Eat the Rich?

Todd Frankel asks, Do the rich deserve what they get?

It’s a provocative question, especially in egalitarian America. I also have a problem with “deserve,” as I do with almost all of the article, but it’s a fairly cogent argument for “social justice.”

As you have greater inequality, you have a greater and greater risk of distorting democracy. If only a small group of people hold more and more resources and money, they're really able to put a lot of pressure on the system to play out their agenda alone. So widening inequality really is detrimental to the principles of democracy. (STL Today)

Progressives forged a social contract over 100 years ago

The wealthy were feeling increasingly threatened by the grimy hordes of unschooled hayseeds and boisterous immigrants crowding east coast cities to work the factories. The kids needed education and the adults needed economic security. There really was generalized fear of peasant revolts or worse, a growing permanent underclass given over to a life of crime.  Gangs of uneducated poor marauding rich neighborhoods like packs of feral beasts was a specter that haunted the nation into governmental noblesse oblige.

This has turned into a crass form of “fire insurance.” Keep the money flowing, and they won’t burn the place down. While I disagree with the class warfare rhetoric, we are facing conditions ripe for community troublemakers to mobilize millions demanding their “fair share.” We’ve built an entitlement culture and you can’t blame the entitled. Government has encouraged them.

People don’t need handouts and grand social programs. We need schools that teach useful skills, economic opportunity, and a strong dollar that holds its value so that life savings are still worth something when we get to our old age. Those three things will not guarantee equal outcomes (nothing will), but they will give everyone an equal shot in this most prosperous, egalitarian, and upwardly mobile country in the history of the world.

Progressive Mistrust of The People

President Barack Obama’s budget willinclude $10.7 billion to build a nationwide wireless network foremergency workers and $5 billion to help Americans get mobileaccess to high-speed Internet service. (Bloomberg)

Like all progressive schemes, it sounds good, but there's a rat in there somewhere...

“High-speed Internet allows small businesses to reachmarkets beyond the one that they’re in, in the next town, in thenext state or even in a different country,” FederalCommunications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said in aFeb. 8 interview. “We need to take that as seriously as we tookelectricity and telephone service in the 20th century.”

They declare the internet a public utility and they now own and control it. Their other angle is to put the internet on “the public airwaves” via WiMax, and the FCC now has a clear case for jurisdiction and control.

Also, businesses have discovered and leveraged the power of the internet all on their own.  They don't need Obama's Kommisars "helping" them.

This displays the fundamental fallacy of progressivism:  If government doesn't do it, it won't get done.

John Stossell quickly punctures this BS balloon, by explaining spontaneous order...

“Another way to understand spontaneous order is to think about the simple pencil. Leonard Read, who established the Foundation for Economic Education, wrote an essay titled, "I, Pencil," which began, "(N)o single person on the face of this earth knows how to make (a pencil)."

That sounds absurd -- but think about it. No one person can make a pencil. Vast numbers of people participate in making the materials that become a pencil: the wood, the brass, the graphite, the rubber for the eraser, the paint and so on. 

Then go back another step, to the people who make the saws and machinery that are used to make the materials that go into a pencil. And before that, people mine iron to make the steel that makes the machines that make the materials that go into a pencil. It's all without central direction, without these people even knowing they are all working ultimately to make pencils. 

Thousands of people mining, melting, cutting, assembling, packing, selling, shipping -- and yet you can buy pencils for a few pennies each.”  (Stossel – Spontaneous Order)

This is how the world works, and no single entity acts as a controller.  It is spontaneous order brought about by millions of self-interested people.  Not only does it work, it has worked to bring the price down on every consumer good imaginable.  Our homes are filled with luxuries our parents and grandparents only dreamed of.

I recommend you go read Leonard Read's little essay.  It only takes five minutes.  Better yet, have your kids read it as well.  I'll leave you with an excerpt:

Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. 

Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person’s home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one’s range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!  (I, Pencil – Leonard Read)

Bonus question.  Why does domestically-produced milk cost more per gallon that gasoline that is pumped out of the ground as crude overseas, shipped around the world, refined and shipped again to gas stations all across the nation?

Progressive Fascination with Choo Choo Trains

George Will explains why our progressive overlords are so obsessed with high speed rail: It’s about modifying our behavior.

OK, I get that...

What I don’t understand is how the rank and file (including fellow bloggers in Left Blogistan) can simply gobble up this nonsense and regurgitate it.

