Perhaps the act of stepping on a piece of paper is mundane and insipid in the 21st century. When I walk across the courtyard of the college where I teach, I step on bricks that bear the names of donors, administrators, colleagues, and students. Indeed, I even step on Christian symbols. Several decades ago when I visited St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, I sought the burial marker for the reformer John Knox, but I was unable to get a clear view because of the vehicle that was parked atop it.

The act of stepping on the name of Jesus, however, is historically significant. In particular I recommend Shusaku Endo’s novel, “Silence.” In this historical novel, the author depicts a missionary’s dilemma. Is it permissible for me to step on the name of Jesus, and hence symbolically denounce my faith, when my refusal to do so will cause terror, torture, and even death on local believers in the village? I highly recommend the novel; I have read it several times.

The Florida Atlantic faculty is currently suggesting that the administration’s handling of the situation has compromised the instructor’s academic freedom. On the one hand, I agree; on the other hand, I’m not convinced.

The latest news coverage indicates that the instructor is still waiting to learn whether or not his contract is being renewed. If the administration decides not to renew his contract, on the basis of this classroom exercise, the instructor deserves a full and complete hearing. Unless due process is followed, his academic freedom has been compromised.

On the other hand, however, I’m not convinced that the exercise is best depicted as a threat to academic freedom. At InsideHigherEd.com, academic freedom is defined first and foremost as relating to intellectual debate and intellectual commitments. The engagement of this exercise in class moves the activity from intellectual debate to a behavioral dilemma.

The exercise of a class of students being asked to write “Jesus” on a piece of paper and then stepping on it is a ridicule of religion to some, and indeed at least one student complained. Academic freedom does not give the instructor the right to ridicule a student’s faith. However, this exercise is larger than academic freedom. It is better discussed as an issue of civility.

The claims of Jesus are such that this exercise is not a threat to his dominion. Nevertheless, it communicates a lack of respect for others. Such lack of respect, when conveyed by an instructor, is a lack of civility. Demonstrating civility in the public arena is more critical than ever. The failure to do so will alienate students. Recent events in Boston suggest that some of our students may be living on the margin. We want them to see and experience the best of academic freedom and the liberal arts. When professors abuse their academic freedom, and ridicule (either explicitly or implicitly) the views of their students, their lack of civility is a disservice to our modern society.

A healthy classroom engages students in a rich debate of ideas. It should not encourage students to perform symbolic gestures that ridicule the beliefs of others. This instructor should apologize for his lack of civility and then continue his task of educating his students.

Maybe it’s a measure of progressives’ refusal to look back, to always move “forward.” Otherwise, they should be celebrating right now. In fact, President Obama and fellow modern progressives/liberals should be ecstatic all this year, rejoicing over the centenary of something so fundamental to their ideology, to their core goals of government, to their sense of economic and social justice—to what Obama once called “redistributive change.”

And what is this celebratory thing to the progressive mind?

It is the progressive income tax. This year it turns 100. Its permanent establishment was set forth in two historic moments: 1) an amendment to the Constitution (the 16th Amendment), ratified February 3, 1913; and 2) its signing into law by the progressive’s progressive, President Woodrow Wilson, October 3, 1913. It was a major political victory for Wilson and fellow progressives then and still today. By my math, that ought to mean a long, sustained party by today’s progressives, a period of extended thanksgiving.

President Obama once charged that “tax cuts for the wealthy” are the Republicans’ “Holy Grail.” Tax cuts form “their central economic doctrine.” Well, the federal income tax is the Democrats’ Holy Grail. For progressives/liberals, it forms their central economic doctrine.

As merely one illustration among many I could give, former DNC head Howard Dean and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell were recently inveighing against Republican tax cuts. Dean extolled “what an increase in the top tax rate actually does.” He insisted: “that’s what governments do—is redistribute. The argument is not whether they should redistribute or not, the question is how much we should redistribute…. The purpose of government is to make sure that capitalism works for everybody …. It’s government’s job to redistribute.”

What Dean said is, in a few lines, a cornerstone of the modern progressive manifesto. For Dean and President Obama and allies, a federal income tax based on graduated or progressive rates embodies and enables government’s primary “job” and “purpose.” They embrace a progressive tax for the chief intention of wealth redistribution, which, in turn, allows for income leveling, income “equality,” and for government to do the myriad things that progressives ever-increasingly want government to do.

And so, in 1913, progressives struck gold. The notion of taxing income wasn’t entirely new. Such taxes existed before, albeit temporarily, at very small levels, and for national emergencies like war. The idea of a permanent tax for permanent income redistribution broke new ground. The only debate was the exact percentage of the tax. In no time, progressives learned they could never get enough.

