Downgrading the U.S. Federal Government's Creditworthiness

In 2011, major financial agencies reduced the rating of bonds and other forms of debt issued by the United States federal government. Simply put, the USA isn't as good a risk as it used to be.

This doesn't mean that the nation is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Yet. But it does mean that by standards as objective as any can be, we've not done a good job of managing our budget.

Naturally, efforts were made to hold someone responsible for this. Who to blame? The Democrats and Republicans blame each other; the liberals and conservative blame each other; the Congress and the President blame each other. Perhaps the most realistic, and least political, location in which to lodge blame is in the past, about forty years earlier.

President Lyndon Johnson, under his slogan of a "Great Society," orchestrated a mathematical impossibility, a sort of generational Ponzi scheme stretching over decades. One financial engine motivating the eventual downgrade of the nation's credit is the Medicare Plan. Kevin Williamson writes:

The blame for Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. sovereign credit belongs almost exclusively to the president, the most socialistic American chief executive in living memory, but also to key congressional Republicans, who got carried away by their emotions. The president is Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the congressional Republicans are the 70 members of the House and 13 senators who, led by Rep. John W. Byrnes (R., Wis.), voted to create Medicare, a welfare handout disguised as an insurance program and structured as a Ponzi scheme. The handiwork of these illustrious gentlemen has taken some time to catch up with us, but catch up it has.

One definition of 'Ponzi scheme' in a common dictionary tells of "the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors." LBJ's Medicare setup was never financially viable; but it took forty years to reach critical mass. Exacerbating factors included other Great Society programs like Medicaid.

Medicare cannot go out of business, no matter how boneheaded its financial decisions. Because enrollment in Medicare is automatic rather than voluntary, because it is funded mainly out of payroll taxes, and because its premiums are mostly symbolic, Medicare encourages beneficiaries to make maximum use of it, which drives up both overall healthcare expenses and the deficit. We have managed to cut ourselves with both sides of that double-edged sword.

Hence the downgrading of the USA's credit. Medicare is an example of what some economic textbooks call a perverse incentive. Selling insurance for far less than its market value encourages consumers to buy it and use it - and those most likely to see the benefit to themselves in the arrangement are those least likely to need it: educated consumers, used to calculating comparative advantages, tend to come not from the lowest income classes. Kevin Williamson explains that while a number of various Great Society programs pose dangers to the nation's credit rating, Medicare is by far the most dangerous, precisely because it appeals to those savvy consumers who need it least:

And it’s really Medicare. Medicaid is a clear and present fiscal danger, but it will be relatively easy to fix, because it is easier to take benefits away from poor people than to take them away from well-off people, and the oldsters who collect Medicare are one of the most affluent and therefore politically powerful demographic groups in the country, age and wealth going together in our society more or less.

Medicare is also an example of a regressive tax. The poor are likely to put more money into it, while getting less out of it. Life expectancy alone would insure this regressiveness, but education does as well. Well-educated people tend to live longer and accumulate greater net worths.

It is worth keeping in mind that, as a National Bureau of Economic Research report found, “Medicare has led to net transfers from the poor to the wealthy, as a result of relatively regressive financing mechanisms and the higher expenditures and longer survival times of wealthier beneficiaries. Even with recent financing reforms, net transfers to the wealthy are likely to continue for at least several more decades.”

When the USA's credit rating was lowered in 2011, it was the fault of neither President Obama nor President Bush. It was a long time coming, and it was due to President Johnson.

Inconveniencing the Stalinists: the Smith Act

The Smith Act, a bit of legislation passed by the Congress in 1940, made explicit the notion implicit in any form of government: that those who advocate the violent overthrow of the government are afoul of the law. In a free society, which the United States attempts to be, there is a constant tension between freedom of speech and the security of the citizens.

On the one hand, criticism of the government, and even proposals to replace the government with a different one, are within the realm of a civil liberty, while the advocation of violent overthrow is a premeditation bent on harming individuals and therefore punishable by law. But where, exactly, is the boundary line between the two?

A number of famous trials involved the Smith Act, and some of them reached the Supreme Court. A few of them involved leaders of the Communist Party (CP), which was operating in the United States as both an intelligence-gathering network for the Soviets, and as a network for those who were prepared to sabotage the U.S. government. This latter, active, aspect of the CP's presence in the USA ranged from influencing policy decisions in the federal government, so that decisions were made against the nation's best interests, to developing and preparing saboteurs who were prepared for acts of violence against persons and objects - prepared to shoot people and dynamite buildings. Ronald Radosh writes:

the post-war Smith Act trial that took place in 1949, when the Justice Department brought to the docket the top leaders of the American CP, and indicted them for conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In Dennis v. U.S., the Court, led by Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson, ruled in a 6–2 decision that the convictions were legal and that the Smith Act under which the defendants were indicted was constitutional. The Court’s majority decision stated that the government had a right to prohibit the intention to commit acts meant to overthrow the American republic, and to prosecute the plotters before they acted.

