Hasta la vista, baby

A policeman’s son from a mining town near Graz — no one ever made a movie about Johann Strauss teaching the belles of Europe to dance the waltz amidst the wedding-cake finery of Graz — Mr. Schwarzenegger grew up in a home without a telephone, a refrigerator or even indoor plumbing. His dream of getting to America by becoming a champion bodybuilder? Ridiculous! Later, his dream of becoming a movie actor — a superstar, no less? With that accent? Absurd!

Then, once Mr. Schwarzenegger had accomplished both those impossible dreams — and married into the Kennedy family and became a millionaire businessman, just for good measure — he thought he could become governor of California. So he did. On his first try.

Talk about a guy who’s proved that America remains the land of opportunity — that what people really need to succeed isn’t government handouts, but rather the freedom to make their own decisions, to keep what they earn and invest it as they see fit. This guy was a walking poster boy for the land of opportunity. And, as is so often the case (see Ayn Rand or Christopher Hitchens) it took the outsider, who had lived the other way, to remind us how greatly we should cherish that heritage of freedom.

Then, unfortunately, Mr. Schwarzenegger went to Sacramento. Now, once again, he displays his chameleon-like talent to make himself over into whatever proves necessary to succeed.

Two years ago, Arnold placed on the ballot four initiatives, asking California voters to back up his effort to change the way government does business in California — reversing the trend toward ever-expanding government dominated by public employee unions.

Voters turned him down. So, once again, Arnold changed. He has met the enemy, and he is now them.

At the California State Republican Convention Sept. 7, Arnold Schwarzenegger warned “We are dying at the box office” and urged the Republican Party to move even further to the left, following the lead he set when he made deals with Democratic lawmakers to outlaw low-wage jobs and embrace measures that will further cripple his state’s economy in the interest of “fighting global warming.”

But truth and principle are not subject to majority vote. The majority cannot vote or wish away the real-world consequences of tax-hungry, nanny-state collectivism, which strips the worker and entrepreneur of the incentive for his innovation and his labor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger knows how to be popular, God bless him. But does he really not realize that — down through the ages — the man who we come to wish we’d listened to is seldom the one who played to the cheers of the mercurial crowd, but rather the sometimes lonely man who kept reminding us of the course of virtue?