In 1913, when the progressive income tax began (and the first 1040 form, with instructions, was only four pages long), the top rate was a mere 7 percent, applied only to the fabulously wealthy (incomes above $500,000). By the time Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921, the great progressive had hiked the upper rate to 73 percent. World War I (for America, 1917-18) had given Wilson a short-term justification, but so did Wilson’s passion for a robust “administrative state.”

Disagreeing with Wilson were the Republication administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, his immediate successors. Along with their Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, they reduced the upper rate, eventually bringing it down to 25 percent by 1925. In response, the total revenue to the federal Treasury increased significantly, from $700 million to $1 billion, and the budget was repeatedly in surplus.

Unfortunately, the rate began increasing under Herbert Hoover, who jacked the top rate to 63 percent. It soon skyrocketed to 94 percent under another legendary progressive, FDR, who, amazingly, once considered a top rate of 99.5 percent on income above $100,000 (yes, you read that right).

Appalled by this was an actor named Ronald Reagan, himself a progressive Democrat—though not much longer. Reagan often noted that Karl Marx, in his “Communist Manifesto” (1848), demanded a permanent “heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Indeed, it’s point 2 in Marx’s 10-point program, second only to his call for “abolition of property.”

The upper tax rate wasn’t reduced substantially until 1965, when it came down to 70 percent. Alas, President Ronald Reagan took it down to 28 percent. And despite claims to the contrary, federal revenues under Reagan increased (as they did in the 1920s), rising from $600 billion to nearly $1 trillion. (The Reagan deficits were caused by excessive spending and decreased revenue from the 1981-3 recession.)

The upper rate increased again (to 31 percent) under George H.W. Bush and under Bill Clinton (39.6 percent). George W. Bush cut it to 35 percent. Barack Obama has returned it to the Clinton level of 39.6 percent.

Here in 2013, 100 years henceforth, the wealthiest Americans—the top 10 percent of which already pay over 70 percent of federal tax revenue—will be paying more in taxes this year than any time in the last 30 years. For progressives, this is justice. But it is also bittersweet: As progressives know deep inside, it still isn’t enough. For them, it’s never enough.

To that end, my enduring question for progressives is one they typically avoid answering, especially those holding elected office: In your perfect world, where, exactly, would you position the top rate? I routinely hear numbers in the 50-70 percent-plus range.

Democrats like President Obama complain about Republican “intransigence” in raising tax rates but, truth be told—and as any liberal really knows—if it wasn’t for Republican resistance, progressives would rarely, if ever, cut taxes. America would remain on a one-way upward trajectory in tax rates, just like under Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and just as it has been in its unrestrained spending for nearly 50 years. Like their refusal to cut spending (other than on defense), progressives are dragged kicking and screaming into tax cuts. They need high income taxes for the government planning and redistributing they want to do; for Obama’s sense of redistributive justice.

This year, the progressive income tax turns 100. For progressives, getting it implemented was a huge triumph. Their success in making it a permanent part of the American landscape is a more stunning achievement still.

Republicans are flailing about these days, trying to rebrand themselves before the next election cycle. A certain amount of introspection and internecine debate is inevitable after suffering a stinging loss against an opponent with a dismal record. One thing the GOP needs to do to gain greater acceptance among voters is to improve their credibility by outgrowing a tiresome, unthinking opposition to any and all tax increases.

This is anything but a recommendation that Republicans “go moderate” and tack for the political center. Being to the right of 99.9 percent of Republicans on taxation, I agree that Americans are overtaxed and for decades have favored zero capital gains tax; advocated zero taxes on corporate profits; and called for a low, flat, income tax.

What bugs me now, and what should concern Republicans who worry about their image, are the recent objections raised by some Republican legislators in Michigan and Maryland to their respective governors’ proposals for higher gasoline taxes to pay for road and bridge repairs. In a fairly typical comment, Maryland state delegate Susan Krebs complained that motorists would bear the cost of the tax hike.

But why shouldn’t motorists—the users of roads—be the ones to pay for the repair and upkeep of those roads? For Republicans to take the position that someone other than motorists should subsidize road maintenance is to adopt the ethos of progressives—that people should consume the economic goods they want and then stick somebody else with the tab.

There is a different, honest, and straightforward approach that Republicans can take if they believe that motorists should not have to pay as much as their governors propose for road maintenance: They could privatize the roads and let the new owners worry about how to cover the considerable costs of providing such a valuable product to drivers.

Republicans did similar damage to their reputation with their reflexively anti-tax ideology in 2010 by assenting to Obama’s 2 percent FICA (Social Security) payroll tax reduction. The GOP may talk a lot about “saving Social Security” for future generations, but they made hypocrites of themselves by voting to reduce Social Security revenues at the very time when current revenues no longer matched payouts, and they themselves were warning about the dangers of Social Security’s long-term underfunding.

