The Column: Week 1

[The first edition of my new weekly column]

Congress has now passed its “cure” for the Fiscal Cliff Follies™, so our attention can now return to more important matters, such as North Korean architecture.  Trust me, they are closely related subjects.

While flying back from Florida this weekend, I got the chance to read this book review in the Wall Street Journal of German architect Philipp Meuser's work,:"Architectural and Cultural Guide: Pyongyang."

Printed in the Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2012.

Putting aside the wisdom of writing a travel book to a land that few are ever allowed to visit, the Journal points out the usefulness of such an exercise, preserving a record of—in Herr Meuser’s words—“an architectural cabinet of curiosities. . . .arguably the world's best preserved open-air museum of socialist architecture."

Curious indeed.  The style includes the typical collection of Brutalist monstrosities, but that’s the point.  As the Journal explains,

“The idea here is that size is the message.  By dwarfing the populace, such gigantism conveys the subservience of the individual to the state.”

As columnist Mark Steyn and others frequently point out, “the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”  The leaders of communist North Korea have merely taken this maxim in its literal form, putting the idea into poured concrete. 

I have never been to the North Korean capital, but I have visited its closest American cousin:  Albany, New York.  Back in the 1990’s, I had occasion to visit government offices in the Empire State’s capital city, which are located in a complex known as the Empire State Plaza.  With the addition of marble, the Nelson Rockefeller-commissioned, 1960s-era Plaza shares the same Brutalist style as the North Korean capital, and the same inhuman scale.  Walking across the open plaza between buildings, one feels like an insignificant ant against the might of Government.  Mission accomplished!

Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York

The Plaza stands adjacent to, and in stark contrast of, the more approachable, human-scale, New York State Capitol building.  This Classical/Romanesque, 1890’s-era building houses the state legislature.

That relationship seems about right.  The House of the People looks like a building you would want to visit.  The offensively bland House of the Bureaucracy says ‘tremble in fear…and stay away.’  And so it is with the less literal aspects of Government.

The Plaza and the Capitol sit side-by-side in Albany

The more impressive the façade, the less impressive the balance sheet.  New York ranks as one of Forbes' 11 death spiral states as a result of the Empire State’s poor finances.  It ranks among the top states in per capita debt.

However, nothing can top the Federal Government for sheer scale.  From the mind-boggling $16.3 trillion national debt, to the 2,358-page Obama Care bill, and the 747-jumbo jet winging the President back to Hawaii, post-cliff deal, everything about modern Government is designed to make you, the citizen, fell small and worthless.

Many of my comrades on the right are looking forward to the next big DC set-piece confrontation:  the debt ceiling crisis.  My advice is to take another look at the photographs above.

Big Government will not buckle in a head-on confrontation.  Instead, start working today on chipping away at the foundation.  As that old lefty Harry Belafonte used to sing,

“House built on a weak foundation,
Will not stand oh no”