On NRO today there is a wonderful piece by Alexander Benard, discussing the prospect we face of becoming like (better to say “much more like”) the social welfare states of Europe. It’s evident that Obama and his collectivistic allies are serious about transforming the United States into a big version of Britain or Sweden, where the omnipotent state takes care of all the citizens’ needs. What’s that like? Benard, who lived in Europe for quite a few years, has a good idea. It transforms the people, sapping their energy and sense of personal responsibility.

With regard to higher education, Benard writes, “it is far more common for students to remain enrolled for years and years, trying one field and then another, with no sense or urgency or purpose. The atmosphere in the classroom suffers, with students failing to take their academic responsibilities seriously. Why would they, when everything is delivered to them at no cost?” American higher education already suffers from that malady; it will just get much worse.

The Marxists thought they could improve society by having the state take over responsibility for just about everything, but instead of “the new Soviet man,” they got workers who said, “the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work.” The more heavily politicized a nation is, the less productivity and innovation you find.

In his new book Applied Economics, Thomas Sowell writes about a professor who long ago got him to go beyond “stage one” thinking by asking him, after he had just offered up a youthful plan for solving some social ill, “And then what happens?” It’s evident that no professor ever challenged Barack Obama to think through the long-range consequences of his big plans.