As with road repair, if Republicans believe that government should be involved in its citizens’ retirement, they should authorize the collection of sufficient revenue to pay for the commitments they legislate. Alternatively, if they rebel at covering the expenses of a particular program, they should privatize it. In the case of Social Security, privatization would not be the sham privatization proposed by George W. Bush—i.e., diverting part of Social Security withholdings into government-approved private investments. A genuine privatization would deposit payroll deductions directly into an account in the employee’s name where the federal government can’t control or spend it.

In both the recent opposition to raising taxes to pay for upcoming road repairs and in the two years of Social Security tax cuts, Republicans have made a mockery of their professed concern about fiscal responsibility and government deficits. Reducing the revenues for specific spending projects and programs without reducing the corresponding spending is a formula for increasing deficits. Too often, Republicans pick the low-hanging political fruit of tax reductions without doing the hard—and more important—work of reducing government spending. The result is that Republicans end up weakening their brand.

Democrats have an advantage. They know who they are. They are single-minded in their relentless, unapologetic desire to maximize government spending. They don’t give a hoot about deficits. They know that the more they spend, the more power and control they have. As repugnant as this mindset is to those of us who value liberty, this unwavering commitment to the ever-increasing bestowal of federal largess motivates a large number of voters to go to the polls and vote Democratic.

Republicans, by contrast, project ambivalence and insincerity. They claim to be more fiscally responsible, but show a willingness to support underfunded expenditures. They claim to believe in limited government, and then do their best to make the Democrats’ welfare/transfer state work, rather than proposing to dismantle it. The result is cognitive dissonance. How can voters be sure about what Republicans really believe, other than the importance of winning elections?

My recommendation to Republicans: Work harder to differentiate yourself from progressives and Democrats by forging a clear, unambiguous brand as the party of smaller government. If you remain the party of Big Government Lite, work less at reducing too-high government spending than at reducing too-high taxes, and are unwilling to devolve government programs to the private sector—in other words, if you persist in business as usual—you will deserve the electoral defeats you will bring upon yourselves.

The gushing, almost angelic praise for Hugo Chavez by the left in America and around the world has been shocking to behold, but hardly surprising. I will not bother repeating the litany here. Rather, I’d like to focus on another surreal aspect of Chavez’s death—namely, the rush to preserve and display his body, so the faithful may pilgrimage and pay homage for decades to come.

Here again, I’m sadly not surprised. The far left has never been shy about venerating its heroes. This is supremely ironic, given that many of the subjects of veneration, as well as those doing the venerating, were not merely agnostics and atheists but militantly so. Recent examples include Asian communists Mao Tse-Tung and Ho Chi Minh, but the best example remains Vladimir Lenin.

Upon his death in January 1924, Lenin’s body was embalmed and preserved in a tomb, actually a shrine, in Red Square, whereby the faithful could forever honor the Great One. Etched in the marble holding the Bolshevik godfather’s body is this inscription: “Lenin: The Savior of the World.”

For an atheist state angrily committed to a war on religion, this would seem odd. In fact, however, it is precisely what we came to expect from communist regimes. In short order after Lenin’s death, poems and songs were written in praise of the “eternal” Lenin who “is always with us.” Yuri Gagarin, the first Soviet cosmonaut, visited Lenin’s mausoleum immediately before his flight so he could meditate over Lenin’s rotting flesh and draw strength for his mission. Later, Gagarin returned to the sacred site to report to Lenin on his mission.

The “Leninization” of the Soviet state’s spiritual life quickly took flight. Throughout the USSR, “Lenin Corners” were established, modeled on the Icon Corners of the Russian Orthodox Church. These mini-shrines included icon-like paintings of Lenin along with his words and writings.

A “secular religion” was established, one that, as noted by Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin’s biographer, demanded “unquestioning obedience” from its disciples. So certain was the Party of Lenin’s infallibility that in 1925, one year after his death, the Politburo established a special laboratory to remove, dissect, and study Lenin’s inactive brain. The purpose, said Volkogonov, was to show the world that the man’s great, infallible ideas had been hatched from an almost supernatural mind.

This nonsense (if not blasphemy) continued for decades. Just ask any former Soviet citizen who suffered through the extended nightmare. A Ukrainian citizen, Olena Doviskaya, once told me: “Everywhere you went, there were statues everywhere of Lenin. They wanted you to worship Lenin.”

Most curious about this Lenin reverence and mysticism is the fact that Lenin himself considered any worship of a divinity an outrage. Lenin blasted the notion of “god-building.” He thought the most horribly unimaginable things about religion, calling religion “abominable” and “a necrophilia.” A vicious, hateful man, Lenin might have hastily shot those responsible for deifying him.

Nonetheless, communists and certain elements of the far left have engaged in such behavior for a long time, readily placing their faith in (leftist) men and replacing traditional religion—Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc.—with a Marxism or socialism that they essentially treat as a religion. Brian Lowe of the University of Virginia notes that in the Soviet system, Marx was the Messiah, the Party was the Church, the Proletariat was the Elect, the Revolution was the Second Coming, and more. The Communist Manifesto was accorded a level of sanctity approaching Holy Scripture. Marx and Lenin and Stalin were deemed other-worldly.

