Here comes Patrick Buchanan to the defense of his Orthodox Christian brethren. In one of the weirdest op-eds I’ve read in a while, Pat argues that in order to fight a war with the Chinese, we’re dumb to antagonize Russia. Forget the premise for a minute – the rationale is what matters. “By 2025, Iran will have as much people [as Russia]. Russians today are outnumbered by Chinese 9 to 1. east of the Aral Sea, the ratio is closer to 50 to 1,” Buchanan argues. His point? Defend the white people! “Bolshevik Russia was an enemy, but Orthodox Russia is a part of the West, a natural ally,” he goes on. The real enemy is the yellow peril, closely followed by those nasty Persians and Arabs. I’m actually sympathetic to his underlying point. I see no reason to antagonize Russia either. But Buchanan’s ethnic prejudices infect everything he writes. Not so long ago, Buchanan wasn’t too keen on the Serbs, because he backed the Croats. The Croats were white, Catholic, and even more like Buchanan than the Serbs. But now it’s the Serbs and the Russians against the Chinese – so here’s to Belgrade and Moscow! No-one should accuse him of inflexibility in his ethnic solidarity. But no-one should accuse him of insight either.
THE BUDGET FINE PRINT: I took the big budget book to bed with me tonight and found … just kidding. Happily, the Wall Street Journal editors beat me to it. They pull out a handful of interesting statistics today. Individual income tax now amounts to 10.4 percent of U.S. income – higher than in the last year of Jimmy Carter. Individual income tax now accounts for over 50 percent of all federal receipts, up from 44 percent when Bill Clinton became president. As a percentage of GDP, federal taxes now make up 20.7 percent, only a smidgen less than the level achieved in 1944 at the peak of wartime expenditures and far higher than anything since. Federal debt, in contrast, is now a mere 30 percent of GDP, scheduled to drop to 14 percent by 2006, even if Bush wins his complete $1.6 trillion tax cut. But Paul Krugman adamantly argues day after day that we cannot afford a tax cut. The New York Times editorializes today that Bush’s proposed spending “cuts,” which will still allow the government to grow by 4 percent a year, are “harsh” and his tax cuts “outsized.” One wonders when the Times thinks a tax cut would be possible. I suspect the answer is never.
WHAT THEY REALLY WANT: A revealing piece in the Nation by Rick Perlstein. I sometimes wonder what the real left now wants. Most of what passes for radicalism these days is a kind of adolescent whining – the kind of politics that gave us the Seattle riots and the Nader campaign concerts. But Perlstein, finding inspiration in Barry Goldwater’s failed radicalism in 1964, contemplates another scenario: “Imagine a senator who by some miracle of backroom organizing won the Democratic presidential nomination in the year 2004 with a platform as equally unfathomable to the conventional wisdom of the age as Barry Goldwater’s in 1964: say, halving the military budget, socializing the medical system, reregulating the communications and electrical industries, establishing a guaranteed minimum income, promising to fire Alan Greenspan, counseling withdrawal from the World Trade Organization and, for good measure, speaking warmly about adolescent sexual experimentation. Not a Ralph Nader third-party run or a Jesse Jackson left-flank run at the Democrats, but the Democratic nominee.” Sure, this is a self-conscious fantasy on Perlstein’s part and not a serious agenda for the present. But the fantasy is still revealing. My favorite part is the encouragement of adolescent sexual experimentation. The left now believes that even horny thirteen year olds need political encouragement. The other thrill is the vagueness of it all. “Reregulating the communications industries?” And what would that mean? A government take-over of the press or the networks? Withdrawal from the WTO? Ah, that would be great news for the economy. It’s always helpful to check in on the fringes from time to time to see what mischief they may be up to. This one doesn’t even pass the laugh test.
EURO-REVENGE?: And you thought Polly Toynbee hated America? The Guardian of London has just published yet another anti-U.S. screed, ascribing to “right-wing ideologues” the notion that the U.S. is a sovereign nation. Columnist Larry Elliott ups the ante by arguing that the Europeans and Japanese should respond to Bush’s abandonment of the Kyoto Agreement (which the Europeans and Japanese have yet to ratify) by refusing to finance America’s trade deficit. The envy of the Americanophobes is beautifully captured by this Brit: “So, with driving cheap and the economy growing rapidly, Americans have bought more cars and bigger cars over the past decade, along with vast quantities of other consumer goods.” The very gall of it! What to do? Cut off capital supplies to bring the U.S. economy to its knees! “Will this be contemplated?” Elliott ponders. “It depends of how serious the rest of the world is about global warming and how willing it is to stand up to the US. But let nobody say that there is nothing that could be done. There is. What’s needed is a strike by European and Japanese capital. Get militant, comrades.” Love that “comrades” bit. Who needs to pick a war with China when we’ve got the British left to deal with?
The Dish 