High speed rail, global warming, electric cars and a plethora of unproven theories taken as gospel belie a lack of thinking and critical analysis on their part. I’m not calling them dumb, just naïve and incredibly credulous. Even in densely-packed Europe, where rail travel is popular, it cannot make a profit and must be subsidized by government.

Back to George Will. He’s right. It’s about social engineering…

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. (George Will)

Further reading:
Robert Samuelson – High Speed Rail Folly
Ronald Utt – High Speed Rail Financial Disaster

Progressives of All Parties are Destroying America

The progressives of all parties who hijacked the federal bureaucracy have just about destroyed us. Sure, they started with good intentions, but we’re now morally, intellectually and financially bankrupt.

WASHINGTON—The federal budget deficit will reach a record of nearly $1.5 trillion in 2011 due to the weak economy, higher spending and fresh tax cuts, congressional budget analysts said, in a stark warning that will drive the growing battle over government spending and taxation.

As a percentage of the nation's economic output, the 9.8% deficit would be the second-largest since World War II, behind only the 10% level in 2009.

"This report is a reflection of the gross mismanagement of our nation's finances," said Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.). "It should make every American think twice about the latest calls by the president to increase spending at a time when Washington can clearly not afford to pay its bills." . (WSJ – Deficit)

We’ve spent ourselves to the brink of bankruptcy, but most sickening of all is that we have nothing to show for it.

Social Security is going broke…

New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.

This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. (El Lay Times)

Obamacare will not save any money, and no, you can’t keep your coverage…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare's independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

The landmark legislation probably won't hold costs down, and it won't let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. (AP – Medicare Official Doubts)

Meanwhile, HHS is handing out Obamacare waivers, 733 and counting …

Over at HUD, they’re having a party with our money and creating failure, which justifies requests for even more taxpayer funds…

Even by Washington standards, $26 billion is a lot of money.

That’s the amount spent by taxpayers annually to provide housing for needy Americans. But there’s significant evidence that some of the monies have been poorly spent for years.

A joint investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development has struggled to combat theft, corruption, and mismanagement in the more than 3,000 public housing agencies nationwide it funds, and particularly inside the172 that HUD considers the most troubled. (Public Housing – Private Frustration)

Now who want to stand up and deny that the progressive house of cards is collapsing?

Progressive Logic & Compound Interest II

There have been many calls from progressives for the government to slash military retiree benefits and an independent commission's call for an integrated active and reserve retirement system would put an end to immediate retired pay for active duty members after 20 years.

Under the proposal, retired pay would begin at age 62 for those with 10 years of service, age 60 for those with 20 years, and age 57 for those with 30 years. "There are people who see military retirement, with its immediate annuity as very generous at a time when pensions are disappearing in the private sector" said a house aide, who asked not to be identified.  (Army Times)

Let us take for an example an E-8 with 25 years of service from 1985-2010
In his last three years of service he earns $4499 (as an E-7), $4786, and $4948 in base pay. His high 3 average (which they use to calculate retirement) is $4744 and of that sum he takes home in retired pay 62.5% or $2965 a month, $35,889 a year. Sure seems like a lot, if he lives to the age of 75 the government will have paid him $1,076,400 over 30 years.

Suppose instead this upstanding young soldier had put $100 a month with 200% matching contributions (that's what my company does) for his first 10 years, $150/mo for his next 10 years, and $200/mo for his last five years. The average annual return from the S&P 500 from 1985-2010 was 12.43%. At the end of ten years, with $3600 a year invested, he has $65,000, increasing the contribution to $5400 at the end of twenty years he has $309065, and saving $7200 for the last five he ends with $601,348.

If he moves his portfolio into a more conservative investment earning 6% and is allowed to withdraw the equivalent of his retirement pay at age 45 ($35880/yr) he will still continue earning money on the principal. Withdrawing $35880 a year, he has over the course of time: 5-yr $590,342, 10-yr $575,612, 20-yr $529,525, and at the end of his life at 75 he leaves $446,974 to his heirs. Now if the government had done the same thing with the money it needed to pay for his retirement benefit, almost half a million dollars would go back in the fund. Some will die at 65 some will die at 90, it is these variations that allow the fund to cover everyone.