All of which brings me back to Hugo Chavez and his enshrinement—and its paradoxes.

Chavez comes from a Roman Catholic country, whereas Lenin came from a Russian Orthodox country. In both the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox traditions, suspected saints—people who lived uniquely holy lives—have been placed in special tombs for purposes of veneration and to see if their dead body is ultimately incorruptible, divinely protected on earth even in death.

The Bolsheviks turned this upside down. They created atheist museums where dead priests/saints were displayed with worm-holes and other decay. They attempted to pose this in contrast to Lenin’s incorruptibility, even as the jaundiced Lenin consistently required removal and re-embalming and re-waxing.

And so, is the left currently in the process of enshrining Hugo Chavez’s body as a form of saintly veneration? Will he become a symbol of the left’s sacred cows of collectivism, wealth redistribution, and nationalization?

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that secular/atheistic progressives and socialists don’t have saints and martyrs. They’re every bit as faithful as the most Bible-thumping fundamentalist. And with the death and preservation of Hugo Chavez, they might be preparing themselves a new saint.

There’s an old joke from the Cold War. It went like this: Hardline East German communist Walter Ulbricht (who erected the Berlin Wall) died and went to hell. There, the devil gave him a choice between the socialist sector and the capitalist sector. Devoted to the end, Ulbricht stuck to the faith, saying: “I’ll go to the socialist sector.” “Good choice,” averred the devil. “Over in the capitalist sector, they’re getting the full hellfire treatment. But in the socialist sector, they’ve run out of coal.”

Say what you want of Hugo Chavez, of his tactics, of his beliefs, and (as many are doing) of perhaps where he might be right now, but this much is certain: he stuck to the faith.

Many of us were downright amazed when Chavez, in his late 50s and desperately ill from cancer, opted to go to Cuba for treatment. It was a surefire death sentence. Only the most hopelessly devoted communist would be so naïve. Loaded with vast wealth he stole from his people, Chavez effectively chose acupuncture over the 21st-century healthcare widely available anywhere in the West.

And yet, the Venezuelan dictator clung to his religion. He went to Havana.

Chavez apparently gained some measure of comfort near the aging breast of his dying, beloved Fidel. He had so much in common with Castro, admiring the totalitarian’s unparalleled, unprecedented seizure of power and resources, all in the name of redistribution and “social justice.” Like Fidel, he pilfered enough riches from the ostracized affluent class to make himself one of the world’s wealthiest leaders. As he did, he churned the propaganda, blaming his nation’s every ill on his predecessors and on the alleged criminality of the very same rich—as Fidel has done, as the left generally has done.

A few years back, my wife and I were in Washington meeting with an old friend from grad-school days, a native of Venezuela named Daria. When we introduced her to another acquaintance, she remarked with a sad smile, “I’m from Venezuela. We’re communist now.”

In Chavez’s partial defense—and this isn’t saying much—he never achieved the scales of collectivism and depths of depravity of Fidel Castro, or of the world’s really bad communists. Venezuela didn’t become Cuba or the Soviet Union. Needless to say, Hugo Chavez was no Joe Stalin—even as, remarkably, he died on the 60^th anniversary of Stalin’s death.

Nonetheless, like any man of the left, he had his enemy groups, and he used them to full advantage. Some of these assorted villains were flagged in a curious Washington Post obituary which headlined Chavez as a “passionate” albeit “polarizing” figure. What earned him even this slight compliment from the Post? Who knows? The same article noted that Chavez referred to the Catholic Church hierarchy as “devils in vestments.” But perhaps the Post was impressed less with Chavez’s opprobrium for the Catholic Church than his encomiums for Barack Obama.

Of course, Chavez was a big fan of Obama. He made this clear the first year of Obama’s presidency. In an extraordinary statement at the United Nations that September, Chavez sniffed, “It doesn’t smell of sulfur here anymore.” This was a swipe at former President George W. Bush. Waxing almost spiritual, Chavez mused: “It smells of something else. It smells of hope.”

Yes, even to Hugo Chavez, Barack Obama equaled hope; the theological virtue of Obama. The Venezuelan caudillo inspiringly appealed to David Axelrod’s legendary campaign slogan.

And like Obama, Chavez just as quickly jettisoned the words of hope when less-inspiring rhetoric better suited his intentions. He excelled at blaming things on the rich, on profit seekers, on greedy corporations, on nefarious jet-owners and millionaires and billionaires, on banks, on investors, and, of course, on George W. Bush. Unlike Obama, who he spoke of in angelic terms, Chavez called George W. Bush a “devil.”