In reaction to the verdict in Dennis vs. U.S., those who supported the communists claimed that First Amendment rights were violated; that the defendants were being prosecuted for what they had merely said. The legal task here is to find the boundary between speaking about an act and preparing to commit an act. If a man speaks, in an abstract way, about changing governments, about the need for a new government, and even about the possibility of doing so by means of violence, then his speech, however unpleasant, may still be protected by the First Amendment. But when he begins to stockpile bombs and guns, when he makes specific and concrete plans about whom he will shoot and which buildings he will explode, when he is receiving instructions and materials from of hostile foreign government, and when he trains and organizes others to do so, he will at some point move out of the realm of those things which are protected by the First Amendment.

Over the past two decades, since the release of the so-called Venona decrypts of Soviet intelligence operations in the U.S. and the more recent Vassiliev KGB files, as well as documents found in Moscow by Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, much evidence has been assembled that proves beyond any doubt that the American Communist party was not just another political party, but an institution whose policies, leadership, and programs were forged in Moscow, and that served as a recruiting ground for Soviet intelligence, with the participation and cooperation of the American party’s top leaders.

Despite the claims of the communists and their supporters, evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they were under the supervision of Soviet intelligence agencies like the KGB. It must be remembered that in the late 1940s and 1950s, the USSR was actively preparing for war, anticipating a major conflict when it attempted to overrun those parts of Europe which it had not already dominated. The USSR was also preparing to trigger an overthrow of the United States government from within, by means of the Communist Party of the United States of American (CPUSA) - the official and alternative title for the American Communist Party.

the American Communist party was an organ of Joseph Stalin and a ready fifth column in the event that war broke out between the U.S. and the USSR.

Elizabeth Bentley was a spy for the Soviets from 1938 until 1945, when she defected from the communists and revealed what she knew to the FBI. She provided one of the biggest breaks in terms of uncovering Soviet espionage activity on American soil.

Soviet spying was not a figment of the imagination, and that the Smith Act indictments took place concurrently with the revelations by Elizabeth Bentley concerning the spy networks she handled in the United States.

One of the espionage networks with whom Elizabeth Bentley worked, and about whom she revealed data to the FBI, was the Silvermaster network, which carried out a number of operations for the NKGB (a predecessor of the KGB). One such operation was the theft of currency printing plates, which allowed the Soviet government to counterfeit currency, thereby simultaneously destabilizing the economy of the western allies and siphoning wealth from the United States to the Soviet Union.

Not only did members of the American Communist party have direct contacts with the NKGB, the KGB, and other Soviet espionage agencies, but some of them had been taken to Russia to be trained. Ronald Radosh explains that

a labor historian named Albert V. Lannon wrote a post on a historians’ Internet discussion group. Lannon is the son of Al Lannon, later a Smith Act defendant in the second New York Communist trial in 1951, who was the CP’s head of Communist waterfront dock workers in New York City. Lannon wrote that, at the time of his father’s trial, his father told him that while he was in Moscow at the Lenin school for party cadres, he was instructed that if war broke out between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, he was to organize party cadres in the factories and get those at the Celanese plant in Cumberland, Md., to engage in sabotage.

Some branches of the communist network in the United States were more violent than others; some directly planned to use physical violence, others kept it as an option to be used if needed.

one defendant, Gil Green, acknowledged that he had, in a speech, urged the use of violence to attain the party’s goal of achieving Communism in America. Green, he writes, “admitted that he had at times advocated violence — though only ... if, ‘heaven forbid, America becomes the victim of a fascist dictatorship and change became impossible by orderly, majority, and, above all, democratic means.’”

The insiders in the American Communist party were so thoroughly indoctrinated that they saw little difference between Adolf Hitler and Harry Truman. They saw the U.S. government as utterly unjust and as needing replacement. Holding such opinions, as bizarre as they might be, was within their First Amendment rights; planning sabotage was not.

hard as it is to comprehend, in 1949 the CPUSA believed that the U.S. was most of the way to fascism already, and that Pres. Harry S. Truman was the leader of the Wall Street warmongers who desired war with the USSR and the head of an essentially fascist government. Thus Green’s own words reveal that the prosecution was indeed correct in its assertion that the Communists were advocating force and violence, necessary because they lived in a fascist America.