Effectively the military retirement system is the equivalent of a 401K without the employee contribution and without the age penalty restrictions. With military, federal, state, and other institutional pensions the same general equivalency can be made, the difference between a public and private pension is the government is the fund manager as opposed to a private company. What's sad is that for many years employees with the option to participate in government or private pension options chose the government because they trusted them more, today we see how far that trust was misplaced.


Bernie Madoff is Jealous
The federal, state, and local governments engaged in pension fund management practices that had they been civilian would have landed them in the cell next to Bernie Madoff, and today the progressives blame the retirees for being greedy. Little blame falls on the idolized political candymen who handed out unfunded or underfunded social programs like kibble. Politicians gambled and lost, now it is time to pay the piper and they are more than happy to throw their constituencies to the wolves.

Ask yourself...who's to blame? The retired Army Major, statehouse Secretary, Fireman, Schoolteacher? Or the politicians who played tricks with funding and money that would land them in jail if they worked for IBM? Our politicians pay off one credit card with another, and the Repo-man is catching up.

Progressive Logic & Compound Interest

Social Security by the Numbers

There has been a lot of talk on the left and right about slashing pensions, medical benefits, and other retirement plans of folks who are already retired, or who have contributed into those plans for many, many years.

"I would like to see any Tea Party member cut their Medicare Card. Or not to cash their SS check. Or quit their government job (whether state or federal) or refuse any benefits associated with a past or present government job."

"Federal, state, and corporate pensions should be substantially reduced if not eliminated entirely."

"A quick fix to all government budgets is to stop paying pensions and benefits."

"All pension should be abolished ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Including federal government." [sic]

You can opt out of the benefits, but not the taxes
These comments are not unique and are reflective of the problem with the progressive mindset. If you are against their programs, you ought to opt out... don't collect that social security check of which you are paying 6.2% (12.4% if you are self-employed) on the first $106,280 of income. Of course in the progressive mind, while you ought to opt out of the benefit, there is no opting out of the taxes. They seem to think that Social Security is some form of government largesse as opposed to a rather shitty return on a government mandated investment.

$252,246.35 in...
Let us perform a simple mathematical exercise on a hypothetical entrepreneur who started working at the age of 21 and who retires at age 66 on December 31,2010. This person, born in 1945 started working in 1966 and earned the maximum FICA taxable income through this period. This person, over his 45 year work history, would have paid $252,246.35 in Old Age Survivors Disability Insurance (OASDI) on his income.

The total is based on social security tables and breaks down all the payments, year by year. OASDI subtotal column used, because since 1994 there is no upper limit on what you are taxable on for Hospital Insurance (HI). In 1993, where the OASDI figure is $7142.40, our subject would have paid the maximum $3915 in HI, in 1994 there would be no maximum and our subject would have paid an HI amount based upon his total income. http://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/t2a4.pdf

$269,724 out!
Now, this person who is 66 years old, if a white male, can expect to live to 75.6 years of age, that's another 114 months. The maximum benefit payout is $2366 a month for a total annual income of $28392, so in the remainder of his life (ignoring cost of living increases) the social security payout will be $269,724 presuming he gets the full amount without any income offsets. AH HA you progressives exclaim... evil white conservative guy is stealing $17,478.


What if you put the money in a bank account instead?
But compound interest makes it a more interesting story. If our subject wasn't very investment savvy and had simply stuck all that FICA money in a savings account at 1% interest, he would have ended up with $285,833.49, more than enough to cover his predicted withdrawals of $2366/mo and his heirs would have received $30,062 (remember, the principal keeps earning interest). Had he invested conservatively and received an average return of 4% when he retired his portfolio would have been worth $440,270 and his heirs would have received $299,960.34... as it stands now, the SSA pockets all that money (or they would if the government didn't play funny money games).

What if you invest it?
Suppose instead that our subject had invested all that money in stocks, from 1966 until the day he retired. The Standard & Poor's annual average rate of return from 1966-2010 was 10.95%, had our subject invested wisely his portfolio upon his retirement would have been worth $1,621,653.73 and if he continued to earn 10.95% interest and withdrew only the maximum allowable under social security ($2366), when he died the portfolio would have been worth $4,074,116.83. So you can see, your government largesse has screwed our poor fellow and his heirs out of $3,804,392.83

So instead of not cashing my social security check, how 'bout I fold it into sharp corners and shove it up your...

That's the problem with progressives, they take your money and expect you to be obsequiously grateful as they dole out the pittance they think you deserve.