Chavez often seemed to invoke the devil.

Alinsky-like, Chavez constantly isolated his targets and demonized them, calling them “degenerates,” “squealing pigs,” and “counter-revolutionaries.” It was pure demagoguery.

In this, and more, Hugo Chavez was faithful to the very end. Did he really think he would be healed in Havana? Was there no other hope? Or, in the end, maybe faith was all that Chavez had. He should have learned from millions of Cubans over the last 50-plus years: faith in Fidel leads only to destruction and death.

A wise man once told me that when any tax-levying entity operates at a deficit, the possible causes number precisely two. Either it is taxing too little for how much it wants to spend, or it is spending too much for how much it wants to tax. It has either a revenue problem or a spending problem.

The problem for Republicans is that George W. Bush presided over massive increases in spending and the conversion of a budget surplus to a large deficit. According to Office of Management and Budget data, federal revenue in 2000 totaled just under $2 trillion, while spending was about $1.8 trillion—a $200 billion surplus. By 2008, we had a deficit of $500 billion because spending had increased 67 percent (to 18 percent of GDP) while revenue increased only 25 percent over Bush’s eight years.

By 2012, Barack Obama’s deficit settled in at about $1.3 trillion, a 160 percent increase over 2008. OMB estimates for 2012 show that while annual revenue increased about 17 percent since Obama took office, annual spending increased 27 percent (to 24 percent of GDP).

So, is that a revenue problem or a spending problem? Well, if you ask Democrat leaders and pundits, it’s definitely not the spending. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi doesn’t believe we have a spending problem, nor does Senator Tom Harkin—to provide just two recent examples. As for pundits, count The Daily Kos, Mother Jones, and Paul Krugman amongst the “spending problem deniers.”

Democrats seem pretty convinced of this. So, here’s an idea: What if we just agreed that we have a revenue problem and tried to erase the deficit with new taxes alone?

What, then, would a $1.1 trillion (the 85 percent share of the deficit made up by individual income taxes) “revenue” increase look like? We could try to eliminate the deficit “by getting millionaires and billionaires to pay a little bit more.” There are approximately 250,000 households (less than 0.5 percent of all households) in America with annual income over $1 million. Asking them to eliminate the deficit alone would add $4.4 million in new annual taxes per household.

Well, it might not be practical to ask tens of thousands of Americans to pay an amount that is quadruple their total income. But if we expand the definition of “millionaires and billionaires” to households with incomes over $200,000—we now have 4.2 percent of households to work with. If we reduce the incremental burden on millionaires to only $500,000 per household, the additional per household tax bill on those making more than $200,000 goes up to, well, just over $200,000.

Since our tax code is among the most progressive in the world, we could try to share the $1.1 trillion equally among income brackets. This would add only about $9,600 in new taxes for every household—including those in the lower two brackets (which together make up 47 percent of all households), whose federal income taxes would go from 0 percent (or even below 0 percent) to at least 20 percent and in most cases much higher.

What’s the point of all of this? The first point is that there is, in fact, no feasible scenario wherein you can eliminate a $1 trillion-plus deficit with taxes alone. Democrats understand that you can’t confiscate all or most of the income of the wealthy and have no intention of asking the lower 47 percent of households to begin paying federal income tax. And even if you increased the corporate federal tax share from 15 percent of the total to, say, 20 percent (a 33 percent increase), individual households still would have to plug a $1-trillion deficit with new taxes (instead of $1.1 trillion).

The more fundamental point is that progressives’ rhetoric on this topic is cynical and dishonest. Their reactions to the “sequestration” in early 2013 tell the truth of the matter. Best estimates on the proposed “cuts” show they could amount to about 2 percent of the total budget, barely a drop in the bucket. And the reality is that overall federal spending will still increase over last year, and in every category except maybe defense. But even this is being mercilessly demagogued by Democrats, proving that no actual spending cuts are acceptable to them. Of course, economic growth would help. But even Obama’s first chief economic adviser understands that huge tax increases cause economic contraction, not growth.

So, if you’re not willing to reduce spending and you recognize that there’s no way to eliminate the deficit through tax increases alone, you are left in an endless loop that points inexorably to one conclusion: you don’t actually care one iota about the deficit, or the resulting debt, or the economic crash that is sure to result from this whole absurd mess.

The Pentagon’s budget occupies center stage in the sequestration drama. Defense spending comprises approximately 18 percent of the 2013 federal budget, but accounts for 50 percent of federal spending cuts stipulated in the sequestration agreement.

Why is there such a disproportionate impact on the defense budget? The primary reason is that neither party has the stomach to address the elephants in the federal budget—the three entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) that together account for 48 percent of FY 2013’s federal expenditures.