In the minds of the CPUSA members, if Harry Truman were the moral equivalent of Benito Mussolini, and if the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s were as fascist as Hitler's Nazi-controlled Germany, then a violent overthrow of the government was not only justified, it was a duty. To be sure, the United States wasn't then, and isn't now, perfect; but these moral equations seem at least odd, and perhaps even surreal. It is important to understand, however, that these equations were integrally woven into the worldview of the inner circle of the CPUSA members, which explains their readiness to use violence. Undeniably, there were also CPUSA members on the fringe of the organization who had not fully internalized the demonization of the United States and who were not contemplating the use of force in a political overthrow.

There is a historical irony in the tension between the fact that, on the one hand, the 1950s saw advanced in civil rights for African-Americans and a rise in the number of women obtaining college educations, while on the other hand the CPUSA saw the United States as a fascist country. Even as the USA was moving in the direction of still greater freedom, the CPUSA members were convinced that it was repressive, and to compound the irony, the CPUSA wanted to replace the U.S. government with a Soviet-style dictatorship, the alleged cure for the alleged repression!

The powerful hold which this worldview had on the minds of CPUSA members is seen in their behavior after they were convicted. Having been found guilty under the Smith Act, and awaiting verdicts, Ronald Radosh reports their continued preparations for a violent communist revolution on American soil:

After the guilty verdict came in, a few of the convicted defendants fled while on bail, and hid out for years. One of them was World War II hero Robert Thompson, who had received the Distinguished Service Cross. He came to the home of another underground party cadre, Carl Ross, asking to be put up in a safe house. He told Ross it was important that he, Thompson, stay free because he was both a senior CP leader and had military experience in both World War II and the Spanish Civil War, and he would be needed to lead U.S. Communist guerrillas against the American fascist regime, or during World War III should war break out between the U.S. and Russia.

Prosecutions under the Smith Act identified a list individuals who were undoubtedly Soviet agents. The lives and safety of ordinary citizens in the United States were in an amount of danger which seemed unlikely at the time. As the nation worked to return to a sense of normal life after WWII, the everyday concerns of living were about sending returning soldiers to colleges, an upsurge in the house construction market, and the Baby Boom as millions of young couples got married and began families. Few of them were thinking that the Soviets were so close to destroying their way of life.

So when key FBI informants — including ex-Communist Louis Budenz and Herbert Philbrick, an FBI infiltrator into the party — testified that, in the event of domestic repression, they would have become underground saboteurs, they were telling the truth.

The CPUSA was, then, a direct extension of Stalin's KGB and of other Soviet intelligence agencies, and carefully prepared to unleash a wave of sabotage and assassinations on U.S. soil. This is the unpleasant reality behind the image of daily life in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s.

Foreign Policy: Monroe, Roosevelt, Truman, Kerry, Obama

The famous Monroe Doctrine was not the first statement on U.S. foreign policy, but it remains one of the most famous. Nearly two hundred years later, President James Monroe's text is indisputably significant, but perhaps sometimes misunderstood. His words, in fact, are a notable step in the process of ending colonizing and ending the imperialistic drive. In a speech to Congress in 1823, he discussed negotiations taking place with Russia about the status of Alaska, and said:

the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

While the main message of the text is usually interpreted as U.S. opposition to European empire-building efforts, there is more to the text than this one point. Commenting on a revolution in Spain which produced a brief respite from absolutist rule between 1820 and 1823, and on the subsequent resumption of absolutism in Spain, Monroe adds:

It was stated at the commencement of the last session that a great effort was then making in Spain and Portugal to improve the condition of the people of those countries, and that it appeared to be conducted with extraordinary moderation. It need scarcely be remarked that the result has been so far very different from what was then anticipated. Of events in that quarter of the globe, with which we have so much intercourse and from which we derive our origin, we have always been anxious and interested spectators.

The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow men on that side of the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do.

Sorting through the garbled syntax of the speech, Monroe seems to be saying that while many Americans were privately disappointed at the resumption of absolutist rule in Hapsburg Spain, the United States would not intervene in European matters. A war between European states, or a civil war inside a European state, would not be an occasion for U.S. military action. This is a clear and noteworthy statement by a U.S. president. Monroe goes on to specify the conditions under which the United States would mobilize its military:

It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers.

The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted.

We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

In the war between those new Governments and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to adhere, provided no change shall occur which, in the judgment of the competent authorities of this Government, shall make a corresponding change on the part of the United States indispensable to their security.

Having established then, that the United States would not interfere in a conflict between two European powers, but that it would intervene in a conflict between a European power and an American nation, Monroe explains the apparent asymmetry - why would he justify military intervention in the one case, but not the other?

The different responses which the United States would be intelligible, Monroe argues, because the European situation is remote, while the other American nations are close to, in some cases even bordering, the United States. The extent to which the other European powers chose to intervene in the situation in Spain in the early 1820s, he adds, is a matter for the private judgment of the respective nations.

