Since his quest to win the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 2004, Barack Obama’s faith has provoked controversy. In that campaign, his Republican rival Alan Keyes—a black Catholic—accused Obama of stressing his faith only “when it’s convenient to get votes.” When faith must be followed, explained, and serve as a basis for policies, Keyes protested, Obama pled the “separation of church and state”—a concept that was neither constitutional nor scriptural. “Christ would not vote for Barack Obama,” Keyes asserted, because his behavior was so contrary to that of Christ’s.

These charges prompted Obama to reassess how his faith related to his approach to politics. He concluded that his typical responses to Keyes’ criticisms—that “we live in a pluralistic society” and “I can’t impose my own religious views” on others—had been inadequate.

By 2006, Obama had decisively changed his tactics. At the Sojourners/Call to Renewal conference, he chided Democrats for refusing to talk about religious values out of fear of offending people or belief that religion had no role to play in the public arena. Ignoring “the power of faith” in the lives of Americans was “a mistake.” Obama urged Democrats to discuss “how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.”

Obama called the contention that people “should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates” a “practical absurdity.” American law, he argued “is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” “Secularists are wrong,” Obama asserted, “when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama strove to win the votes of religiously-devout Americans by providing a biblical basis for his policies on poverty, healthcare, immigration, and other issues. He urged citizens to “heed the biblical call to care for ‘the least of these’”—America’s poor—by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing the minimum wage, and supplying universal health insurance.

During the campaign, Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright (who pastored the United Church of Christ congregation Obama had attended in Chicago for twenty years), the widespread misperception that Obama was a Muslim, and his stances on abortion and homosexual rights called attention to his religious beliefs and created controversy.

As president, Obama has frequently testified to his Christian faith, most notably at four National Prayer Breakfasts, and linked many of his policies to biblical teachings. Contrary to the wishes of many of his supporters, he has also continued George W. Bush’s Faith-based Initiatives.

Obama’s rhetoric and actions have led to conflicting claims about his presidency. John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College, recently labeled Obama perhaps the “most explicitly Christian president in American history” because of his extensive citation of the Bible and copious references to Christian faith. Fea stressed that Obama regularly read the Bible and prayed, was being mentored by evangelical pastors (most notably Joel Hunter, Kirbyjon Caldwell, and T.D. Jakes), accentuated both faith and works, urged Americans to follow God’s command to love our neighbors as ourselves, and strove to build the kingdom of God on earth.

Glenn Beck’s criticism of Fea’s op-ed on his show brought the history professor hundreds of scathing emails and elicited numerous rebuttals. The response of well-known conservative activist and author David Barton was especially caustic. Barton denounced Obama as the “Most Biblically-Hostile U.S. President.” Barton supplied dozens of examples to support his contention that Obama has engaged in acts of hostility toward people of biblical faith, violated biblical values, and given preferential treatment to Islam.

Meanwhile, in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Mitchell Landsberg correctly observed that Obama has been both “praised—and pummeled—on matters of faith.” “Few presidents,” he added, “have spoken more often or more articulately about their religious beliefs” or been so censured by some religious groups because of their policies.

Obama has been reproached for not attending church regularly, praising Islam and the Qur’an, requiring religiously-affiliated institutions to provide coverage for contraception, and his policies on abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, and ministerial exemptions.

Because of continued confusion about his faith (45 percent of Republicans in Alabama and 51 percent in Mississippi identified him as a Muslim in recent polls), conservative charges that he is waging war against religious groups, and substantial concern that some of his policies contradict either biblical principles or long-standing American religious freedoms, Obama’s faith and religious issues are very likely to be a major issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.

Two years later, the United Kingdom is back in recession. Keynesian economists are enjoying a savory “I told you so” moment, as many pointed out the dangers of austerity during troubled times. The logic runs as follows: when businesses, households, and governments all try to pay back their debts at the same time, they spend less. As they spend less, national income falls, leading to even less spending. This sets off a cycle of decreased spending and economic collapse.