Is there waste and inefficiency in the Pentagon budget? Of course there is, but this is because the Pentagon is a bureaucracy, not, as the left seems to believe, because it is tasked with national defense. As Ludwig von Mises explained so clearly in his book, “Bureaucracy,” waste and inefficiency are inherent in the bureaucratic model of organization (note the reports of hundreds of billions of fraud and waste in the Medicare bureaucracy, for example). Such results are inevitable, due to the absence of a profit/loss calculus. The important lesson to be taken from Mises’ penetrating analysis is that no society can afford to assign many tasks to government bureaucracies.

What is the “right” amount of money to spend on national defense? I haven’t the slightest idea, nor do the experts, since nobody knows with certainty what threats will arise in the future. Rather than try to settle this impossible question, let me concede to those who wish to slash defense spending that history has not dealt kindly with geopolitical superpowers that have overextended themselves militarily and fiscally. And to those who favor maintaining or increasing defense spending, it is indisputable that we live in a dangerous world and that—when it comes to military matters—it may be prudent to err on the side of over-preparedness rather than under-preparedness.

Ideally, what all of us, hawk or dove, should want with regard to defense spending are two things: one, that the brave Americans who have volunteered for military service be supplied with what they need to carry out their assigned tasks effectively and with the fewest possible casualties; and two, that Congress, the president, and the Pentagon leadership identify our country’s defense needs and establish a coherent set of policies to meet those needs.

Practically speaking, both of those objectives may be reasonable, but they are problematic, especially the second one. In our debased political system, parochial interests too often trump national security. Seeing the way politicians determine the Pentagon’s budget brings to mind Bismarck’s comment that people would sleep better at night if they didn’t know how sausages and laws were made.

The Pentagon’s budget has become a political football. Congress and the president are treating it more like a bargaining chip in partisan deficit-reduction strategies rather than as their most solemn constitutional responsibility.

The football analogy is particularly apt, since footballs are “pigskins,” and many of our elected national office-holders forget all about national security and use the Pentagon to procure pork for political constituencies.

President Obama has exhibited a pronounced tendency to place politics above national security in his treatment of Pentagon spending. Even though he clearly wants a less muscular military (e.g., fewer ships and jet fighters, massive reduction in nuclear weapons), the president now claims that we can’t afford the projected Pentagon spending cuts.

I think his reasons are transparent. First, there is his well-known preference for public-sector jobs and his desire to keep people on the public payroll; thus, he views the Pentagon as just another federal jobs program. Second, since government spending is the key to government power, as a matter of ideological principle, he dislikes cutting government spending. Third, President Obama loves to reward his political allies and punish his opponents, so you can expect him to try to rescue some defense-related jobs and let others in “hostile states” like Texas be terminated.

Nobody should assume that Obama wants to rescind the sequester deal’s spending cuts out of a concern for military strength. He’ll find a way to beat the Pentagon’s swords into plowshares. Last year he ordered the Pentagon to buy higher-priced renewable energy to support his green-energy boondoggles.

We all should be embarrassed at the way national defense has been degraded to a political football. As cynical as the treatment of national defense has been, though, we, the people, should be feeling even more cynical about the hysterical, sky-is-falling rhetoric about sequestration. Even if the stipulated cuts in future spending somehow manage to stick, they will be so modest that it may end up being a case of winning a battle while losing the war against runaway federal spending.

Suddenly, everyone in Washington seems to agree on the need for immigration reform, and they may even agree on most of the details. That’s because nobody has said yet what the exact details are. A “gang of eight” senators has proposed legislation, several House members have proposals, and a leaked White House immigration plan reveals that the president now has very similar designs, so it seems that agreement must be forthcoming.

But only in Washington do leaders first vote for the bill so they can later find out what’s in it. In the current immigration debate, what’s in it matters a great deal. Success or failure depends on the details.

Almost every plan for immigration reform includes enhanced border security, better employment verification, a path to some form of legal status for people already here illegally, and lastly—almost an afterthought—a new guest worker program.

As to a guest worker program … such a program cannot be an afterthought, and it cannot wait for the details to be added later. It ought to be the cornerstone of the entire effort.

A simple work-permit system can solve the problem for future workers and those already here without authorization. Such a program doesn’t need to blur the line between legal worker status and citizenship. Nor does it need to treat different groups differently, as would limited proposals like the DREAM Act, an agricultural jobs bill, or plans to grant green cards only to students with certain college degrees or those who serve in the military. Strong arguments can be made for all those approaches, but none of them solves more than a fraction of the problem, and they’re all contrary to the basic American principle of equal treatment under law. Rather, any successful program must guarantee three essential elements—opportunity, protection and fairness—for employers, for new workers coming in, for those already here illegally, and for Americans worried about border security.