Compound Interest calculated using:
http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calculator.htm

End the Welfare State - Towards a New Morality

The Progressive Welfare State encourages irresponsible behavior and enslaves people, making them wards of the taxpayer and eventually rendering them helpless, and hopeless.  It would be less destructive to end all government assistance.

I tire of discussions dealing with how to incentivize the stupid, the irresponsible, the indigent and the downright lazy.  Our welfare system has produced multi-generational poverty and people too fat to leave their government-provided dwellings.  These government slums are gang-infested anyway, so it's not just the morbidly obese who are veritable prisoners in these cinderblock jungles.

Government concerns itself with so many questions.  How do we keep people off of drugs, get kids to go to school, make parents responsible, reduce crime...

A shared code of morality used to take care of much of this, but shame is dead and virtue sneered at.  We're left scratching our heads wondering how we can get irresponsible people to change their destructive behavior.

Natural Consequences

It's time to knock down the taxpayer-funded wall between irresponsible behavior and natural consequences.  You don't work you don't eat.  Blow your mind out on drugs and booze, and you will be living off the charity of others for the rest of your life--Uncle Sam won't help you.  Crank out all the kids you want, but you're paying for them.  You need food and housing?  Work for it like the majority of your fellow citizens do!

The safety net is now a hammock.  The progressive nanny state has spawned multi-generations of innocent victims who no longer know how to care for themselves, and it has also spawned legions of deadbeats gaming the system.  Left unchecked it will destroy America; it is already depriving us of the human capital we need to advance the economy. 

Cut off all public assistance

No housing, no welfare checks, no food stamps.  This would be a wonderful boon to those enslaved by progressivism.  People would learn again to be thrifty and self-sufficient.  Generous Americans would put their money in local charities that are better able to sort the deadbeats from the truly needy.  Best of all, families would grow closer and help one another, as it should be.  The moral choice between buying myself a new car or helping my broken down old Dad is crystal clear.

The beauty of this plan is that the incentives are self-evident and the consequences are natural

If sitting on your ass all day swilling sugared drinks and playing XBox instead of going to school has make you fat and stupid, you're going to have a harder time finding a job.  You will be unable to buy food and shelter, and you will be saddled with health problems.  That's not a nice life to look forward to, but at least you will serve as a warning to others.

WWJD?

Some will call this a cruel policy.  I was called all but un-Christian by a liberal in Left Blogistan for suggesting this in a thread.  WWJD?  I doubt he would advocate a government-run shakedown operation to "spread it around."   He commands us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the widows and orphans...  families used to do this until Uncle Sam stepped in, short-circuited our charitable activities and shook us down to build a multibillion dollar Frankenstein's monster.

This is why I say progressives are not evil.  They are merely delusional pollyannas who eschew time-tested ways and ignore human nature, instead preferring "modern," "scientific" nostrums cooked up by eggheads.  The more pointy-headed the intellectualism, the better.

They had a good run through the 20th century, but reality has a way of reasserting itself.  The progressive dream has turned into a nightmare, as it spawns an ever growing criminality, irresponsibility, dependency and despondency.  Time to try what's worked since the dawn of time.

A government check lasts days.  Virtue and character are timeless.

Live and Let Die: The Creepy Side of Progressivism

With progressive screams of “Palin is an accessory to murder!” still fouling the air, a story emerges from Philadelphia of a macabre chamber of horrors sponsored, funded and championed by progressives. 

The gory details of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s charnel house read like something out of a Wes Craven movie. Sadly, it’s all real, right here in America.

A Twisted Idea of Morality
The morality of a woman’s right to choose trumping human life is twisted and repulsive. It is important to recall that this dubious concept was developed by the likes of racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger. A progressive hero, Sanger’s work was referenced by Nazis as justification for killing not just Jews, but gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, the elderly and generally anyone else who was unwanted by society or deemed undesirable.




Think I’m being harsh? Let’s try out one of the abortion advocates’ favorite thought exercises, The Fireman’s Dilemma:

You’re a fireman rushing into a burning building with only seconds to spare. You spy a three-year old girl on the right, and a petri dish containing 20 fertilized human embryos on the left. You only have time to save one, which do you save? One life or 20?