The late events in Spain and Portugal shew that Europe is still unsettled. Of this important fact no stronger proof can be adduced than that the allied powers should have thought it proper, on any principle satisfactory to themselves, to have interposed by force in the internal concerns of Spain. To what extent such interposition may be carried, on the same principle, is a question in which all independent powers whose governments differ from theirs are interested, even those most remote, and surely none more so than the United States.

Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all instances the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none.

The neutrality, despite private sentiments, which the United States was able to demonstrate regarding Spain will not be demonstrated regarding nations in the western hemisphere. Any European aggression toward a nation in the two American continents will be seen not only as a threat to U.S. security, but also as a violation of the principle of self-determination, a violation of Locke's vision of a government obtaining its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, a violation of the vision of a republic with freely-elected representatives, and a violation of the principle of majority rule.

But in regard to those continents circumstances are eminently and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new Governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course.

Thus the Monroe Doctrine not only states that the U.S. will defend other western hemisphere nations against imperialistic encroachments, but it also states that the United States will remain out of conflicts inside Europe, and it gives a justification for the distinction.

For nearly a century, this guiding principle was solidly a part of American foreign policy. That would change with the Progressive Era, as historians sometimes label the early part of the twentieth century. Speaking to Congress in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt, a representative of such Progressivism, articulated a change in the Monroe Doctrine:

It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. If every country washed by the Caribbean Sea would show the progress in stable and just civilization which with the aid of the Platt Amendment Cuba has shown since our troops left the island, and which so many of the republics in both Americas are constantly and brilliantly showing, all question of interference by this Nation with their affairs would be at an end. Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them. While they thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful sympathy. We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence can not be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

Roosevelt's policy innovation is, of course, famously known as the Roosevelt Corollary, although it is not, strictly speaking, a corollary. Roosevelt's stance is his own creation. A corollary is a proposition which is logically entailed by another proposition; a proposition which follows necessarily from another, already proven, proposition. Roosevelt went beyond anything implied or entailed by Monroe.

It would be President Woodrow Wilson who would explore the full possibilities in Roosevelt's brainchild. Both Roosevelt and Wilson belong to the progressivist movement, despite the fact that they were members of different political parties. The progressivists rejected the anti-imperialism put forth by William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, and William James. This anti-imperialism appeared in the late 1890's and early 1900's, partially in the context of the aftermath of the Spanish-American War.

By contrast, the progressivists like Wilson and Roosevelt embraced an activist and internationalist foreign policy. Roosevelt argued that some situations "require intervention by some civilized nation." That nation might be the United States, and his adjective 'civilized' manifests an air of imperialistic superiority. The United States might have to be "an international police power," and, bluntly, the USA's "interference" might be both necessary and justified.

Although Roosevelt made some minor actions in central America which demonstrated his policy, Woodrow Wilson understood the far greater implications. Just as the original Monroe Doctrine shaped not only America's actions in the western hemisphere, but also America's actions elsewhere, so also, Wilson saw, Roosevelt's corollary not only opened the door for an activist policy in central America, but also an international activist intervention elsewhere in the world.

In calling for war in 1917, Wilson combined the rhetoric his audience expected to hear, the rhetoric he knew was necessary to get approval for his declaration of war, and hints at his progressivist foreign policy agenda:

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Clearly, Wilson had no hesitation in assuming the role of 'international policeman' for the other countries in the world. What precisely he meant by 'liberty' and 'freedom' must be understood in light of his willingness to impose significant restrictions on free speech and his willingness to impose various planned economies and social engineering experiments on the citizens of the United States.

Wilson's embrace of Roosevelt's corollary led to U.S. involvement in WWI, to Wilson's nation-building efforts vis-a-vis Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and to Wilson's idealistic formation of the League of Nations.

Progressivist foreign policy led to the deaths of millions in WWI, and set up the deaths of millions more in WWII.

If the U.S. exceeded its proper role, if it disrespected the sovereignty of Latin American nations, if it intervened beyond propriety - then it is because of Wilson's stretching of Roosevelt's corollary to its outer limits.

After the bitter experiences of two worlds wars, a failed effort at isolationism between them, and the start of the Cold War after them, President Harry Truman worked to define a new direction for U.S. foreign policy. The progressivism of Woodrow Wilson was a failure. In March 1947, as overt and covert Soviet efforts threatened Greece and Turkey, Truman enunciated his policy:

One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.

To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.

The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, can perhaps be seen as a moderation of progressivist foreign policy. While going beyond the Monroe Doctrine in allowing U.S. involvement overseas, it curbed the imperialism and adventurism of Wilson's willingness to consider U.S. involvement nearly anywhere for nearly any reason.

Truman's criteria for intervention seem to be narrower than Wilson's. Truman works to give some definition to his concept of freedom, creating at least some notion of the test for whether or not intervention is appropriate in any given concrete situation. By contrast, Wilson seemed willing to intervene overseas motivated either by the domestic political opportunities created by foreign wars, or by the desire to impose a progressivist internationalist framework on the nations of the world, or by a sheer desire for adventurism.