Opportunity, protection, and fairness are in the eye of the beholder. That’s why so much discussion centers on a market-driven plan called the Red Card Guest Worker Permit—a quick and simple process whereby private employment firms would be authorized to set up offices anywhere in the world, run criminal background checks on prospective workers, and issue guest worker permits to specific workers for specific jobs. These firms would utilize the most modern technology, always readily employed first in the private sector, but often coming to government bureaucracies ever so slowly.

Private employment firms operate databases on which employers post available jobs and workers post qualifications, each paying their own fees for the service, which offers an already-understood process for matching foreign workers with American employers who need them. This proposal would simply allow these companies to do what they do best: match workers and jobs, and issue guest worker permits with smart-card technology that allows tracking, changing, upgrading, renewing, or cancelling as needed. That provides answers for people on both sides of the politics.

For conservatives, that means opportunity: for businesses to get the workers they need, for workers to find legal jobs and earn good money, for the economy to grow and prosper. It means protection: from mass amnesty and from a porous border. And it means fairness: in keeping families together and treating all equally—no special deals are needed for special groups. In fact, under this plan, there would be no further need for the alphabet-soup of complex visa classifications that add to the bureaucratic nightmare currently faced by employers and employees alike.

For liberals, the same program means opportunity: by giving workers upward mobility, portability, and renewal as long as they stay employed and productive. If they wish, they can apply for citizenship while working legally, a completely separate process. It means protection: against abusive employers, freedom from exploitation, and the ability for workers to enter through a gate rather than risking their lives sneaking across borders or paying exorbitant fees to smugglers and coyotes. And it means fairness: in bringing families together (both sides care about that), and equal treatment for all—a chance for the undocumented to come out of the shadows and be treated like all other workers.

Any plan that appeals to people on all sides of this debate will inevitably attract attention. This one is already being considered carefully by a wide range of policy makers and congressional leaders in both Houses. A market-based guest worker component must be part of any immigration reform that has a chance to work, but it is more than just one part—it is the cornerstone.

February is the month of presidents. It includes Washington’s birthday, Lincoln’s birthday, Ronald Reagan’s birthday, and, of course, Presidents Day. Given that I teach and write about presidents, this time of year always prompts me to strange musings. This year is no exception, as I’m thinking about six particular presidents: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, FDR, Herbert Hoover, Bill Clinton, and Harry Truman. How could I possibly connect these six?

Bear with me—I’ll start and end with Obama.

Barack Obama, and particularly his re-election campaign, has achieved something quite dubious of a sitting president. Namely, he has managed to successfully blame nearly every woe of the last four years on his predecessor. Never mind that every economic indicator under Obama is not only worse than under George W. Bush, but far worse. Obama has presided over a steadily worsening economic disaster, one that is stacking up as one of the most dreadful economic records of any president in history. And yet, as he does, he passes the buck to his predecessor, blaming George W. Bush.

This is unbecoming of an American leader; it’s precisely what our presidents don’t do; they don’t treat each other like this, having much more respect for the job and those who have held it. There is a long-time gentlemen’s understanding, honored by nearly every president, that you don’t blame your predecessor for your problems.

Nonetheless, George W. Bush has become Obama’s go-to scapegoat.

For the record, Obama is not completely alone in mastering this ignoble tactic. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, like Obama, conjured up various demons to advance his “progressive” agenda, with the rich atop his enemies list. But FDR also dumped on his Republican predecessor. He blamed everything on Herbert Hoover.

Notably, this really upset Hoover. Hoover was hurt deeply by FDR constantly trashing him, his record, his policies. FDR did not treat Hoover the way we Americans expect our presidents to treat one another. Their relationship became toxic. FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, took notice. “Roosevelt couldn’t stand him,” said Truman of Hoover, “and he [Hoover] hated Roosevelt.”

Even sadder, FDR, like Obama, got away with this blame-game. FDR successfully pinned everything on Hoover in re-election upon re-election. As for Obama, a literal majority (60 percent, according to one exit poll) who voted for him in 2012 agreed with him that the terrible economy was totally Bush’s fault. They swallowed Obama’s Bush blame-game hook, line, and sinker.

How do Harry Truman and Bill Clinton relate to this?

Truman and Clinton, like Obama and FDR, were, of course, both Democrats. Truman, however, was willing to put party aside to do what was right. He had character by the boatload. Truman saw how troubled Hoover was by FDR’s mistreatment. A good man, Truman did what he could to remedy the situation. (This is detailed nicely by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy in their excellent new book: “The Presidents Club.”) He reached out to Hoover after World War II and sought to use the maligned ex-president in several significant projects, including post-war reconstruction for Europe.

“I knew what I had to do,” said Truman. “I knew just the man I wanted to help me.” And so, Truman employed Hoover’s considerable managerial talents.

It was a very gracious gesture, and pure Truman. Truman saw a wrong by his fellow Democrat, FDR, and strived to correct it, regardless of his party loyalties.

