Obama's Bismarck?

Bismarck is burning. Not like the 1991 documentary film about debauchery in NYC, and certainly not the way fires of revolution have engulfed the Muslim Middle East. 

I toyed with entitling this post "Sink The Bismarck (Again)", but the famous German WWII battleship's fate carries less resonance in our culture with every passing year. 

Or how about "A Tale of 3 Bismarcks", given that the city and the ship were both named after the famous non-Socialist who invented the modern welfare state?

Today Bismarck—and all of North Dakota—truly is on fire. In a Chamber of Commerce kind of way. With Otto von Bismarck's cradle-to-grave Statism finally dying all over the world (see Greece, Ireland and Spain), and with the warship still mired on the bottom of the Atlantic, the town on the banks of the Missouri River is the only one of the three Bismarcks still kickin'. And how.

What was the unemployment rate in your state last month? Probably not 3.7% like North Dakota's. Taxes there are moderate, and it's a right-to-work state, attractive to new employers. The state's median household income has increased 17% in the last decade, triple the rate of Massachussetts and more than 10 times California's. Oh, and North Dakota has the lowest percentage of non-religious people of any state, and the most churches per capita. Coincidence?

In his Washington DC palace today, Otto von Obama sits grinding his teeth that he cannot exert his will in North Dakota as he can in Alaska, Utah, Wyoming and off the coasts of Louisiana, California and other states. But why can't the King of America issue edicts to stop the production of shale oil up by the 49th Parallel? Because the land up there isn't owned by The Crown. 

With so much of their land in private hands, North Dakotans are free to develop it for their good and ours. Their lignite coal provides 90% of the state's electricity, and the oil-fields up there are helping fill our gas tanks, while bringing wealth to the free people in and around Bismarck. 

I hope in the next election we'll chart a course for our ship of state more along the lines of our friends up yonder, and reject the path of the the man who brought the world National Health Insurance.