It’s a ridiculous hypothetical trap set to spring on pro-lifers. Its purpose is to suck us into the depraved world of "moral" judgments where we weigh the value of one human life against another. Questions such as this are employed by philosophers to plumb the depths of a thought or idea, but treating it as if it has relevance in real life is absurd. And when has something like this ever really happened? Even if the hypothetical fireman had time to discern that the dish contained fertilized ova, his natural instinct would be to grab the fearful, crying girl and go. In real life, you do what you can.

The Devil’s Dilemma
Here’s the creepy, progressive eugenics part of this thought experiment: What if the choice were between an old person and a young person? Do you save a severely handicapped man or the beautiful and healthy young woman? Does a Chinese research scientist with a 180 IQ get saved instead of a cute little Mexican boy who is illiterate and struggles in his special ed classes?

See where this leads? Human beings have no right to evaluate the worthiness of other human beings and decide who lives and who dies. It is a slippery slope to hell greased with the blood of “undesirables.”

To the pro-choice crowd I ask, how can you condemn this man? 
How can you call this murder, but killing the baby inside the mother OK? Do your morals really hinge on such a thin legal distinction?

Based on pro-abortion logic, this man should not be tried for murdering the babies because the mothers wanted these children dead and he ran a legal practice that did just that.

This is the legal fiction (as Rick Santorum calls it) we have in this country: If the mother does not want the baby, he is tissue and can be aborted. If he is fortunate enough to be wanted by the mother, the law confers person-hood on him and it is murder to kill him.

Pro-abortion advocates cannot call for Gosnell being charged with murder without contradicting their own stance.

Safe, Legal and Rare
The Margaret Sanger Eugenics wing of the Democratic party likes to repeat over and over how abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” warning us of the dangers of illegal, back alley abortions that harm and kill women if we outlawed the practice. Well, abortion is legal. So tell us how this house of horrors happened?

http://www.slate.com/id/2281812/

Margaret Sanger, Sterilization and the Swastika

Black Genocide – How Planned Parenthood duped America

A Dark Past – Jonah Goldberg

Philly.com – Gruesome Details

America in the Progressive Stranglehold

What is Progressivism? 

Progressivism springs from a basic human urge to sort, organize, and move the human lot along the road of progress.  Life is messy, and progressives are intent on cleaning it up, usually shouting "science!" to justify their latest assault on the sovereignty of the individual. 

Conservatism does not rule the day here.  We are living in a progressive age ushered in over 100 years ago.


Professor Thomas G. West explains progressivism's roots:

A growing body of scholars -- including John Marini, Charles Kesler, R.J. Pestritto and my colleague Tiffany Miller -- finds the origins of today’s liberalism in the Progressive era. Leading intellectuals of that day openly repudiated the principles of the American founding. In that group, Wilson is often highlighted because he was uniquely both a major politician and an academic.

Referring to his own time period, Wilson continues,

“Life is so complicated that we are not dealing with the old conditions, and that the law has to step in and create new conditions under which we may live.”

In other words, the Founders’ idea of protecting property rights is outmoded. We need a government that intrudes into and even micromanages the private sphere. 

Wilson anticipates today’s liberals by telling Americans to follow the example of Europe:

“In the city of Glasgow, for example (Glasgow is one of the model cities of the world), they have made up their minds that the entries and the hallways of [apartment buildings] are public streets. Therefore, ... the lighting department of the city sees to it that the lights are abundantly lighted.”

Glasgow is Wilson’s ideal. Government knows best. (NY Times - Government in Every Part of Life)

Think of Obama as a Wilson only without the professorship, scholarly writing, or intellectual firepower.  All he's got is a hopium-fueled cult of personality redolent of charismatic third world maximum leaders.  Nonetheless, he harbors the same Wilsonian belief in the power of the state over the petty concerns of the individual

George Will does an excellent job explaining why progressives persist in their pseudo-intellectual utopianism:

The point of progressivism is that the people must progress up from their backwardness. They cannot do so unless they are pulled toward the light by a government composed of the enlightened - experts coolly devoted to facts and science.

The progressive agenda is actually legitimated by the incomprehension and anger it elicits: If the people do not resent and resist what is being done on their behalf, what is being done is not properly ambitious. If it is comprehensible to its intended beneficiaries, it is the work of insufficiently advanced thinkers.

Of course the masses do not understand that the only flaw of the stimulus was its frugality, and that Obamacare's myriad coercions are akin to benevolent parental discipline. (George Will - Progressives)

Progressivism is not pretty, but like a car wreck or the face of a benevolent dictator, we must look upon it and learn what it is in order to save ourselves.  We must, before its practitioners declare the hallways of our houses a public thoroughfare that can only be lighted by government-approved means.

