by Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n
Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Last week\u2019s poll numbers seemingly confirmed the doubts about democracy\u2019s viability expressed in last week\u2019s\u00a0column<\/a>. After a barrage of outrageous smears fired off by the Obama campaign, which accused Romney of killing a woman with cancer and failing to pay any income tax, Obama is leading Romney by 7-9 points. Coming on top of the continuing approval of Obama\u2019s economically disastrous, class-envious assault on the \u201crich,\u201d the success of patent lies in improving Obama\u2019s numbers makes one think that democracy\u2019s critics may be right: most people lack the ability to see past their selfish, short-term interests and make electoral decisions that benefit the state as a whole.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s not give up on democracy yet. Mitt Romney\u2019s pick of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential candidate should give us hope that maybe a critical mass of Americans will rise above petty self-interest and do what must be done to keep the United States from morphing into California on its way to becoming Greece on steroids.<\/p>\n Judged solely on political expediency, Romney\u2019s choice seems a disaster. According to \u201cone of the country\u2019s most prominent and influential conservatives,\u201d as the Huffington Post\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0of its anonymous commentator, Ryan is too much like Romney, a wonky white guy too polished and detached from the average American. Ryan, this unknown Solon continues, can\u2019t deliver any electoral votes, is too obsessive about the deficit, has been tarred by his zeal to reform Medicare, and fails the \u201c3 a.m. crisis call\u201d test. No wonder some Democrats are happy about the choice. \u201cDemocrats are gleefully united in bashing Rep. Paul Ryan,\u201d Politico\u2019s John Bresnahan\u00a0writes<\/a>, \u201cblasting him as the author of the controversial \u2018Ryan budget,\u2019 claiming his proposals \u2018end Medicare,\u2019 and warning that his policies will return the country to the \u2018trickle-down economics\u2019 of the 1980s and the presidency of George W. Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ll soon know if the Dems are whistling past the graveyard. But if we forget political expediency and think about principle, the choice of Paul Ryan should give us hope that the defining crisis of our times \u2014 the fiscal apocalypse fast approaching if we don\u2019t cut back on spending, debt, and deficits \u2014 will be confronted, and the tough policies needed to mitigate it be frankly acknowledged.<\/p>\n Paul Ryan has been the only politician to do just that. His budget\u00a0plan<\/a>\u00a0cuts spending to 20% of GDP by 2022, cuts the deficit to 2% of GDP by 2050, and reforms the tax code so that revenues stay near the historical 20% level by 2015, saving $5 trillion. In contrast, under Obama\u2019s budget, spending rises to 24%. If nothing is done to rein in spending, debt will rise to 800% of GDP. And if history is any guide \u2014 tax revenues average around 20% no matter how high the rates \u2014 Obama\u2019s plan to raise tax rates will not generate enough money to pay the government\u2019s bills. That\u2019s why the Ryan plan reforms the tax code to make it more efficient and more pro-growth while maintaining revenues.<\/p>\n Finally, given that entitlement spending will devour all tax revenues by 2050, the Ryan plan reforms Medicaid and Medicare, controlling cost by adding choice and market competition to both programs. One can criticize Ryan\u2019s plan and fault some of its details or assumptions, but at least Ryan has put\u00a0something<\/em>on the table, unlike the Democrats, who have not passed a budget in three years. Back in February, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that his boss had no plan to solve the debt and deficit problem: \u201cYou are right to say we\u2019re not coming before you today to say \u2018we have a definitive solution to that long term problem.\u2019 What we do know is, we don\u2019t like yours.\u201d No wonder, then, that the Democrats have smeared Ryan and his plan with outright lies. Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz recycled those distortions by saying of Ryan\u2019s plan, \u201cIt suggests that we should end Medicare as we know it, shred the safety net for seniors in healthcare that we had in place for more than 50 years, turn Medicare into a block grants (sic) and send it to the states, which would really jeopardize seniors in nursing homes, potentially take 10 million students off of\u00a0Pell Grants<\/a>, cut healthcare, cut education.\u201d And it took just a few hours after Ryan was picked as Romney\u2019s VP candidate for the notorious Medicare ad showing Ryan pushing granny off a cliff to resurface, confirming that irrational emotion rather than sober discussion and debate is all the Obamites can appeal to.<\/p>\n The most important consequence of picking Ryan, however, is that it clarifies what the election is really about \u2014 reining in an out-of-control federal government that if the current policies continue will bankrupt this country and eat away at our freedom. It focuses the choice between two visions: one that sees the energy, creativity, and autonomy of free individuals as the best way to create prosperity and guarantee our freedom; the other that considers techno-elites in government bureaucracies better able to manage more and more of our affairs.<\/p>\n The critics of democracy have always argued that most people are incapable of choosing wisely, and so they need \u201cguardians,\u201d as Plato put it, to limit and guide their choices, backed by the coercive power of the state. The latter vision has dominated our government for the last several decades, and its wages are evident in the current fiscal implosion of California and the Eurozone. Nor are the reasons for this failure beyond the understanding of most people. The fiscal crisis we face is a simple question of mathematics: lavish social welfare entitlements work until you run out of other people\u2019s money, which is what we are currently doing.<\/p>\n The problem, its causes, and its solution are clear. The only question left is, will enough people rise above their own interests and make a choice for individual autonomy, responsibility, and freedom, or will they confirm the criticisms of the enemies of democracy and vote for dependency, bankruptcy, and \u201cdemocratic despotism\u201d? Paul Ryan\u2019s candidacy will give us the opportunity to keep that stark choice at the forefront of the coming election.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Last week\u2019s poll numbers seemingly confirmed the doubts about democracy\u2019s viability expressed in last week\u2019s\u00a0column. After a barrage of outrageous smears fired off by the Obama campaign, which accused Romney of killing a woman with cancer and failing to pay any income tax, Obama is leading Romney by 7-9 points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,96],"tags":[12,1014,42,1026,107,243,32,184],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-8r","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-clear-alternatives-in-the-presidential-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":523,"position":0},"title":"The Clear Alternatives in the Presidential Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Forget all the pre-debate handicapping and advice about what Mitt Romney needed to do or what Barack Obama had to avoid. Last night\u2019s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. On the one hand, we heard a candidate who endorses limited\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":392,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-game-changes\/","url_meta":{"origin":523,"position":1},"title":"The Game Changes","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama\u2019s exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-hare-romney-the-tortoise\/","url_meta":{"origin":523,"position":2},"title":"Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop's classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls \u2014 only to fall back to about even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-debates-taught-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":523,"position":3},"title":"What the Debates Taught Us","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The president of the United States in the last debate chose to go on the attack against his challenger, Mitt Romney \u2014 and once again largely failed to convince the American people that he was the more presidential alternative. But how did the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-medias-racial-prison\/","url_meta":{"origin":523,"position":4},"title":"The Media’s Racial Prison","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-problem-last-night-was-not-just-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":523,"position":5},"title":"The Problem Last Night Was Not Just Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}