When Barack Obama responded to the Ohio plumber who didn’t want his taxes raised by saying that he wanted to “spread the wealth around,” I wanted to tell the Illinois senator to spread his own wealth around.
Senator Obama, in a rare moment of candor, all but told “Joe the plumber” that his wealth should be seized in the name of equity. Their personal encounter this past Sunday played out one of the old themes of democratic politics: the appeal to the many to take from the few. It’s traditionally an easy sell in democratic regimes.
Despite Obama’s implication to the contrary, however, it doesn’t represent much in the way of change.
The personal income tax, the federal government’s main source of revenue, is collected overwhelmingly from a relative handful of Americans. Indeed, the most recent IRS data shows that the top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 40 percent of all income taxes. That means the top 1 percent paid about the same as the bottom 95 percent, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. The bottom 50 percent paid just 3 percent.
Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. “If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city,” Aristotle warned.
The Founders of the United States shared Aristotle’s worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be, as James Madison put it, “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” Madison and others therefore made it a “first object of government” to protect personal property from unjust confiscation.
The Democratic leaders have been going through their playbook and have decided that class warfare is the way to go. Take advantage of the open sewer of economic ignorance that flows through America’s consciousness (thanks to generations of government education) and cast this as a grand battle between the evil rich and the glorious poor.
Does class warfare work? Does a hog love slop? There is an underlying current of animosity – even hatred – for those who are perceived as being rich that is far more intense than you might expect.
The left has mastered the dark art of conducting a class-warfare campaign. First and foremost, you must dispel any notion that those who are rich actually got that way through hard work. Americans at all income levels admire hard work and almost universally believe that those who work hard should be rewarded. To make the class-warfare efforts bear fruit, the left must convince the middle- and lower-income Americans that they are the only ones who are really working for their income.
This is why you constantly hear Democrats refer to lower- and middle-income earners as “working people” or “working families.” The unspoken premise here is that if you are in the upper-income levels, you don’t work. You’re not one of the “working people.” To the class warrior, the only true work is work that is done with muscle. Working with your brain isn’t work…
After the class warriors have convinced the middle- and lower-income groups that they are the only ones actually working for their money, their next step is to show them that those horrible Republican tax cuts will actually take money out of their pockets.
In a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution column in opposition to the Bush economic plan, Dean Baker wrote “Bush wants to take $650 billion from the public and give the bulk of it to the richest 1 percent of the country.” Note, please, the two key words there: “Take” and “give.” The Republicans want to “take” your money and “give” it to the rich.
Here’s where that inconceivable economic ignorance nurtured by our government schools comes into play. A tax cut is a cut in tax rates. When payday arrives, the employer takes less money out of the worker’s check for federal taxes. No money is being taken from anyone. The money is simply staying in the pocket of the person who earned it…
There is some indication that people are actually tiring of the Democrat’s class-warfare tactics. After all, don’t most people hope to become rich one day too? And when they do reach those rarified income levels, wouldn’t they like to keep as much of the money they work for as they can?
Well … not to worry. If the class-warfare thing doesn’t work, there’s always race.
However much it is claimed that Jefferson (and most of the other Founders) were secular deists, there is no escaping that Jefferson’s writings are permeated with God consciousness. It’s true that Christ does not figure into his political writings, but God does, and frequently. What gave Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries the right to be so, well, revolutionary? What gave them the right to start this country? Whence came their idea that the people should rule instead of a king or a parliament of nobles? How could they claim that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was “unalienable,” meaning beyond the power of a government either to grant or deny? Why did they talk about human rights to begin with and where do rights comes from?
According to Thomas Jefferson and his fellows, the ultimate answer to all those questions was simple: God.
However true it was that commercial interests were prominent in the minds of Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and all the rest, only cynics of today’s postmodern day say that the religious convictions of the Founders were not central to their determination to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for a single claim: the self-evident truth that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain rights that may not be rightfully denied them.
That was the whole justification for the American revolution: the rights of the people in America came from God, not from the British crown. When the Crown usurped them, it was the God-given right of the people of America to cast off the crown and determine their own mode of governance. That is what the Declaration of Independence says, and that is what the Founders did. [James] Freeman wrote, “If you could sum up Jefferson’s political views in one sentence, you would say: He believed that God and reason allow people to rule themselves.”
…I shudder to think what our civil life would be like if our Constitution required things of us rather than limited the power of government. Any list of obligations can be twisted into tyranny, whether by civil or religious authority. It is always too easy for the law, whether civil or religious, to cease being a guide and begin being a slavemaster.
“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.” –Benjamin Franklin
“The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.” –John F. Kennedy
Being a conservative in America means conserving the principles of the American revolution… It means fighting to uphold the classical liberalism of the founding from assault by liberalism of a different sort.
Liberals love to think of themselves as intellectual and nuanced, but liberalism is incredibly simplistic. It’s nothing more than “childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues.” Very seldom does any issue that doesn’t involve pandering to their supporters boil down at its core level to more than feeling “nice” or “mean” to liberals. This makes liberals ill equipped to deal with complex issues.
Since liberals tend to support or oppose policies based on how those policies make them feel about themselves, they do very little intellectual examination of whether the policies they advocate work or not. That’s because it doesn’t matter to them whether the policy is effective or not; it matters whether advocating the policy makes them feel “good” or “bad,” “compassionate” or “stingy,” “nice” or “mean.”
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* Why are so many liberals hostile to religion? Because religion sets rules and tells people that if they break those rules, they’re sinning! That keeps people from doing things that make them feel good and telling people that they’re sinning makes them feel bad.
* Why are so many liberals hostile to the troops? Because the troops tend to be conservative (evil) and because they’re out killing people and breaking things (which would make most liberals feel like bad people).
* Why are so many liberals unpatriotic? It makes liberals feel morally superior to rant about what’s wrong with their own country. Plus, as an added bonus, people from other nations agree with them and that makes them feel good as well.
* Why do so many liberals have so much confidence in the government? With liberals, it’s not about whether something works or not, it’s about how it makes them feel.
So, they can look at the IRS, post office, airport security, FEMA, and ICE and then say, “These are the same people we want handling our health care” — because it’s about making themselves feel good that they got people insured, not about getting the best system of health care for everyone.
* Why do so many liberals have so much confidence in the UN? See the previous answer and apply it on a global scale. The UN may be corrupt, anti-American, and utterly incompetent, but it makes liberals feel good to think that they’re sending money to the poor in some godforsaken country (sure, it’s not their money and almost all the money may be wasted or stolen, but it’s the thought that counts).
* Why are liberals so hostile to successful people who don’t happen to be celebrities, trial lawyers, or big donors to the Democratic Party? Again, this is another great opportunity for them to feel morally superior. They can feel like good people because they want to give money to the poor — granted, not their money, but rich people’s money. The rich have so much and the poor have so little, so why shouldn’t liberals take it from them and then pat themselves on the back for their compassion?
Once you understand the basics of how liberals think, you can understand everything that they do. Granted, there will be a few exceptions, but if the vast herd of liberals is doing something that doesn’t seem to fit the template, it’s either because there’s money or sex involved, they’re doing what they have to do to win politically, they’re taking that position because they refuse to be on the same side as conservatives, or there’s something going on you don’t know about and it’s not really an exception.