Specifically, Truman argued that the U.S. should respond against aggression, whereas Wilson did not restrict himself in this way, i.e., Wilson would be willing to consider intervention even in the absence of aggression. The complex political dynamics which led to the start of WWI forestall any simplistic analysis in which one nation is cast as an aggressor and the other as victim. The Cold War, on the other hand, was a clear case of ambition on the part of the USSR over against smaller nations of eastern Europe.

Unlike Wilson's enthusiastic romp into WWI, motivated at least in part by his notion that a foreign war would give him prerogatives in implementing his domestic policies, Truman's 1947 announcement of his doctrine was directly motivated by geopolitical realities. As Charles Krauthammer writes:

In March 1947, with Greece in danger of collapse from a Soviet-backed insurgency and Turkey under direct Russian pressure, President Truman went to Congress for major and immediate economic and military aid to both countries.

More than sixty years later, Secretary of State John Kerry would attempt to adjust U.S. foreign policy again, with a statement about the Monroe doctrine. In November 2013, he said:

When people speak of the Western Hemisphere, they often talk about transformations that have taken place, but the truth is one of the biggest transformations has happened right here in the United States of America. In the early days of our republic, the United States made a choice about its relationship with Latin America. President James Monroe, who was also a former Secretary of State, declared that the United States would unilaterally, and as a matter of fact, act as the protector of the region. The doctrine that bears his name asserted our authority to step in and oppose the influence of European powers in Latin America. And throughout our nation’s history, successive presidents have reinforced that doctrine and made a similar choice. Today, however, we have made a different choice. The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.

Careful analysis shows that Kerry cannot have meant what he said, and that he cannot have said what he meant. A latecomer to the Obama administration, Kerry is inheriting a policy which might be described, not as ending the Monroe Doctrine, but rather going even farther in the same direction as the Monroe Doctrine. The Obama administration has worked to change the status of the Falkland Islands. Under the original understanding of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States was content to allow England to retain the Falklands, because the islands did not represent an imperialistic expansion on the part of Britain, but rather were already long-held and long-established British holdings by the time President Monroe issued his statement. The Monroe Doctrine was designed to keep European powers from barging into the New World and claiming territory as colonies. The Monroe Doctrine is content to allow nations from outside the western hemisphere to retain their already established holdings. Monroe was interesting in prevented new acquisitions, not in confiscating old ones.

The Obama administration, however, is attempting to transfer ownership of the Falklands from the English to the Argentinians. Although most of the administration's actions on this topic occurred before Kerry became Secretary of State, Kerry is still carrying the flag of the administration. The administration not only retains the Monroe Doctrine, but goes much further and embraces the much more interventionist and activist Roosevelt corollary. Kerry continued his statement:

The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states. It’s about all of our countries viewing one another as equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners to advance the values and the interests that we share.

A clearer insight into the Kerry/Obama foreign policy can be gained to ascending to a broader global level. The Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary, and the Truman Doctrine are neither sincerely embraced nor sincerely rejected by Obama; instead, they are used or ignored depending on the policy needs of a higher order.

At the macro level, one of Obama's foreign policy goals is to weaken the USA's relations with its allies: recall the incident in which he rejected the bust of Winston Churchill. Another goal is to weaken those allies themselves: hence the desire to pry the Falklands from England. A final goal is to weaken the United States: in part by means of the first two goals, in part by relinquishing power and failing to project an image of power, and in part by a self-abasing rhetoric.

In the service of these goals, which are the core of Obama's global vision, the historic foreign policy doctrines of the United States are mere tools, to be used, reinterpreted, misinterpreted, or discarded in the service of dismantling a reliable diplomatic structure. While Obama and Kerry may have some acquaintance with the Monroe Doctrine, neither cares about it.

An Ill-Starred Political Career

The bumpy history of Kathleen Sebelius has met more than the average share of disasters. Whether you call it luck, chance, or fate, it seems unfair that she has been left holding the bag - left to suddenly have to deal with a difficult problem or responsibility because someone else has decided he does not want to deal with it.

In 2007, a tornado destroyed most of the town of Greensburg, Kansas. The destruction of the buildings was almost complete. Seeing an opportunity, green politicians decided that Greensburg, aptly named, could be their chance to construct an example of a planned environmentally-friendly community.

By ensuring that each of rebuilding was recognized as green, the bureaucrats could unlock plentiful grants to fund cutting-edge technology and embed it into the town from the ground up. Writing for the Associated Press, reporter Roxana Hegeman notes:

But local leaders were enthralled by an idea proposed by then-Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and other clean-energy proponents, who saw a blank slate on which to create a better place. The Kansas prairie offered plentiful sunshine and powerful winds to provide power.