The Keynesian solution is government spending. It goes like this: Governments can increase spending during recessions to keep national income up, preventing the spending collapse. In short, more stimulus is the answer.

In turn, many progressives in the United States are arguing that any similar austerity here (such as Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan) would have equally bad results: another recession.

Unfortunately, this reasoning is based on a faulty premise. Here is the reality: There is no austerity in the United Kingdom.

Quite the contrary, government spending in Britain has increased in the last two years, and will continue for the foreseeable future. In real terms (based on estimated inflation and GDP growth), spending was set to decrease this fiscal year. Unfortunately, this prediction was made on the assumption of positive yet small GDP growth. As we now know, this assumption was bad and GDP shrank, heralding a recession.

Public debt in the United Kingdom continues to rise. The 2012 budget clearly outlines increases in public debt all the way until 2016 (when the predictions stop). To top it all off, these numbers exclude the 2008-09 emergency financial interventions. The financial sector in the United Kingdom took a hit in the previous recession and was promptly bailed out in 2009. Since then, the government has borrowed an additional 124 billion pounds to keep banks afloat.

Furthermore, some British think tanks estimate that only around 6 percent of Cameron’s cuts have been implemented, with the remaining 94 percent still waiting to actually be cut by 2016-17. Is this “austerity” (itself a loaded term) in any sense of the word? Suppose you were driving towards a cliff. Is it enough to ease off the gas pedal, or do you need to hit the brakes?

Economists such as Paul Krugman are already branding Europe’s approach a failure. In many ways, it is. But what is really at stake is the real reason things are failing. We cannot allow history to think that the United Kingdom tried austerity. It is simply not true. If we interpret this wrong, we will get the wrong historical lessons.

In fact, something similar happened during the onset of the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover was in office when panic struck and the history books claim he tried free-market principles, which failed. In the first year of the depression, 1931, federal expenditures rose from $4.2 billion to $5.5 billion. The federal government incurred a $2.2-billion deficit the same year. In 1932, Hoover raised taxes.

Sound familiar? Despite the fact that President Hoover increased government spending and debt, his approach was labeled “free market.” The exact opposite is true. When running against Franklin Roosevelt, Hoover actually argued that Roosevelt would make things worse by lowering taxes and decreasing spending. Roosevelt responded by accusing Hoover’s administration of being a profligate spender.

The same classification error is happening again today. The United Kingdom has raised taxes, increased government spending, and taken on more debt. This is the exact opposite of the clear meaning of austerity. What sort of Orwellian doublespeak is being used when “free market” means more government?

Of course, the situation in the United Kingdom is not identical to the United States. Exact comparisons and examples do not translate. One thing we do know, however, is that the British have not attempted to rein in out-of-control government spending. Like many governments, Britain scheduled cuts years into the future and continue to pile on debt. Before we even consider the failure of austerity in England, we must first be convinced austerity has really happened.

The election of Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande to the presidency of France epitomizes the sorry state of contemporary democracy. By that, I don’t mean to imply that the French people should have voted for the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy. Neither would be capable of solving France’s intractable problems in a way acceptable to French voters, nor are the problems with democracy unique to France. To varying degrees they exist throughout Europe as well as here in the United States.

The first problem is: widespread economic illiteracy. Hollande campaigned on a platform of economic growth and expanded job creation, to be accomplished by raising taxes on the rich and increasing government spending. Well, good luck with that one. Even Lord Keynes himself advocated lowering taxes rather than raising them to stimulate economic activity. And the record of net job creation via government stimulus is one of dismal failure. Hollande’s program can’t work, and yet a majority of the French electorate voted for it. How sad.

