Liberalism Unraveling?

     What disappointment must reside in the hearts of those who worship before the altar of omniscient government?  Among the true believers, the thrashing liberal media, the cognoscenti, the professors, the unions, and, of course, their political allies in Washington, can there be hope as their vision of progressive utopian bliss crashes upon the shoals of irksome reality? 
    Alas, only a liberal would be surprised.  For anyone not inhaling the vapors, the outcome was predictable.
    Liberalism is, after all, a tributary of communism, and the vast vortices of human suffering and impoverishment that barbaric system has meted out in the last century are well known.
    One might have gleaned the gradual calamities that would unfold, the relentless decline and misery that would arrive with its slightly less pure but insistent cousin, liberalism.
    The issues confronting the progressive vision are myriad and compelling: its social restructuring strategies are implausible; its distortion of culture and tradition disabling; its wealth redistribution efforts untenable; its entrenched bureaucracies self serving and hostile; its administrative incompetence insufferable; its fiscal incontinence ultimately thoughtless and cruel: is it charitable to bequeath tens of trillions in debt to unborn generations?     
    Liberalism calls basically for a governing class and a recipient class; with scarcely enough space for the despised productive class - and herein lies its quandary: the more liberals punish and demoralize producers (and reward sloth and dependency), the less wealth is available to shower upon its growing multitudes of serfs and wards. 
    Verily, all of liberalism's glaring inconsistencies and flaws would vanish if only money fell from heaven – and if only those pesky laws of economics and human nature could be suspended… if only…
    A recent example of liberalism's ongoing decay was the unrest in London, where rampaging youths looted, smashed, and set fire to homes, buildings, and vehicles, with damages in the billions and loss of life, precipitated by government cutbacks.  It seems, perhaps, only natural for those who have grown accustomed to living off the property of others to assume they remain entitled to (destroy) those same such assets when subsidies come to an end.      
    The hoodlums are, of course, the criminal progeny of welfarism and liberal popular culture: raised on indulgence and government largess, such antiquated notions as personal responsibility, self-restraint, and respect for the belongings of others mean nothing.  Many of them may never have held jobs.  Their education, food, health care, rent, clothing, TVs, and cell phones may have been paid for in some fashion by others.  Not that they are grateful, for dependency does not confer gratitude but only further slovenliness and resentment. 
    They represent the grotesque underside of liberalism, a permanent and intermittently malfeasant underclass.  Their behavior reflects the disintegration of the civil society, its customs, values, and institutions, which is to say the moral and spiritual capital upon which a free and vibrant nation is based.
    We then shift our attention to continental Europe, specifically Greece, but others too, collectively and appropriately referred to as "PIGS" for Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain.  Here, throughout Europe (Rome, Madrid,etc.) but particularly in Greece, we find similar levels of unrest and violence by the same sort of aging gangs.  The upheaval has been spread out over the last year and has included the requisite looting and destruction of property that we have seen in London, prompted by necessary "austerity" measures taken by governments that have pursued non-viable utopian fantasies for far too long.  Here, too, we encounter the nanny state offspring accustomed to receiving that which they did not earn, turning nasty when the patronage spigot is turned off.

    Successive socialist governments in Greece have squeezed the life out of its private economy and, so, it is no longer capable of supporting its bloated public sector, which employs more than a third of the work force.

    The Greek economy shrank by more than 4% in 2010 and will shrink an additional 5% this year.  Greece's debt/GDP ratio is 166%.  Its deficit/GDP ratio will be 10% (it should be 3%).  The government has spent too much, has damaged its economy too greatly, and will ultimately default.  European banks and other owners of Greek debt and, finally, taxpayers will be left picking up the pieces.     

    The Greek/PIGS/European crisis is not just a problem of bad loans, deficits, profligacy, illiquidity and insolvency but the crisis of welfarism in general: a crisis of moral, cultural, and economic dysfunction.  It is the shredding of critical institutions, values, and attitudes that bind a culture and society into a dynamic functioning whole. It is a demography that incorporates yet greater numbers of immigrants who are often low skilled, less educated, and hostile to western values and capitalism (yet content to utilize the vast public infrastructure to their benefit).  It is an aging population that indulges a libertine lifestyle while abandoning even its most fundamental social obligation to bear and raise adequate numbers of children to replace itself.  It is an unaffordable social welfare system.  It is the crushing of the entrepreneurial spirit through taxes, barriers and other burdens.  It is stagnant economies and the loss of international competitiveness...
    Which brings us to the US, formerly the citadel of vigorous capitalism and liberty, but increasingly a moribund, staggering behemoth supporting a monstrous and unwieldy public apparatus.  At all levels of government, municipal, state, and national ("federal" no longer seems apt), we find vast systems with entrenched bureaucracies, public sector unions, and encrusted politicians secreting complex webs of regulations and punitive taxes, with crushing deficits, unfunded liabilities, and a dwindling private sector.
    The most recent instance of American decline was the unprecedented downgrade of America's credit rating for its treasury debt by Standard and Poor's from Triple A to AA+.  Formerly a pillar of the global financial system, S&P no longer believed US debt deserved to be ranked among the safest investments in the world, placing it below a dozen other governments. The response of the Obama administration was to attack S&P and launch an investigation.  
    It should investigate itself…
    The federal government, under Obama, receives roughly $2 trillion in revenue while spending almost $4 trillion, borrowing nearly 50% of its budget; this year, Obama will run a deficit of $1.6 trillion or 8-9% of GDP; in three years under Obama, the US will have added nearly $5 trillion in new public debt, raising the public debt level to $10 trillion, or 70% of GDP, the highest level since World in War II; Government spending under Obama has risen to 25% of GDP, also a first since World War II;  ten-year projections place debt levels at between $24-26 trillion.  Unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are estimated at $61 trillion.  If state and municipal unfunded liabilities (health care, pensions, etc.) are included, that figure rises to $100 trillion.  Despite Obama's trillion-dollar "Stimulus" program, the economy creeps along at .8% growth.  Unemployment remains stuck at European levels, above 9%.  All this before Obamacare, a vast new entitlement, begins in 2013…
    The question is not why S&P downgraded the US, but why it took so long…
    
    The US got a taste of unhinged Greek-like leftist mob activism in Madison, Wisconsin earlier this year, when Governor Scott Walker made mild adjustments in public sector bargaining rights in an attempt to control spending and balance the state budget.  Public and private unions from the state and around the country converged on the state capital converting the state house into a 60's era, grimy, litter strewn, left wing flophouse, with protesters camping out, trashing the building, disrupting government functions, closing schools, and engaging in most "uncivil" discourse and behavior.
    California, a public sector union utopia and very blue state, runs a $23 billion deficit (perhaps half owing to illegal immigrants), may be next.  Once a prosperous, economic titan and cutting edge technological wonder, in two decades leftist politicians have brought ruin to this once vibrant, eminently, first rate American state, bankrupting it and destroying its productive class; California now hemorrhages jobs, working citizens, and businesses that cannot abide its high tax, over regulated, anti-business environment.  California may be the first to go belly up Greek style here in the US.
    But this would be just a foretaste of the disruption and unrest that would ensue as bills continue to go unpaid, temporary politicians rampage through the American economy and its productive class, and the liberal edifice begins to crumble...
    
    Across the globe, the leftist, utopian universe unravels under the weight of its fanciful beliefs and impossible schemes...