Now that The House has passed the single worst piece of legislation in US history, the Cap-and-Trade Bill, a showdown in the Senate has been set. If freedom prevails and The Senate fails to pass this bill, the US will see the high water mark of Pres. Obama’s honeymoon power. Like Pres. Clinton before him, Obama has overreached and the backlash could be substantial.

While Obama is popular, the polls show some dark clouds on the horizon. Obama is a highly divisive figure for a newly minted President, more divisive than was Pres. Bush following his controversial election in 2000. Also, Obama’s policies are not popular – union card check, auto bailouts, single payer health care, and, currently, Cap-and-Trade. Because of his charm, people simply want to like Obama, so he is not equated with his socialist policies. Obama has cultivated this advantage by taking a hands-off approach to such things as the impossibly wasteful stimulus bill. Eventually, however, all Presidents become the sum of their policies, and their popularity falls in line.

Obama stepped off his triangulation cloud to lobby for the Cap-and-Trade bill, which may be his undoing. CNN, along with most major papers, described the House passage as a “triumph” for Obama. Obama lobbied hard to bring wavering Democrats in line for this bill. Even though Speaker Pelosi pulled out all the procedural stops (the ones she chastised the GOP for using), the bill would not have passed without Obama’s explicit backing. While the botched stimulus act belonged to Democrats in general, the Cap-and-Trade bill belongs to Obama, his first controversial bill.

Controversial indeed. While the CBO estimates that the typical family will suffer only a $175 annual increase in energy costs due to the bill, that figure is the tip of the global-warming iceberg. As this blog has pointed out previously, everything everyone consumes contains a large component of energy expense. Every human activity consumes energy, and those energy costs find their way into the costs of every product and service. Worse still, even though the US is the most energy efficient country in the world, economic expansion remains in proportion to increases in energy consumption. The history of modern prosperity is the history of exploiting low cost energy to allow production. The Cap-and-Trade bill would essentially cap energy consumption, and thereby eliminate economic growth and job creation. As a special treat, the bill would create a trade war with China by slapping tariffs on goods from countries without Cap-and-Trade.

So, Obama has tied his wagon to a bill that would eliminate economic growth, create a trade war (and hence a new great depression),and drive up the cost of everything. He is surely fortunate that the Republicans are too weak to swat a fly, because they are being served a generational opportunity. Yet, like Bill Clinton, Obama may be brought down by his own overreaching, Republicans or not.

Clinton’s so-called Hillary Care bill was his undoing. Like Obama’s Cap-and-Trade bill, Hillary Care was overreaching, and its details were unpalatable to Americans. Hillary Care came out strong, but died in the Senate, where its cautious procedural rules allow the Republican minority to debate the bill’s ugly socialist details. The same will be true for Obama. The Senate lacks anywhere near the votes for cloture on the Cap-and-Trade bill. While Pelosi was able to keep the Cap-and-Trade bill’s ugly details a secret until a few hours before the vote, Sen. Reid will be forced to allow a public debate. The GOP will then be able to show Americans the bill’s true radical agenda. In short, nobody expects the House bill to pass The Senate. Expect Obama’s approval ratings to fall into the mid 50′s as a result.

Once Bill Clinton met his Waterloo in the Senate with Hillary Care, he moved on to govern from the center-left. The Clinton years became, surprisingly, a golden age of limited government, free trade, and prosperity. These good times were largely due to divided government and a President weakened by his perjury scandal, but they were also a reflection of Clinton’s personality. Clinton clearly wanted to be loved above all else, even at the expense of abandoning his socialized medicine dream in favor of declaring that the “era of big government is over.” Clinton was reelected, and most people remember him fondly.

Obama lacks Clinton’s acceptance character flaw. For all the talk of his pragmatism, Obama comes off as a hard left ideologue. With advisers like Rahm Emanuel, who makes Karl Rove look like a pussycat, Obama will not roll right when his signature legislation is defeated or gutted in the Senate. While moral flexibility – the ability to lie and mean it – is a problem for regular folks, it is a boon for politicians.

Obama will face a showdown in The Senate over his Cap-and-Trade bill, and the bill’s likely defeat will be the defining moment of his term. He either will become a left wing laughingstock or a more moderate crowd pleaser. Either way, we will gain the first real insight into his character.