The second problem is the utter cynicism of today’s politics. One wonders whether Hollande himself truly believes his own campaign rhetoric. One senses that he knows that his socialistic policies would drive France’s struggling economy into the ditch: According to the World Socialist Web Site (www.wsws.org)—who were cheerleaders for Hollande’s campaign promises of more tax & spending—Hollande’s team has told Reuters that he is going to change course and “carry out reactionary policies … and intensify social cuts.”

The third problem is that people sometimes believe in fairy tales. Who knows what Hollande believes or understands about economics, but let’s give him credit for being politically astute. He understood that the key to electoral success is to tell voters what they want to hear. In France’s case (as in the recent elections in Greece and northern Germany) most people are opposed to “austerity.” Hollande sized up the public mood and won the presidency on the theme of, “You don’t want austerity, and under me, you won’t have it.” That’s bunk. There is going to be “austerity” (in France and elsewhere) whether the people want it or not.

The fourth problem is that the public is in denial about reality. What is commonly called “austerity” is more accurately termed “sobriety.” For years, people in the democracies have been voting themselves economic freebies and subsidies—getting high on the drug of government wealth transfers. They became addicted to politicians who promised and voted more and more monetary fixes for their present and future desires. That means that politicians who indulge voters’ fantasies and play along with the delusion that the government is a bottomless cornucopia of goodies will have the electoral advantage over those who are courageous enough to tell people the truth about the hard choices that must be made.

What the voters didn’t reckon on—and what they are still in denial about—is that just as a feel-good drug addiction eventually brings one to the point where additional fixes could prove fatal, so the democratic Santa Claus state has neared the breaking point. Either the binge stops—that is, government spending and promises of future benefits are trimmed back—or the system breaks down. The ineluctable fact is that there simply isn’t enough real wealth in existence to make good on all these government promises. The penalty for not facing up to this painful economic truth will be either a market rejection of sovereign debt or a central bank “quantitative easing to infinity” that debases the currency, either of which will convulse markets horribly.

The biggest problem underscored by the French election is the degenerate state of modern democracy (with apologies to Aristotle and our Founding Fathers, who would consider “degenerate democracy” a redundancy). Democracy today is both childish and cannibalistic. It is childish in the sense that masses of people believe that if they want something, all they need to do is vote for it and they will get it—as if economic reality can be transformed by a mere act of will, and government can conjure desired benefits out of thin air. It is cannibalistic in that so many have fallen into a state of moral depravity and pathetic impotence in which they believe that the only way they can have the comfortable life is for government to take other people’s wealth and give it to them.

Many people believe that government is the answer to their problems. They are about to learn the painful lesson that government isn’t the answer. I doubt many of them will recognize that their pain will be self-inflicted. As H.L. Mencken once put it, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” The French, the Greeks, and a lot of other people living in democracies are about to get a jolt of economic reality and sobriety “good and hard.”

Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) is being heavily criticized for comments alleging that certain Democratic members of Congress are communists, and he is not backing down. West dared to quantify his accusation, claiming there are “78 to 81” Congressional Democrats who are communists.

I want to say three things relating to West’s remarks: First, some criticism of West’s critics. Second, a defense of West’s critics. And, finally, some criticism of West, which I offer constructively. I like Allen West and want him to succeed.

First, on West’s critics:

Their concern about West’s exaggeration and name-calling has little credibility coming from an ideology (liberalism) and political party (Democrats) who constantly engage in exaggeration and name-calling. I could point out a litany of examples. It’s as easy as the latest liberal/Democrat gambit accusing Republicans of a “war on women” merely because they believe the federal government shouldn’t force taxpayers to fund contraception and Planned Parenthood. For that crime, West’s colleague Maxine Waters called Republicans “demons.” Nancy Pelosi said they want women to “die on the floor.” Dianne Feinstein insisted they want “to sock it to women.” Harry Reid claimed Republicans have placed a “bull’s eye on women.” Barbara Boxer described it as a “vendetta” against women. Congresswoman Barbara Lee summed it up as a GOP “war on women.”