In addition to the insurance settlements and other private funding which would have normally been available for reconstruction anyway, approximately $75 million in grants - money from ordinary taxpayers in other communities - funded expensive projects designed to meet high technological standards.

The landscape is dotted with windmills, solar panel fields, and odd cylinder-shaped houses. The futuristic, environmentally friendly, energy efficient, high-tech town is also built to withstand tornadoes like the one which destroyed it in 2007.

But there's one problem: very few people want to live there.

The government has been unsuccessful in repopulating the city. Houses and businesses, new and never occupied, stand empty, having cost millions of dollars.

The reasons vary: some people don't want to live there because the cost of living is much higher; maintaining these homes, schools, and stores takes more money, and more work, than normal structures.

Others don't want to live there because of aesthetics. The sky is cluttered with windmills and the horizon with solar panel arrays. Many of the houses are concrete domes.

Some choose not to live there because of the extra hassle required to operate all the green equipment and to ensure that everything is done to green standards. Washing the dishes or mowing the lawn suddenly becomes complex and time-consuming.

The enthusiasm of green experts left Kathleen Sebelius in the awkward situation of having orchestrated the funding of a project which few people seemed to want. $75 million in government funds were used to build houses which now stand empty and build streets on which nobody now drives. Windmills, paid for by taxpayers, generate electricity which nobody uses. Solar arrays, paid for by taxpayers, likewise produce current which is unused.

Greensburg is a high-tech ghost town, as Hegeman documents in her AP piece. The movie Field of Dreams gave rise to the phrase, "build it and they will come." Sebelius built Greensburg, but nobody came.

It would be easy to blame Sebelius for all of this, but she was in some ways placed into this compromising position by over-enthusiastic and over-eager green experts, who hoped to demonstrate their high-tech prowess - and by insincere businesses who saw a way to tap into taxpayer money even if it meant selling unneeded products.

Sadly for Sebelius, this would not be the last time she was left to publicly take the blame for ill-conceived plans which squandered public money.

Leaving the governor's mansion in Kansas, she became Secretary of Health and Human Services. In this role, she would be put forth to take responsibility for other people's failures - to take responsibility for Obamacare, and further for the failed Obamacare website.

The text of the Obamacare legislation was composed by many hands, of which hers was among the least. The Obamacare website was subcontracted out to the administration's cronies, with little regard as to whether they were competent to design and construct the site.

Obamacare was the product of naive idealism, of incompetence, and of cynical opportunism. Sebelius, who was responsible for little of this, was made to be one of the public faces for a taxpayer-funded debacle. Politics have not been kind to her. She has become a scapegoat for the failure of other policymakers.

The Future of Freedom?

Between 2009 and 2014, an economic patterns emerged in the United States: higher unemployment, lower real and nominal incomes, and a lower net worth for the average family. In addition to these downward trends, there was an increase in the number of people receiving food stamps, the number of people holding alleged jobs with the government, and a relatively large increase in the federal debt.

All of these patterns had an amplified effect in the African-American community: unemployment was greater, incomes and net worth even lower. Black activist Deneen Borelli writes:

Ironically, it is the government that creates the need for government assistance. The Obama administration is responsible for creating a path to greater dependency. The country must reduce the public's need for handouts. We don't want Americans to spend their lives scrounging for basic needs. The government should create a political and economic climate that will ensure people can provide for themselves and stand on their own two feet. This is what Americans want and this is what our president should want.

Borelli represents the pain felt by families faced simultaneously with lower incomes and higher consumer prices. This economic pain will only be extended into the future if the government continues to borrow money, creating a debt which today's young people will be paying in the future. On April 15, 2014, the Investor's Business Daily revealed that

The CBO's new budget projections contain an eerie warning that we are on path from today's already unfathomable $17.7 trillion in gross federal government debt to more than $27 trillion in 2024. This in spite of finger-crossing projections of tax revenue over the next decade exceeding its 40-year average as a share of GDP.

A government which exercises self-restraint, and a constitution which restrains the government, can offer economic freedom as well as the personal liberty which citizens desire. The enemies of freedom are taxation, debt, and government spending. African-American citizens want economic opportunities; those opportunities increase as the government shrinks.

Measuring the Damage

After an initial burst of enthusiasm, many African-American voters have become disenchanted with Obama. The numbers of Black voters who cast their ballots for Obama in 2012 were significantly smaller than those who did so in 2008.

While real income and net worth fell for all American families after January 2009, the decline was steeper for African-American families. Unemployment among Blacks rose faster, peaked at higher rates, and stayed longer, than among other demographic groups.

