Here’s an edited version of last night’s special “Stossel” show following the State of the Union Address. Our Cato tape editors have cut right to my opening one-one-one with Stossel, wherein I talk about Obama’s “blueprint” for America and my suggestion for a bumper sticker reading YES YOU DID. Later Matt Welch, Megan McArdle, and Gov. Gary Johnson join the discussion and take on issue of taxes, Iraq, the looming but mostly ignored entitlements crisis, outsourcing, and the president’s audacious claim that his $50 billion bailout of GM and Chrysler had been a good deal. Skip the commercials, watch it here:

At both the beginning and end of his state of the union address last night, the president suggested that the country can solve its problems by modeling itself after the military. Near the start he said:

At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, [members of the military] exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.

He ended on the same note, comparing the unity of the Navy SEAL team that killed bin Laden to the political cooperation between himself Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, and then suggested we all follow that example:

This Nation is great because we built it together. This Nation is great because we worked as a team. This Nation is great because we get each other’s backs. And if we hold fast to that truth, in this moment of trial, there is no challenge too great; no mission too hard. As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.

One problem with this rhetoric is its militarism. Not content to thank the troops for serving, the president has adopted the notion that military culture is better than that of civilian society and ought to guide it. That idea, too often seen among service-members, is corrosive to civil-military relations. Troops should feel honored by their society, but not superior to it. We do not need to pretend they are superhuman to thank them.

There is an even bigger problem with this “be like the troops, put aside our differences, stop playing politics, salute and get things done for the common good” mentality. It is authoritarian. Sure, Americans share a government, much culture, and have mutual obligations. But that doesn’t make the United States anything like a military unit, which is designed for coordinated killing and destruction. Americans aren’t going to overcome their political differences by emulating commandos on a killing raid. And that’s a good thing. At least in times of peace, liberal countries should be free of a common purpose, which is anathema to freedom.

The more we get shoved together under a goal, the less free we are, and the more we have to fight about. Differing conceptions of good and how to achieve it are the source of our political disagreements. Those competing ends are manifest in different parties, congressional committees, executive agencies and policy programs. Our government is designed for fighting itself, not others.

There’s no danger that this suggestion that we emulate military cooperation to make policy will actually succeed. Our politicians are hypocritical enough to rarely believe their own rhetoric about escaping politics, thankfully. But the happy talk is at least a distraction from useful thought about successful legislating. Productive deals get done by recognizing and accommodating competing ends, not by wishing them away. That means better politics, not none.

Cross-posted from the Skeptics at the National Interest.

He’s not unrestrained, but Larry Downes sees the remarkable downfall of legislation to regulate the Internet’s engineering as a harbinger of things to come. Jerry Brito, meanwhile, tells us “Why We Won’t See Many Protests like the SOPA Blackout.”

They’re both right—over different time-horizons. The information environment and economics of political organization today are still quite stacked against public participation in our unwieldy federal government. But in time this will change. Congress and Washington, D.C.‘s advocacy and lobbying groups now have some idea what the future will feel like.

Cato Institute scholars Malou Innocent, Chris Edwards, Neal McCluskey, Ilya Shapiro, Jerry Taylor, Dan Mitchell and Dan Ikenson respond to President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address.

Video produced by Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg and Lester Romero.

Last night, Newt Gingrich praised the Chilean Social Security system, which allows workers to save for their retirements in personal accounts, rather than contribute to the government pension scheme. Several of my Cato colleagues are far more qualified than I am to comment on that system, including Mike Tanner, Jagadeesh Gokhale, and Jose Pinera–who designed and implemented it. But personal accounts are as important for reforming compulsory health insurance schemes like Medicare as they are for reforming compulsory pension schemes.

In 2010, I traveled to Chile to deliver an address to the International Federation of Pension Fund Administrators (FIAP). I detailed the harms caused by compulsory health insurance schemes and explained how personal medical accounts would improve health care and generate wealth even for the poor:

In designing health care markets, perfection is not an option. Under any system, whether state-run or the free market, some patients will inevitably fall through the cracks.