I could go on and on. Google the words “George W. Bush” and “Hitler” or “Nazi.” Or recall the obscene statements from Democratic lawmakers regarding the Iraq war. Remember that Senator Dick Durbin compared our troops to “Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others.”

But only when a Rush Limbaugh blows his top—or someone like Allen West issues charges like this one—does the New York Times start issuing calls for civility.

Point made. Now, for my second and third points:

Allen West needs to be much more careful. He sloppily overlapped categories and blurred lines of distinction. The reality is that the left side of the political spectrum is very broad. It includes Democrats, liberals, progressives, “social-justice” Christians, socialists, communists, Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, and more. There are distinct differences, even when a liberal Democrat favors something that Marx favored. For instance, point two in Marx’s 10-point plan in The Communist Manifesto calls for “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Advocates of this include basically the entirety of the Democratic membership of the House of Representatives—but it doesn’t make them Marxists. Consider point three in Marx’s 10-point plan, which calls for “abolition of all rights of inheritance.” Many “liberals” and “progressives” advocate that to some degree (via taxation), but I know of no Congressional Democrat calling for complete abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Likewise, Marx wrote this: “the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Yes, liberals place all kinds of restrictions on private property, but I know of no Congressional Democrat who would go as far as Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and Castro.

Here’s the reality that often complicates things for conservatives when looking at the political left: Liberals agree with communists on many key sympathies—workers’ rights, spreading and redistributing wealth, a narrow to non-existent income gap, an expansive central government offering a wide array of “free” government services, favoring the public sector over the private sector, class-based rhetoric (often demagoguery) toward the wealthy, progressively high tax rates. The differences are matters of degree, but they are crucial differences.

Sure, Allen West didn’t say that every liberal in Congress is a communist. Yet, he did say that there is a huge portion. Even worse, he initially said that “78 to 81” were actual Communist Party members, or about 40 percent of the Democratic membership. Clearly that’s not accurate. If it is, then West should be chiseled into Mt. Rushmore for exposing the greatest threat to Washington since the War of 1812—and we should commence a national march to the Capitol right now, with torches.

I assume that West misspoke, and meant communists (lower case “c”) in ideology, not actual card-carrying Communist Party members.

Allen West has forgotten the painful lesson of Joe McCarthy: If you’re going to call certain people communists, you better be absolutely, 100 percent certain. There’s nothing that liberals detest more than anti-communism. Their preferred villain is Joe McCarthy, not Joe Stalin. They and their mass media will go ballistic, demanding a level of precision from you that they never demand from their own name-callers. Our side must be more cautious; that’s the deck stacked against us.

Allen West, your courage and boldness is refreshing, but please be more careful.

(A PDF of Dr. Herbener’s full written testimony may be downloaded here.)

To view a streaming video of C-SPAN’s coverage of the hearing at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, please see the video below:

Here are the five points:

1. Making Afghans responsible for their own security within two years
2. Training and operationalizing a 352,000-man Afghan security force
3. An enduring partnership with the United States providing training and counter-insurgency guidance
4. Pursuing a negotiated peace with the Taliban
5. Building a global consensus for peace

Afghanization—the practical consequence of the withdrawal of American forces—requires the strengthening of the Afghan military to withstand the Taliban. Elements fundamental to its success involve improving and modernizing the Afghan military, pacifying rural areas, strengthening the national political apparatus, delivering essential services while building a viable economy and, most importantly, ensuring security for the people.

Subsidiary tasks include expanding and improving the police, establishing democratic institutions down to the village level, restructuring the agricultural economy away from opium production, and rooting out the Taliban infrastructure. Given the non-specific nature of goals four and five in the president’s plan, the three essentials of Afghanization are: self-defense, self-government, and self-development.

