be a cautionary sign to avoid rushing ahead to just get a bill done!

Read more on Five Simple Arguments Against Government Healthcare…

This year April 6th marked the 15th anniversary of beginning of the genocide in Rwanda. Catherin Claire Larson, a senior writer and editor at Prison Fellowship Ministries, has written a new book called As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda, which focuses on how such wounds opened up fifteen years ago are being healed today. (Larson’s book is inspired by the award-winning film of the same name, which debuted in April 2008. Comment carried an interview with Laura Waters Hinson, the driving force behind the documentary film.)

Read more on PBR: Rwanda and Reconciliation…

This past week, President Obama forced the CEO of General Motors to resign. The real significance of this may be lost on most people. Some might say, “Well, if General Motors is not doing well, the CEO should be replaced.” The major difficulty with this is that this is a special power of the GM Board of Directors, not the President of the United States. Effectively, this makes President Obama the Board of Directors of General Motors, and any other company he wants to control, and makes the Board a mere figurehead. Slowly but surely, this is moving us to a fascist form of government. In fascism, the companies still exist, but the government tells them what to do. This was similar to Mercantilism, which was the predominant economic system in Europe from about the 1600s until 1800, more or less. Mercantilism was the system of economics that Adam Smith wrote against in his famous An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which most people shorten to the cryptic Wealth of Nations. Smith was trying to show that government control of business impoverishes nations. Instead, he posited “a system of natural liberty,” which allowed people to follow their natural pursuits, take on the risk of doing so, and allow the market, that is, the countless decisions of people, to decide the outcome. It was the realization of the truth that Smith expressed in his work that subsequently brought prosperity to countless nations.

Now we are returning to the old system, under a new guise. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner recently asked Congress to grant him unprecedented power to shut down any company that, in his opinion, is dangerous to the overall economy. Note that there are no specifics to this power—it would be at his discretion. For those who have read my blog entries “The Economics of Politics,” you can see that all of this is a grab for what politicians live for—power, and power alone. Politics attracts those kinds of people. When asked by a Congresswoman where in the Constitution he went to get justification for this type of power, Geithner expressed incoherent babbling. It did not seem ever to cross his mind that he needed Constitutional justification for such an assumption of power. Again, this is typical of fascism. A crisis is, if not created, then hyped, panic flamed up, and people in this panic are willing to trade their freedom for security. Only too late will they realize that the situation was not as bad as the self-interested government officials portrayed it. The power will have been granted, and only a miracle will pry it away from the hands of the government. Once taken, government almost always keeps a power.

Getting back to General Motors, its problems go all the way back to government-imposed protective tariffs, which are a remnant of Mercantilism. Corporations seek to be protected from foreign competition so they do not have to work to keep up. The government, bowing to pressure and false economic theories, puts tariffs and quotas on imports to raise their prices higher than those of the domestic product; in this case, cars. The car makers then can do whatever they want because consumers face a choice of either us or nothing. In the 1970s, when we began allowing imports, the American car companies were caught, and almost went out of business. They finally got their act together when a new wave of government regulation on cars was imposed, thus raising the cost of domestic cars. To boot, the latest situation is that the Federal government is dictating to the car companies what types of cars to make, all in an effort to be “green.” The problem is that the market does not want these cars, so the company is forced to spend millions on cars they cannot sell. Then the government says, “Oh, it would be terrible if the companies failed; so many would be put out of work. So we have to bail them out again, and since we are ponying up the money, we now have a controlling interest in them, we can call the shots, we can tell the company what to produce, we can fire the executives, and when the company comes in with a loss, we blame the company again, bail them out again . . . .” And the circle continues. Remember, this government is the same one that has brought us the Post Office, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the public school system. All those who believe that the government can bring us out of a recession should remember that it was the government that caused it in the first place. Remember the housing bubble?

What a racket!

Read more on PBR: The Old System under a New Guise…

From the question of performance-enhancing drugs to antitrust issues in the BCS, government involvement in professional sports is a common occurrence nowadays. Then-President-elect Obama said that he would favor a playoff system for Division I college football and that he would “throw” his weight around a little bit in pursuit of that agenda. Congress recently announced plans to take up the question of antitrust issues with the BCS.

Read more on PBR: The Virtue of Sport…

In response to the question, “What form will journalism take in the age of new media?” I came across this Reuters story highlighting a proposal to allow newspapers to file for nonprofit status. The legislation was put forward by Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin, (D-Md.) and he suggests the nonprofit action could be a possible solution for smaller community minded newspapers.

Read more on PBR: Nonprofits and New Media…

In today’s commentary, Sam Gregg writes that “there is little reason to be optimistic about the probable effects of the Obama Administration’s interventionist approach to mortgage relief. In fact, it is most likely to be counterproductive.” More government complacency about moral hazard?

Read more on Acton Commentary: The Problem with Government Mortgage Relief…

Somewhere in the United States today, government officials are writing a plan that will profoundly affect other people’s lives, incomes, and property. Though it may be written with the best intentions, the plan will go horribly wrong. The costs will be far higher than anticipated, the benefits will prove far smaller, and various unintended consequences will turn out to be worse than even the plan’s critics predicted.

Read more on The Perils of Planning…

In response to the question, “What are the moral lessons of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)?”

Does the ARRA mark the dawn of a new era of government accountability, from a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”?

Read more on PBR: Governmental Accountability and Transparency?…

Government is most surely a divinely-ordained reality, and a blessing that we must celebrate. But governments realize their task when they recognize their own divinely-ordained limits.

Government exists as a form of common grace to preserve the world for Christ’s coming, when the government as an order of preservation will give way to a divine monarchy (“Every knee will bow.”). In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the government is here to keep “open” the orders of the world for Christ.

Read more on Worth a Reflective Chuckle (or Two)…