Personal medical accounts can help fill in those cracks by enabling innovations that improve medical care and bring it within reach of the poor. Yes, some will not earn enough to provide for themselves. And when we are free to make our own decisions, a small number of people will make poor decisions. I believe we have a moral duty to care for patients who could not or would not provide for themselves. Personal medical accounts will make it easier for us to meet that moral duty.

Under compulsory health insurance schemes, those cracks widen, and more people fall through. Price and exchange controls block innovation. Governments waste resources on low-value medical care. Some would describe these as the unavoidable costs of creating an equitable society. But those wasted resources do not purchase solidarity. They purchase sickness and poverty.

FIAP turned my address into this book chapter, which also explains how to craft a system of personal medical accounts.

For current enrollees, who have not built up savings in a personal medical account, Congress should make Medicare look more like Social Security. That is, the government should subsidize Medicare enrollees by giving them cash, rather than creating a complex health-insurance scheme that effectively lets government officials shape the entire health care sector.

Last week, the White House claimed 28 states are “on their way” toward creating ObamaCare’s health insurance Exchanges. Here’s what Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinks about that:

[E]ven if one were to accept the White House’s accounting…that would mean that 22 states — roughly 40 percent of the country — are not “on their way” toward erecting the Obamacare exchanges. Isn’t that a problem? Further, upon closer inspection, it’s clear that many of the 28 states that are supposedly “on their way” really aren’t “on their way.”…

A more accurate description of what is going would go like this…the administration can rightly claim 15 states are more or less playing ball with them…

[T]here’s a very long list of states — nearly 30 — with strong Republican governors who have absolutely no interest in doing anything to solidify the position of Obamacare…

In other states, with mixed political control, it’s not entirely clear what direction they will go, as the legislatures and the governors are either at odds over the issue or have deferred taking any definitive steps…

So, a fair reading of what’s really going on is that the vast majority of states are not proceeding apace to implement Obamacare, and there’s no prospect of their doing so anytime soon…

Obamacare is under siege at this point. It is on shaky ground legally. It’s opposed by a plurality of voters. And there’s no real plan in view for actually implementing it, even if it were to survive the various challenges coming its way. No wonder the White House is resorting to unsubstantiated happy talk.

Read the whole thing.

Lately I have argued that Super PACs, a result of the SpeechNow judicial decision, have enhanced democratic debate in the 2012 presidential election.

Super PACs have had one undeniable specific result this year: they enabled a donor to give a Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich several million dollars. Mr. Gingrich, it turns out, has put that money to good use to win the South Carolina primary and now to take the lead in Florida, according to recent polls. Absent that Super PAC spending (and the contribution that made it possible), Mr. Gingrich’s candidacy would have come to an end no later than the end of the New Hampshire primary.

Some people say that Mr. Gingrich’s nomination or election would be a disaster for the Republican party or for the nation, respectively. Let’s assume the accuracy of those beliefs for purposes of argument. Given that, shouldn’t I at least reconsider my position on Super PACs?

Freedom of speech, like all public things, has risks. The real question should be: is such freedom better on the whole than the alternative, i.e. giving government officials the discretion to suppress speech? In this case, a ban on Super PACs would give the government the effective power to decide who loses and when in a party presidential primary. I do not believe that such power, even if it were constitutional, would be exercised on behalf of the general welfare of the country.

In any case, if Mr. Gingrich’s efforts turn out to be a disaster for the GOP or the USA, it will not be because he spent money on television ads. He can only succeed through gaining the assent of voters who were moved by his ads and other considerations (his general demeanor, debate style, and so on). Money fosters speech; it does not guarantee electoral success.

Finally, in this case, as always, more (money spent on) speech is the answer to (money spent on) speech. Gov. Romney and President Obama, I suspect, understand that truth and are ready to act on it. The rest will be up to voters, as it should be.