Neutralizing the Taliban infrastructure is critical to extricating the U.S./NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan for the past decade. In part, this overly long commitment resulted from misjudging the nature of the war from the start, thinking it would be relatively easy to destroy al Qaeda and replace the Taliban government that nurtured and protected the terrorists. What are the obstacles successful Afghanization?

On the plus side, the Afghans are tough, resilient fighters who defeated Alexander the Great, thwarted British imperialism, humiliated the Soviets, and frustrated the U.S./NATO coalition. Molding the Afghans into a Western military image will be difficult. Unlike the Iraqis and Pakistanis, Afghans lack the British military tradition. That 86 percent of Afghan recruits are illiterate makes building a modern U.S.-style military a challenge. Leadership tends to be tribal and reflects the corruption rife in Afghan politics. Warriors abound but many of them are Taliban. Modern armies, however, require trained soldiers and effective leaders. Additionally, the security of advisors and trainers is integral to building a viable Afghan fighting force. So far, 20 percent of U.S. casualties have come at the hands of Afghan military personnel. This does not bode well for the advisory phase.

Item four in the Obama plan specifies a negotiated peace. Leverage is key to successful negotiations. President Obama declared, “A path to peace is now set before them (the Taliban). Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan Security Forces, backed by the United States and our allies.” Is the president’s threat credible?

The Taliban knows that U.S. forces are leaving and 1,834 combat deaths (as of May 3, 2012,) have depleted American will. Given that Washington’s objective seems to be the extrication of U.S. combat forces by 2014, with an advisory contingent remaining, the enemy senses the “new day on the horizon” belongs to them. The Taliban responded to President Obama’s pre-dawn declaration with a daybreak attack within earshot of the U.S. embassy coupled to a strategic proclamation targeting U.S. military forces as well as Afghan security personnel and political leaders. Expect the Taliban to keep the pressure on during withdrawal.

The challenges of Afghanization mirror those of Vietnamization, which succeeded only in providing a patina for extracting U.S. forces from South Vietnam. The precursor to U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was the advisory and training phase that began in November 1961 but so failed to overcome cultural and military impediments that it required a massive U.S. military commitment starting in 1965 to forestall defeat. In 1969, when Vietnamization started in earnest, the original cultural and political challenges remained. Attempts to replicate the U.S. military structure focused on meeting the managerial imperatives of logistics rather than building armed forces able to withstand a North Vietnamese attack.

In the end, Vietnamization fulfilled President Richard Nixon’s vow to bring the troops home by the end of his first term. The president’s promise to South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu to enforce the Paris Agreements of January 23, 1973 proved irrelevant following Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. Barely two years after the last U.S. troops departed South Vietnam, Saigon’s army disintegrated in the face of a concerted North Vietnamese attack. The South Vietnamese lacked military acumen and leadership and, most importantly, the will to fight … and so did the United States, whose Congress drastically cut appropriations needed to sustain the Industrial Age force Vietnamization rendered.

Afghanization succeeds only if it proceeds with a bodyguard of political and economic reforms compelling the Afghan people to fight for themselves. Otherwise, Afghanization only needs to endure until early November and the re-election of President Obama.

As spring bloomed, the president addressed the nation on energy. The president told us, “Without our planning for the future, it will get worse … The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy is simply running out.”

Unless profound changes are made in the next decade, the president warned, the world will demand more oil than it can produce. He called for “strict conservation” and switching to “permanent renewable energy sources like solar power.” Because such sources promise future energy independence—or at least according to the president—his administration would spend billions of taxpayer dollars on wind, solar, and biodiesel, plus offer massive “clean energy” subsidies.

No, the president is not Barack Obama, and the speech was not delivered in 2012. It was President Jimmy Carter, speaking on April 18, 1977.

Since that time, American oil and natural gas production has skyrocketed. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that natural gas consumption has doubled since 1980, production is at an all-time high, imports are at a 20-year low and heating expenses are the lowest in a decade>. Meanwhile, the latest recession barely affected North Dakota, a state rich in oil and natural gas.