Keep options open until circumstances make change necessary. There is enormous inertia tyranny of the status quo in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis-actual or perceived produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. – Milton Friedman (2002)

You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before – Rahm Emanuel (2008)

The Obama Administration is nationalizing industry, socializing medicine, busting valid private contracts to redistribute wealth to their union allies, and establishing arbitrary caps on the pay certain people can earn. As distressing as this agenda may seem, as dark as the next few years will be, maintaining the viability of free market ideas is essential. While Emanuel may be brutish, his tactics are correct, and free market libertarians should use them too.

As both Friedman and Emanuel noted, broad policy most often changes during a panic. F.A. Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, made the breakthrough observation that the abdication of personal responsibility in favor of socialism allowed both the Nazis and the Bolsheviks to seize power. Both of these left-wing ideologies had been lying around for some time, but were swept to prominence in a panic.

Domestically, the USA Patriot Act exemplifies the power of a panic. The gargantuan Act that redefined privacy gained 98 yeah votes in the Senate and was signed by Bush 45 days after 9/11. Without the panic of 9/11, such a bill would never have passed, especially in such short order. The bill was reauthorized in 2005 by a wide bi-partisan margin. Speaking to Friedman’s inertia theory, dismantling the Patriot Act is unthinkable. Look to the Democrat super-majority to again both deride and reauthorize the Patriot Act next year. The essential texts of the Patriot Act had been languishing around Washington for years before 9/11, too radical to gain traction. Once panic struck, however, desperate lawmakers reached for any straw and found the Patriot Act.

The prevailing evidence suggests that the economy has bottomed out and that this may be the last quarter of the recession. Still, the Obama Administration has talked down the economy to maximize the value of this panic. With the power of a crisis, they are dismantling the US system of capitalism at a frightening pace.

Where did Obama’s socialist ideas come from? As with the Patriot Act, socialism is an old idea. Even though socialism has been proven to be catastrophic failure, it is the favored social arrangement to the ivory tower set. Academics and media types have favored socialism for decades. Safe from harsh realities, they have kept their ideals alive in the face of socialism’s failures in Europe, Asia, and South America. Even in the face of Pres. Clinton’s denouncement of big government, socialists maintained their faith, waiting for the opportunity to reenter the mainstream. Their persistence has been rewarded.

In the absence of a crisis, the establishment seeks to entrench itself. John McCain, a powerful enemy of the First Amendment, flogged his campaign finance bill endlessly. McCain-Feingold (Sen. Feingold being the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act) essentially protects incumbent politicians by outlawing competing speech. Incumbents enjoy the bully pulpit, their words and acts are reported in the news free of charge. Their challengers must buy air time to make their voices heard. By outlawing many of the means of free speech, McCain-Feingold further advantages incumbents and the wealthy over upstart challengers to the status quo.

It’s no coincidence that Rep. Pelosi didn’t push the outlawing of right wing radio until left wing radio failed in the market. Her effort to outlaw dissent, or at least chill it with threatening talk, only began when she became the status quo. The political class defends the status quo by outlawing dissent whenever the courts aren’t watching.

Academia and the media are also well known for locking out competing ideas. When looking for an individualist or conservative at Harvard – Obama’s alma mater, pack a lunch, because it will take awhile. The overwhelming majority of academics and mainstream media professionals are socialists, and the anecdotal evidence suggests they systematically close ranks to keep out dissenters.

So, if the status quo is now Keynesian socialism, and the main powers of information and education block dissent, what should freedom loving citizens do? Both Friedman and Emanuel suggest we keep the faith. The ideals of free markets and individual rights must be kept alive to await the inevitable collapse of Obama’s socialist regime. While it is certainly a shame that the Republicans under Pres. Bush corrupted their brand, free market principles remain valid. Perhaps a freedom renaissance won’t take as long as from Goldwater’s trouncing to Reagan’s blow-out victories, but even if it does, there is no other choice than to persevere.

Much like the people who were forced to memorize books in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, libertarians currently have a slim foothold on the survival of their ideas. Still, the current wave of socialism someday will collapse. The ideas of limited government, capitalism, respect for the Constitution, and individual rights must be alive to capitalize on the crisis or else some other form of tyranny will take the helm. So, for the next several years, don’t be afraid to question the current regime and tell your friends why bailouts and socialized medicine are bad for the US. Not only does speaking your mind feel good, it’s a sound strategy for political progress.