Oops!  Too late...  They've already banned the incandescent bulb...

Further reading
CSM - Progressives
Heritage Foundation - The Progressive Movement

This is Progress?

A law not based upon natural law is no law at all...

"To give or make laws, Madame, is a task which God has left to no one. Ah! What is man, to think himself capable of dictating laws to beings whom he knows not?"
-- Mercier de la Rivière

 

Progressives are not evil

It springs from a noble urge, this liberal love of big government, copious laws and an army of bureaucrats to direct and enforce it all. Progressivism seeks to straighten the curves, flatten the hills and fill in the valleys. It’s a naive pursuit of equality and fairness.

Power differentials and inequality have always existed and they always will

Acting otherwise is plowing the sea. The rich and well-connected will always have more power than the poor and alienated. That’s just the way the world works.

But nature is the great leveler. Sloth and complacency often stalk riches and power. Other deadly sins like pride and greed can cause a precipitous slide in fortune or a downright crash to earth. Meanwhile, being poor and powerless brings hunger, and hunger spurs industriousness. Industry leads to riches, or at least to a material improvement to one’s life.

Even now, with social mobility apparently slowing, over 80% of those born into the lowest economic quintile in America will move out of it by adulthood.

Shaw Kenaw, a very smart and quite articulate liberal, recently accused me of being nostalgic for yesteryear and longing to turn back the clock to a simpler time. Nonsense. This has nothing to do with yesterday and everything to do with tomorrow. How shall we govern ourselves going forward? More laws, more bureaucracy? It hasn’t reduced child poverty or improved our education.

More and bigger government saw short-term crashes and panics turn into depressions and double-dip recessions, stagflation, demise of domestic manufacturing, tech bubbles, dot com bubbles, housing market misery. This is progress?

Further Reading:

Murray Rothbard-  With or Without God:  Natural Law and Property Rights

Murray Rothbard - Liberty and Property:  The Levellers

Progressives Hate the US Constitution

Progressives hate the tea parties and they hate the constitution.  These are the two principle impediments preventing them from finishing what Woodrow Wilson and FDR started.

"The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness."

-- Woodrow Wilson

Liberal Propaganda Deconstructed

The liberal propagandists in the press tried branding us racists, but such blatant attacks don't work anymore, so they have adopted more subtle tactics.  EJ Dionne is the latest to deploy a deft combination I call the non-sequitur straw man.  Follow me as I deconstruct a piece of progressive propaganda.

Unlike God, the founders left us an amendment process

Dionne's neat rhetorical trick asserts that we tea partiers equate the US Constitution with the Holy Bible.  This is a neat trick because yes, we believe the constitution must be followed just as The Bible must be.  His unstated non-sequitur avers that since we equate the constitution with The Bible, we must also equate the founders with God Almighty.  This sets up the straw man argument that we worship the constitution and the founders.  It's a straw man because unlike God, the founders left us an amendment process.

Dionne starts out with an innocuous statement...

I offer the Republicans two cheers for their fealty to their professed ideals. We badly need a full-scale debate over what the Constitution is, means and allows -- and how Americans have argued about these questions since the beginning of the republic. This provision should be the springboard for a discussion all of us should join.

He plants a few little seeds of doubt there, but so far so good.  Next comes the premise for the non-sequitur straw man...

From its inception, the tea party movement has treated the nation's great founding document not as the collection of shrewd political compromises that it is, but as the equivalent of sacred scripture.

Note that this statement contains two elements, the first is plainly stated, the second one tacitly follows:  1) The constitution is a document like The Bible that government must obey; 2) Unstated:  If the constitution is the equivalent of sacred scripture, then the founders are the equivalent of an infallible God. 

Number 2 is the strawman that does not follow from the first statement.  Since EJ cannot argue with statement #1, he invents the non-sequitur strawman, statement #2, and then knocks it down: 

Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we "can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders were not outside history. ... They were as enmeshed in historical circumstances as we are, they had no special divine insight into politics, and their thinking was certainly not free of passion, ignorance, and foolishness."

See how he sets up the straw man so he can knock down those crazy rightwingers who want to tea party like it's 1776?  EJ Dionne is too smart to really believe that we deify the founders, so all I can conclude is that he is engaging in a deliberate propaganda smear.   