President Carter’s speech sounds familiar because it is based on the same flawed assumptions that underlie many current politicians’ belief that wise and enlightened central planners in Washington can manage the countless and infinitely complex transactions and calculations that comprise a $14-trillion-dollar national economy.

These politicians hold on to these flawed beliefs despite being regularly embarrassed by them. For example, a recent Capitol Confidential article and video showed President Obama and two senators from Michigan praising a heavily subsidized “green energy” battery manufacturer that is now under severe financial stress and has had its federal money pulled. Another Capitol Confidential piece reported a litany of similar embarrassments on a YouTube channel created by the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Economist F.A. Harper once wrote, “If the planner could plan discovery for others, he probably would have made that discovery himself in the first place. If he is more able in this respect than the others, he is wasting his time not to do it himself; if he is less able, he can hardly plan it for others who are more able than he is.”

It’s much easier for politicians to make plans with other peoples’ money. It would show real leadership for government to actually do less.

And collapse it did, as Hitler points out. The Soviet Union lost four million men; 8,000 aircraft; and 17,000 tanks; the Fuhrer boasts. The Soviet breadbasket region of the Ukraine was quickly overrun, along with half of Russian coal and steel output. Major Russian cities were captured, Hitler states smugly—Minsk, Kiev, Moscow, Leningrad. The commissars capitulated, the Russian people are cowed, and Soviet lands are open to master race colonizers.

Pausing for effect and waiting for the cheering to subside, Hitler brushes aside his trademark lock of hair that cut across his forehead like a black scythe and continues: “Wonder weapons!” he shouts. “Our scientists, our gallant workers of the Reich have produced miracles of modern technology! Soon the skies will be filled with jet aircraft, bombers and fighters, and rockets and missiles with enough range to hit any place on earth. We can destroy those who dare to challenge our supremacy in Europe, in Asia, in the world!” More applause, punctuated by vigorously bobbing heads and expansive grins of triumph in the crowd. “Our submarines patrol the Atlantic, a German lake! Britain is crumbling, ready to surrender.” Then, as an aside: “One torpedo from our new Type XXI submarine will sink that whole miserable island.” Riotous laughter and applause.

Then out comes the map, huge, blazing with colors—black and yellow and gray. Three vast spheres of influence, German (with a nod to the Italians), Japanese, and the Americas, light up the background behind the Fuhrer. The audience claps, and many begin imagining vacation junkets to Asia, Africa, and the farthermost regions of mighty Germania’s global domain. More glances at that huge gray area on the map; with a wink and a nod, someone in the crowd utters, “soon, all that will be ours, too.”

This is the world we avoided, one portrayed with disturbing plausibility by such writers as Robert Harris in Fatherland and Phillip K. Dick in The Man in the High Castle. Sound unbelievable? Consider this: After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, few observers expected the Russians to survive; even Henry Stimson, President Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, was convinced that Russia would fall within three months, leaving the United States and the beleaguered British alone to face the monstrously powerful Third Reich. How powerful? After two years of war, Germany produced twice as much steel as Great Britain and the Soviet Union combined. Indeed, Richard Overy, in his superb Why the Allies Won, declared that “on the face of things, no rational man in early 1942 would have guessed at the eventual outcome of the war.”

Yet victory was achieved, as the result of the world’s other great powers pooling their resources to defeat what likely was the most ambitious threat to global civilization in human history. With American production genius, British perseverance, and the Soviet Union’s recuperative powers, the Allies beat their Axis foes in every dimension of total war—on the ground, at sea, and in the air; in the laboratory, on the factory floor, and at the strategic planning table; and most importantly, in the moral battle for the minds of millions of men and women, civilians and soldiers alike.