Leaders in the African-American community, like Deneen Borelli, began to critically examine Obama's policies. She understood that the permanent poverty which Obama inflicted on inner-city Black families would keep them dependent on government programs; they would not have a chance at finding meaningful jobs, because Obama had damaged the national economy to the extent that job creation was at a minimum, and the few jobs being created were low-wage. Obama removed employment opportunities from African-Americans, forcing them into a lifestyle of dependency on government programs, a lifestyle which Borelli calls a "plantation" of government programs. As far back as Obama's first few months in office, she was already noticing the alarming trends. She wrote:

Early into his presidency, Obama racked up some historic spending figures. There was the $3.9 trillion in spending for 2009 and similar projections for 2010, but the historic levels of national debt were the scarier numbers: Just three months into his term, the nation faced levels not seen before - a staggering $11 trillion. That's almost half a trillion more than on the day he took office. The projections from his budget were even greater for 2012 (the year he hopes to get reelected!): The country, under President Obama, will face $16.2 trillion dollars in debt. Who is going to pay that bill? Numbers like that don't free Americans. Ironically, numbers like that saddle our children with bills to pay, bills that will keep the underclass on the government plantation for years to come.

Later in Obama's presidency, when the harm done to the economy was greater still and detectable by almost all metrics, Borelli reflected the growing discomfort of African-American voters. The "progressive" economic policies were creating ever-higher levels of unemployment, especially among young Black males. Borelli wrote:

Obama is extremely transparent with his plan for the United States. There is no reading between the lines, there is no hidden agenda, and there is no mystery. His words and actions align perfectly with his quest to fundamentally transform America into an entitlement society.

While Borelli, and other African-American leaders like Alan Keyes, certainly articulate some valid concerns about Obama, alternative analyses of the situation are possible. Are Obama's critics oversimplifying the matter? In Obama's defense, one may note that he does not (yet) have absolute power. Under the nation's tripartite government, the Congress and the Supreme Court have a responsibility to act as a check on the executive branch, and are complicit if they do not. As Alan Keyes wrote in January 2014:

Lately, no matter how much their constituents plead with them, the elitist faction leaders in Congress have made it clear that they aren’t listening, on just about every vital issue.

Congress and the Supreme Court share in the guilt, because they have not moved to stop Obama's attack on the American economy. Obama alone cannot be blamed; without their acquiescence, the "progressivist" dismantling of economic opportunities for Americans of all classes could not have occurred.

Why have the legislative and judicial branches not protected ordinary American citizens from Obama's economic tyranny? Various possible causes present themselves: some members may agree ideologically with Obama; others may have fallen victim to his bribery or extortion schemes; some may submit to the directives given by the leaders of their political parties; some may lack a clear understanding of the matters. The data are not enough to permit a final answer in each case about these motives.

Perhaps it is too simplistic, then, to blame Obama alone for the misery inflicted upon American families, and disproportionately upon African-American families. The other two branches of government failed to defend the nation and its Constitution, and so share the guilt. Borelli writes:

Under Obama's leadership, our debt has exploded, family incomes are down, fewer Americans are working, and more of us are in poverty. Then there is the government abuse of existing programs. Internal Revenue Service employees have bullied tea party organizations; General Services Administration employees have partied on the taxpayers' dime; senior EPA employees, including its former head, have used secret email accounts to communicate with special interest groups; and the NSA is spying on civilians.

One may not blindly assume that those who voted for Obama, those who actively campaigned for Obama, and even some of those who work or worked in his administration actively desired to see harm done to American families. Certainly, many of them worked with the best of motives; there were many who thought that Obama could do good, and desired to do good, for the country. Surely, many who voted for Obama believed that he could improve the economy, and that he wanted to improve the economy. Such people may not be held guilty; they were deceived. Borelli continues:

Rather than expanding the American entitlement state, President Obama should be working to advance policies that would empower lower- and middle-income households to thrive independently of government. More economic freedom would benefit all individuals and families, not just those in privileged communities. Less government means more power for people to think freely and make economic choices on their own terms.

Instead of allowing the economy to function freely and create both opportunities and wealth, the administration has inflicted the twin evils of taxation and regulation upon the people, and has caused the most misery among those who most needed opportunity: the African-American voters. Those who voted for "hope and change" have been betrayed.

Korea: Funding the Mission

The Korean War, at least from the American side, was a conflict operated on a proverbial shoestring budget. To be sure, the total defense budget increased significantly during the first half of the 1950's, but those funds were directed toward strengthening defenses in Europe against a possible Soviet attack, toward defending the American homeland against strategic attack, and toward developing a strategic nuclear arsenal. The land war in Korea, or so it seemed to the soldiers fighting there, was an afterthought in terms of funding men and equipment.

