Worrying ‘wonders' are adding up

"Budget: a plan or schedule adjusting expenses during a certain period to the estimated or fixed income for that period"
— Webster's New World Dictionary

If you'll forgive a Pennsylvania Dutch expression that seems particularly apt in present circumstances, it wonders me how anyone, with a straight face, could call the spending and tax proposals unveiled Feb. 1 (National Freedom Day) a budget. What's presented projects a $1.6 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2011, a deficit even greater than the record one this year. This isn't a budget. This is a roadmap to drive the U.S. economy over a cliff.

Assuming he completes a second term (an assumption that appears less likely every passing day), the public debt will have more than doubled on President Obama's watch. Roughly half of that debt already is held by foreign governments that do not necessarily wish us well. We are perilously close to a tipping point where the only way out of the fiscal crisis politicians of both major parties have created is the tactic economists describe, with fear and trepidation, "monetizing the debt."

In a nutshell, what this means is tanking the dollar, purposely diminishing its purchasing power, destroying savings, retirement accounts, and the real value of dollar-denominated debt.

And mind you, this is all coming before the looming train wrecks of unfunded Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are even taken into account.

"War is cruel and you cannot refine it."
— Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman

"In war there is no substitute for victory"
— Gen. Douglas MacArthur

What wonders me too is the way the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are being fought. As of Jan. 2, 5,297 U.S. servicemen and women have died and 36,364 have been wounded. More than $1 trillion has been spent and, if we are honest about it, there is blessed little to show for it. In retrospect and in terms of national interest, we would have been far better off if, after overthrowing a psychopathic Saddam Hussein, we had withdrawn from Iraq and allowed Iraqis to settle their own scores and establish their own government.

In Afghanistan, too, it appears we are on a similar fool's errand — propping up an unpopular, corrupt government in the name of "nation-building." We need to kill our enemies before they kill us, not hope to convert them. If we send 30,000 or 300,000 additional troops to Afghanistan it is not likely to make much difference. There are now dozens of failed states in Central Asia, Middle East and Africa where Islamic terrorists can pitch their tents and plan new attacks on America and the West.

We cannot occupy them all. We cannot put them all on our payroll.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
— Amendment I, U.S. Constitution

Another thing that wonders me: What do they teach these days at Harvard Law School? President Obama is a graduate of Harvard Law and is said to have earned a living for a time as a professor of constitutional law. What constitution could he possibly have had in mind when, in his recent State of the Union address, he urged Congress to enact legislation reversing a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, a decision upholding First Amendment freedom of speech rights?

That he did this in such dramatic fashion as to bring members of his party cheering to their feet was bad enough, as well as being misinformed as to what the Court actually ruled. But when you consider that he did it with the chief justice and seven of the eight associate justices assembled before him — well, that was unmannerly, to say the least. It was — how shall I say? — not Southern.

Whatever you may think of the McCain-Feingold Act, which is the flawed legislation the Court passed judgment on, is there something in "Congress shall make no law" that non-lawyers are not intelligent enough to grasp?

The Framers put in the Constitution provisions for amending it. Though they deliberately made it difficult, it has been amended 27 times. That is the proper way for a president or a Congress to address Supreme Court rulings with which they may find fault. It's wisely said that the only thing standing between we the people and tyranny of the worst sort imaginable is the U.S. Constitution. In this day and age, and particularly with this administration and Congress, it wonders me that anyone desirous of preserving liberty would disagree.

R.L. Schreadley is a former Post and Courier executive editor.