America’s role was of course indispensable, and not just in production figures, but in the spilt blood and sacrifices on countless battlefields in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. Indeed, the success of the Normandy invasion alone created conditions for America’s longer-term victory over its second totalitarian foe over the half century following WWII, the Soviet Union. Which means it’s hard to overestimate the profound significance of Victory in Europe Day, symbolizing the war that was won and the world we avoided.

Like many in my generation, I have family members who fought in that conflict, which is why I encourage everyone to visit a WWII military cemetery in the coming weeks, and—sometime in your life—to make a pilgrimage to that extraordinary American military museum at Omaha Beach. Gaze with somber appreciation at those regiments of crosses perfectly arrayed on that hallowed ground. Ponder the sublime meaning of those silent sentinels that commemorate freedom’s costly triumph over barbarism and tyranny. And remember May 8, 1945, V-E Day.

First, understand the historical context. The Vietnam intervention resulted from a Cold War mindset that assumed the war in South Vietnam was part of a larger “communist plot for world domination.” That made Vietnam more important than it was. The resulting intervention into a local struggle tied U.S. prestige to a dubious cause. Lesson: Look closely at the local situation before commitments become irrevocable.

Second, there are dangers in incrementalism. It is a myth that the United States “blundered” into a Vietnam quagmire. American intervention resulted from a series of small, incremental steps, each seemingly low in risk. By the end of 1965, with over 100,000 American service personnel committed to Vietnam, the U.S. presence was hostage to a faulty policy. The political cost of getting out seemingly outweighed the military cost of staying in.

Third, there are limits to what military power can achieve. In 1961, when the Kennedy administration decided to “draw a line in the sand” in Vietnam, the general military assumption was that U.S. military power, sufficient to defeat Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan in less than four years, could easily handle an insurgency in South Vietnam supported by an impoverished military power in North Vietnam. Surely a nation reaching toward outer space had little to fear from a country where few people knew how to drive a car.

History shows that small nations and dedicated movements can defeat major powers. England defeated the Spanish Empire in the 16th century. The American Revolution succeeded against the British Empire. Japan defeated Russia in 1905.

In March 2003, with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the assumption was U.S. forces would be in Baghdad within a month. It took three weeks. Then the real war started and U.S. forces languished there for the next eight years.

Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant understood, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog that counts.”

Fourth, know your enemy. From the start of the Vietnam War, the fatal assumption was that Hanoi and the National Liberation Front—the Viet Cong—could be coerced with incrementally applied force. Their goals were not amenable to our logical frames of reference. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were willing to pay an enormous price for victory.

The “War on Terror” suffered from the failure to identify the enemy as Islamist fundamentalist-Jihadists determined to defeat the United States and, ultimately, bring down Judeo-Christian civilization. Knowing yourself corresponds with knowing the enemy.

Fifth, Americans are not patient. In 1946, General of the Army George C. Marshall stated, “America cannot fight a Seven Years’ War.” In 1968, the Tet Offensive occurred almost precisely seven years after the Kennedy administration drew the line in Vietnam. Frustrations grew throughout the subsequent administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, weakening public will.

Sixth, beware of open-ended commitments to regimes of dubious legitimacy. In Vietnam, first the United States committed its power and prestige to the support of Ngo Dinh Diem, a self-described “16th-century Spanish Catholic” who governed like a mandarin in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country struggling to throw off its colonial past. When in late 1963, Diem proved ineffective, the United States acquiesced in a coup resulting in a succession of military dictators.

History’s not so tidy that mistakes in the War on Terror are entirely analogous to those in Vietnam. The current war proceeded with an all-volunteer force, not a conscript-driven force. From October 2001 to the present, American military leadership, at every level, has been outstanding. The Bush administration’s big mistake was not clearly identifying the enemy. The Obama administration’s blunder was to set a deadline for withdrawal.

Wars are the most unpredictable of human endeavors, fraught with the unexpected and quite often, when strategically ill-conceived, much longer and bloodier than anticipated. That’s why over 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote, “War is a matter of vital importance; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.”

