Steve Brenan Dislikes America, or So I Imagine He Does

Steve Brenan of the Washington Monthly (which I found via memeorandum) begins his blog post 'None Dare Call it Sabotage' this way...

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?

Let's play the game! Close your eyes and take a minute to think about the policies you would put in place if you disliked America- the kind that would really do the most damage. What did you come up with?

In my mind, those positions that you would take to do the most damage to America would be those positions that damaged our long-term economic strength, eroded our historical values, weakened our security, opened up our borders to invasion, piled up debt, moved people from jobs to welfare, and granted other nations power over our domestic and foreign affairs. To be honest, the stimulus bill might have helped provide employment for people in favored union industries, but long-term, it is a policy designed to do considerable damage to America. Obamacare appears nice to some groups and rewards those who don't take care of themselves, but in the long term will be costly for the government to provide and will encourage structural irresponsibility, and includes death panels and money for abortions, both of which I also consider damaging positions for America. Letting pot be legalized, letting illegal immigrants flow into America, suing states that try to close the borders, encouraging gay marriage, doing little to stop the breakdown of the traditional family structure, funneling more money to killing unborn babies, working to remove firearms from law-abiding citizens, stealing money from my children and grandchildren to give higher salaries to government employees today, and letting Iran get nuclear weapons I would also consider positions taken to harm America by those who dislike our nation.

The funny thing is, after much thought (for a liberal), Steve arrived at a much different conclusion than I did. This is what he imagined:

You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any kind of stimulus investments. You'd also want to cut spending and take money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You'd no doubt want to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency Fund) so you could kill it.


You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to lower the unemployment rate. You'd also no doubt want to create massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States into default.

You might want to cover your tracks a bit, and say you have an economic plan that would help -- a tax policy that's already been tried -- but you'd do so knowing that such a plan has already proven not to work.

It's almost as if there really is a bizzaro world out there, where up is down, left is right, and wrong is right. Every liberal program that I said was bad (because it was paid for by debt, encouraged unemployment, discouraged private initiative and hard work and responsibility, and was contrary to the historical values on which our nation was founded) he said was good. Every policy item that he pointed as something that would be good for America I saw as being bad for America.

I guess there is only one way to really test this stuff out. Let's let the Republicans run things for a couple years and then compare that to when Democrats ran things.... oh my word, we've done that (2000-2006 vs 2008 to 2010 is the only real comparison, although if you want to compare Michigan's growth from 1990 to 2002 vs 2002 to 2010, that'd be fair too) and based on that evidence, liberals like Steve are wrong and conservatives like me are right. See my posts Graph Comparing Unemployment Rate For GOP and Democrat Senators, Democrats=Higher Poverty, or my lengthy personal statistical analysis post Employment-Population Ratio Drops to 58.5%.

The data don't lie. Steve doesn't like America. I imagined it so.

UPDATE: For more of my thoughts about bizzaro world, please check out my earlier post 100 Years of Trying- Communism Wins in the End Though or my more indepth analysis of bizzaroness Bizarro World and the Israeli-Hamas Conflict.

UPDATE II: Some quick numbers... I'm bad with math so feel free to check them... between 1945 and 2008 (63 years), Democratic Presidents have been in charge for 28 years and added 2.05 trillon to the debt. From 2009 to 2011 (3 years), Democratic President Barack Obama added another 5.2 trillion in debt, bringing the total to 7.25. Projected debts for next year (2012) are over a trillion by quite a bit. Republican Presidents have been in charge 35 years, and from 1945 to 2009 added 7.75 trillion in debt. So, is the record clear on who adds more debt? Before Bush, it was Democrats. After Obama, it is going to be the Democrats again. And if Obama wins in 2012 and Democrats take back control of Congress, deficits will be several trillion a year for another 4 years, and not only will that be the end of our nation, but the record for which party is worse at adding debt will be conclusive. Foolish comments from liberals with no idea what they are talking about is always welcome though.