Not only did the Army face a shortage of soldiers during the Korean War, but the organization of those soldiers was such that the conflict was manned largely by short-term draftees, while many experienced infantrymen were stationed in Europe. The greenness of the United States Army not only robbed combat operations of the expertise and insight which come with experience, but also created distrust when large bodies of short-term conscripts were managed by career officers. William Donnelly writes:

The Army’s manpower dilemma during the Korean War’s last two years was unlike its most serious manpower problem during World War II, which was more a matter of distributing the resources provided by full national mobilization, and in particular, providing sufficient numbers of men for the infantry. The Korean War manpower dilemma instead was a foreshadowing of problems the service would face in the Vietnam War. Again, decisions by senior civilian and military leaders created a war in a secondary theater fought primarily by noncareer soldiers who served for only two years of active duty, and who became increasingly distrustful of career soldiers. Vietnam, too, would see the serious erosion of readiness in units not committed to the battlefield, but unlike Korea, the Army did not enjoy a period where the manpower dilemma was cushioned by a major mobilization of the reserve components. The Army during Korea, however, was spared the tremendous change and conflict in American society that was underway as major ground forces arrived in Vietnam, change and conflict that intensified during the war, in part because of growing opposition to the war among the American people. Finally, another manpower dilemma in another war lacking the traditional measures of progress showed that problems in the service’s institutional culture — “oversupervision,” a reliance on evaluation by statistics, and ticket-punching — had worsened during the years after the armistice in Korea.

With both a shooting war in Korea, and a global Cold War overshadowing the planet, the political leaders in Washington could easily justify tax increases to fund defense. The immediacy of Korea made obvious the need for infantry and equipment, but the emphasis drifted to strategic needs with regards to the Europe, North America, and NATO. Historian Russell Weigley writes:

Congress enacted three wartime tax increases, and the combined impact of the rate increases and an economic boom stimulated by the war was to raise federal revenues from $36.5 billion in fiscal year 1950 to $47.6 billion in the next fiscal year, $61.4 billion in fiscal 1952, and $64.8 billion in fiscal 1953. Expenditures for national security purposes rose from $13 billion in fiscal 1950 to $22.3 billion, $44 billion, and $50.4 billion, respectively, in the following three fiscal years. These increased defense expenditures went first, naturally, into creating the necessary instruments to fight the war in Korea. Frightened by the unreadiness the Korean War demonstrated, however, and by the its unarguable evidence that the deterrent powers of the country's atomic weaponry had not been complete, government and military leaders generally agreed that the growing funds available for national security must be used to seek a larger security beyond the immediate demands of the war.

After WWII, the Army's reduction in force and accompanying decreases in defense spending, while appropriate for the circumstances, left the United States with few extra infantrymen for Korea when the conflict began in June and July of 1950. Those U.S. soldiers who were first put into combat in Korea were inexperienced, poorly led, and disorganized. They were men who'd been doing the relatively easy duty of occupying Japan, a task, which by mid-1950, consisted of simply being present. They were not prepared for intense combat, and neither were the officers who led them. It was clear that the Army would have to quickly upgrade and reorganize its forces in Korea.

While the Army did succeed in making a significant and sufficient improvement in its forces in Korea, this pressing need was still obscured by an emphasis on preparing a globally strategic force, a nuclear arsenal, and stationing trained and equipped troops in Europe. Much of what happened in the U.S. defense establishment during the Korean War era had little to do with the Korean War. Historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write:

Amply funded and skillfully managed, the Korean War rearmament program nevertheless had its intrinsic confusions, since it was two mobilizations for two wars. The real war in the Far East required fast and large reinforcements in men and materiel, especially after the Chinese intervention. The Department of Defense, however, had a more compelling concern, the possibility of a war with the Soviet Union. The administration's military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers estimated that by 1952 the Russians would have an optimum opportunity to initiate a general war with the United States and its NATO allies. By that time the Soviets were likely to have sufficient nuclear weapons - including hydrogen bombs - and aircraft to carry them to launch an attack on the continental United States. Just the threat of such an attack might so intimidate the United States that it would not use its own nuclear weapons to meet a Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe, where the Russian forces still outnumbered Western forces on an order of three to one in manpower and weapons. Even if the Soviets did not actually attack, the threat of such an attack might bring Soviet-leaning neutrality to most of Europe. The Truman administration accepted the "year of maximum danger" concept, but its dilemma extended far beyond 1952. It had to weigh the immediate demands of proxy war with the Communists against the long-term requirements of deterring general war.

Veterans of the Korean War can feel, and rightly so, that they were asked to fight a war as an afterthought. Much of the military and the civilian defense organization was devoted to Cold War strategizing, while infantrymen were asked to do the fighting, bleeding, and dying without the measure of funding, the quantities and quality of equipment, and the amount of trained experienced officers which might be desired for actual combat.