President Obama recently referred to free-market economics as “you’re-on-your-own economics.” It’s a catchy phrase—rhythmic, alliterative, clever. Too bad it’s bunk.

The only genuine “you’re on your own economics”—let’s call it “yo-yo economics,” for short—is known as “Robinson Crusoe economics.” It applies only to those who really are on their own, like sole inhabitants of islands or hermits. Apart from those oddities, human beings don’t live in solitude, but are interdependently connected in a social division of labor.

In a free-market economy, individuals typically prosper to the extent that they contribute economic value to others. Those who earn high incomes are generally producing more of what people value than those earning lower incomes. To President Obama and his ideological kindred, social justice consists of government overseeing a compulsory redistribution of property from the productive to the less productive. Disdaining free markets as “yo-yo economics,” Obama advocates a radically different agenda—what we might call “we’ll always take care of you” economics, or, to use another child’s toy as an acronym, “BB economics” (as in “Big Brother economics”).

We may concede to the president that, in a free market, some people will be in need. These include children, the sick and disabled, and even some healthy, involuntarily unemployed adults. It is a non sequitur, though, to conclude that the federal government must provide economic support to those people. Relatives, friends, neighbors, churches, voluntary community organizations, etc., can address those needs at far less cost and with a much more personal touch than can federal bureaucracies. Even if one believes that government must be involved, local, county, and state governments are closer to the situation than Uncle Sam.

The declaration that federal programs are not essential is anathema to the president’s belief in BB economics. According to him, yo-yo economics “has been tried in history and it hasn’t worked. It didn’t work when we tried it in the decade before the Great Depression. It didn’t work when we tried it in the last decade.” Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Let’s correct those errors with facts.

1) What the president belittles as “yo-yo economics”—that is, a system characterized by voluntary economic transactions—predominated for the first 125 years of our history. The glaring and regrettable exception, of course, was slavery. The salient historical fact here is that during the period of yo-yo economics, the United States developed into the richest country in the world. Contrary to the president’s counterfactual statement, “yo-yo economics” did work.

2) Later in our history, in the 1920s and 1930s, the superiority of the free-market/yo-yo over the government-intervention/BB model was clearly demonstrated. The depression of 1920-21 was as severe and rapid an economic contraction as any in U.S. history. Unlike the contraction in 1929-30 that eventually persisted for 12 years, the severe depression in the early ‘20s ended in 1922. By 1923, the economy was firing on all cylinders. Why?

The policy response of the Harding-Coolidge administration was to cut tax rates and slash government spending—basically to get government out of the way to let free markets make the necessary price adjustments. In the 1920s, yo-yo economics was an indisputable success. Obama’s insistence that “it didn’t work when we tried it in the decade before the Great Depression” is patently untrue.

In stark contrast to the successful policy response in the early ‘20s, Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt opted for BB economics: massive tax increases, government spending, new regulations. The result was the 12 years of made-in-Washington misery that became known as the Great Depression. Ignoring that grim historical lesson, Obama has persisted in pushing 1930s-style, debt-financed, “stimulus” spending and a huge expansion of government power over economic activity.

3) President Obama’s third historical inaccuracy was that “we tried [yo-yo economics] in the last decade” under George W. Bush and “it didn’t work.” Here, the president is half-right. It’s true that the last decade’s overall economic performance was inferior. The problem with the president’s statement is that George W. Bush’s policies were the antithesis of yo-yo economics—everything from the addition of a new federal entitlement (Medicare Part D) to Wall Street bailouts to expanding the annual federal budget from $2 to $3 trillion per year in only eight years.

The president’s aggressive historical revisionism is no mere academic debate. We’re not dealing here with inconsequential trivia like his 2008 gaffe about having visited 57 states. The stakes are much greater. Obama has contrived a historical narrative that justifies the kinds of economic policies that retard rather than promote prosperity.

The truth will make us free—and falsehood will make us less free.