Bill Clinton, unfortunately, is the anti-Truman. When Clinton, who is very friendly with both George W. Bush and his father, learned of Obama’s campaign to blame Bush for every ill in America, including those that Obama has not merely created but mushroomed to unprecedented levels, what did Clinton do? Did he telephone Obama and say, “Hey, back off, that isn’t right and you know it. We presidents don’t treat ex-presidents that way.”

No, that’s what Harry Truman would have done. Bill Clinton joined the Obama campaign against Bush. The most notorious display was Clinton’s Democratic National Convention speech, where he prattled on about how not even he could have turned around the permanently disfigured economy that Barack Obama inherited from the malevolent Bush. No, no way, just impossible. Clinton incessantly pushed the line in campaign stop after campaign stop.

And no doubt, when the 2012 campaign was all over, and Clinton, who perhaps even privately voted for Mitt Romney (it wouldn’t surprise me), surely flew to Texas and (Joe Biden-like) grinned and back-slapped George W. Bush and said, “Hey, no hard feelings, pal!”

And George W. Bush, no doubt, did what he always did, stoically turning the other cheek, forgiving Clinton, and gently suffering the insults in silence—and again helping to make possible another Obama term.

Happy Presidents Month, America.

The current global debt accumulations are unprecedented. In fact, it can be observed that at no time in the history of the human race, other than during periods of war, has debt accumulation on the planet ever been greater. And the most rapid debt accumulators are the world’s sovereign nations.

It is critically important to recognize that during periods of war, relative wealth is both destroyed and accumulated. The defeated lose their wealth and default on their debt obligations. The winners take the spoils of war in reparations, seized assets, etc., and create more wealth to service or liquidate their debts. There is generally a significant price inflation attended to the process for both the winner and the loser.

Today, massive debt accumulation is used not to finance new production or fight a war but to finance current consumption. The primary direct beneficiaries of the current debt issuance are government workers, retirees, and unemployed private-sector workers. These beneficiaries are consuming wealth; they are not creating it.

What is disconcerting is that the world has entered a period of slower historical growth that has resulted in lower government tax revenue worldwide. This slow growth environment is often referred to as the “new normal.”

As a result of the of the tax-revenue shortfall, central banks around the world are desperately printing cash to fund new debt issuance. Consumption is maintained, debt accumulates, and real wealth creation lags further and further behind in the “new normal” world.

Today, the U.S. federal government borrows 40 cents out of every dollar it spends and the Federal Reserve directly or indirectly prints money to fund 80 cents out of every dollar of that government debt. So far this financial arrangement has produced rising financial asset prices and no significant “officially measured” consumer price inflation.

The question that begs an answer is: How long can such an arrangement last? Why hasn’t debt-financed consumption, coupled with Federal Reserve money printing, coupled with lagging wealth creation, resulted in massive price inflation?

Is the Fed simply “pushing on a string?” Did the financial collapse of 2008 convert bankers into prudent lenders who are unwilling to extend credit to needy borrowers? Has the private sector decided to pay down debt and simply forego borrowing because of government-created uncertainty or a lack of desirable investment opportunities? Or, is it something else altogether?

The truth is no one knows. Another truth is that it may not matter. What is perhaps most important is to recognize that there is no historical precedent to act as a contextual reference for what is happening. We are in uncharted territory.

In the current fiat central-banking world, there is massive money printing going on that is now approaching the initial phase of even the most egregious hyperinflationary episodes of the past. This printing supports consumption and the “markup” in many real asset prices, such as stocks and bonds. It all feels painless so far as we appear to have entered a steady state of range-bounded volatility, inflation, consumption, production, and unemployment.

However, something very important is missing. There is no real wealth creation of the kind required to support such massive debt. The Fed’s asset “markup” program and the lack of real wealth creation simply cannot support the long-term debt accumulation enabled by Fed money printing. The Federal Reserve governors must know this, yet they continue to massively print anyway.

Absent a war, this nice little fantasy may last for a while. Debt will continue to accumulate to support consumption and the “markup” in financial asset prices. Real wealth creation will lag far behind the level necessary to support such huge piles of debt. Officially measured inflation will probably remain subdued.

All will seem sustainable, until it is not.

The bell will ring when some event shocks people into the recognition that: (a) the lack of real wealth creation accompanied by continuous, massive debt accumulation can never be reconciled; and (b) the political will does not exist—and may never exist—to call a halt to the debt accumulation and/or do what is necessary to enable an acceleration of real wealth creation.

It seems that a majority of people now believe that the redistribution of existing wealth is more important than the creation of new real wealth. They apparently believe, in violation of common sense and all accepted laws of physical science, that you can get something for nothing. That view has now become entrenched in every branch of the media, academia, politics, and—shockingly—many parts of the financial world.

At some point soon, we will cross the Rubicon. The financial adjustments will be breathtakingly swift. Then, the world as we know it will never be the same.