As much as those who seek to defend Standard English hate to admit it, language is a social compact in flux. Bill Safire, the great warrior for the language of Shakespeare, fought a battle he could never win. Every day, the entire world’s population modifies and adapts language to fulfill contemporary needs. What is in a word? Nothing more than what we hear and believe.

Still, words have power. Eloquence flows to authority, which flows to new perception. If asked, no sensible parent would give his child a dose of amphetamines (speed) on a daily basis. Yet the exact same substance is commonly prescribed to unruly children under the name Adderall. ‘Flight Attendant’ sounds more professional than ‘Stewardess’. Apparently ‘Waiter’ is impolitic, with ‘Server’ being the preferred newspeak.

Words change attitude. The drab and graphic ‘Homosexual’ has been replaced with ‘Gay,’ a word that just sounds nice. Apparently nobody consulted with perennially depressed homosexuals on that one. Rebranding an unpopular item is the first step toward changing attitudes. Good luck Altria.

If ‘Disrespect’ can become a verb, there really is no point in fighting the tide of change. Still, this blog must draw a line in the sand over the appropriation of ‘Libertarian.’ Even though the principles of free minds and free markets are under assault like never before, ‘Libertarian’ has become cool and horribly misunderstood. This blog must say: Hands off my word. Do not steal it. Do not change its meaning.

When liberals like Bill Maher call themselves libertarians, the time has come to fight, but what is and what is not a libertarian? In a nutshell, a libertarian believes that most everyone is fully capable of caring for himself and his dependants. The individual will make rational and wise decisions far more often than will the collective.

A libertarian is in favor of free markets and free trade. While these lead to prosperity, the main reason for supporting them is because they reflect the natural right to free association and self determination. While Republicans and some Democrats (Gore in the 1990′s, but not the 2000′s) argued that NAFTA was good economic policy, a libertarian would argue that the government has no right to interfere with anyone’s desire to associate and trade with any country. Even if NAFTA were to harm the overall economy (which it did not), the collective good is not a higher priority than individual freedom. Of course Maher is against free trade.

Likewise Maher is in favor of other market restrictions like unions, minimum wages, and single-payer health care. His panelists are stacked with extreme leftists and token free market thinkers, whom he flogs to get cheap laughs.

Libertarians are against the war on drugs. While it is true that the war on drugs has failed to reduce the access to illegal drugs, has been ruinously expensive, and promotes violence, the libertarian argument is not one of policy. Otherwise law abiding adults have the right to do what they want with their own time and money in their own homes. Even if a portion of the population is harmed by their own poor choices, personal freedom must trump collectivist fear. People are perfectly able to make wise decisions for themselves without a government nanny. Consider that marijuana consumption is higher in the US than in Amsterdam, where it is de facto legal. Many people remain anti-drug, but the same logic that calls the government to protect us from drugs also allows the government to ban trans-fat oil and cigarettes. Once you let the devil into your life, there are no half measures.

Maher is again wrong on this issue. Maher supports drug legalization, but his view is policy based. He is pro-drug, where libertarians are pro personal responsibility. The far better voice on this issue is Penn Gillette, a lifelong sober man, and a real libertarian.

Guns are the same issue as drugs. A libertarian trusts responsible adults to handle guns with care. Even if someone with a carry permit were to commit a crime with a gun (not a single example comes to mind), that is the worthy price for personal freedom. Collectivists like Maher deeply distrust an individual to make responsible decisions regarding guns. Perhaps because they see themselves as children of a socialist family, they expect the government to treat others as children too. Even if the Second Amendment did not affirm the right to bear arms (it does), individual adults have the right to bear arms because personal responsibility cannot be handed over to a faceless government.

If Maher is on the wrong side of every important issue, why does he call himself a libertarian? Self loathing, most likely. Maher portrays himself as an outsider, an anti-statist rebel, when nothing could be more false. Maher parties like a rock star, endorses the PC view, and leads a life free of responsibility. His left wing collectivist views are the norm in his world. Rather than admit he is a plain-vanilla liberal, Maher has latched on to the libertarian label. Libertarians are true rebels; their views are often at odds with both left and right. Maher is appropriating ‘libertarian’ as a canard for his New York Times orthodoxy.

While Maher and other phonies are free to be as foolish as they please, don’t let them ruin a perfectly good movement by stealing its word. Leftists like Maher will do to ‘libertarian’ what the neo-cons did to ‘conservative’ – ruin it and its principles along the way. So, the next time someone calls himself a libertarian, don’t be too quick to pat him on the back. Check the substance of his views first.