Progressives are not out to destroy the tea parties; they have bigger fish to fry:

An examination of the Constitution that views it as something other than the books of Genesis or Leviticus would be good for the country.

Yes, let's knock that dusty bit of outmoded parchment off its pedestal.  Good progressives like EJ Dionne and Ezra Klein are just following in the footsteps of Progressivism's great grand daddy, Woodrow Wilson.  They can’t quite muster the intellectual starch of this racist scholar and failed statesman, but it’s just the right pitch for the MSNBC crowd.  It's neo-progressivism reduced to valley girl vapidity:

"The constitution is, like, so old, and full of, like, so many old words that are, like, spelled funny.  Bogus!  It's like totally irrelevant, totally!"

They want a living, breathing constitution, to which Dr. Walter E. Williams has the perfect riposte:

How many people would like to play me poker and have the rules be "living"? Depending on "evolving standards," maybe my two pair could beat your flush.

Indeed.  Those who crave power and control must have "living rules."  Oh, and they also want to hold the book, because some animals are more equal than others.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/03/celebrating_the_new_gop_majority_108404.html

Progressives Need Victims

I'm not ready to vote for Sara Palin for president, but I love how she unhinges the left.  Sarah is successful, accomplished, independent, has a beautiful family and a hunky husband who doesn't mind playing Mr. Mom.  Everything liberals hate in a woman, explains the smart and sexy S.E Cupp...

nothing raises the ire of cynical liberals more than a happy-go-lucky, totally unburdened, freethinking and self-assured conservative woman who has everything she wants and then some. And without anyone's help.

Liberalism, after all, needs to imagine an unhappy populace. Passing sweeping entitlement programs and convincing voters that big government is the answer only works if people are frustrated with their stations in life. (NY Daily News - S.E. Cupp)

Progressives need people on the welfare rolls, people without health insurance, hungry people, marginalized people speaking foreign languages, bitter and angry resentful people, homeless people and people in substandard housing.

A self-sufficient people have no need for progressive government busybodies.  Imagine if everyone followed in Sara Palin's footsteps.  Progressives would be out of business.

Tom Friedman, Un-American

Cosmopolitan Liberals are Un-American 

It's not just the statist policies that have discredited the Democrats.  It is their mindset, and Thomas Friedman is exhibit A for why we should pry their grimy mitts from the levers of power.

Citizen of the world Thomas Friedman writes breezily about sipping tea with third world potentates at his country manor, while advocating that we the unwashed be divested of our suburban homes to be herded into crowded city centers, all in the name of enviro-statism.

Regularly extoling the virtues of totalitarian regimes like China, this New York Times sophist represents the very worst America has to offer.  Last week, he posed a typical stupid question:

Can China balance Freedom and Prosperity?
(Friedman - NY Times)

It's a nonsensical question. You can't balance one against the other.  History shows they are inseparable.  Freedom and prosperity sit at the same end of the teeter totter. What China is really trying to do is to balance these noble aspirations against state-sponsored tyranny.

Progressives long for the Strong Man
Like too many progressives, Friedman displays an unabashed admiration of dictatorial power and statist governments.  Since the early 20th Century, progressives in this country have a long and enduring love affair with strong men and strong governments, personal liberties be damned.

Tom Friedman and his ilk are anti-American, and the mellifluous BS that flows from his pen is a threat to our nation and our way of life.

Strong Government = Weak People
Thanks to the Long March of Progressivism in this nation, many of us have forgotten that with freedom comes responsibility, and personal prosperity is not a birthright. It is something one earns through virtue and hard work.
 
Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite on-line professors, explodes Friedman's statist stupidity by pointing out that ...

...it’s  fashionable today  in some circles to toast autocracy – particularly among our  growing ranks of  Sinophiles on both right and left. But the Legatum study suggests that democracy, not top-down dictatorship,  remains the surest way to build a prosperous society.

The Legatum Prosperity Index found that all the more prosperous places – not only by income, but by quality of life, environment, education and health care – almost exclusively are democratic states. “Prosperity,” the report concludes, “is found in entrepreneurial democracies that have strong social fabrics.”  (Forbes - Joel Kotkin)

Reason magazine does humanity a great service by regularly publishing cogent rebuttals to this one-world, statist's bumper sticker philosophy.  You can inoculate yourself here:  Reason - Thomas Freidman

Vote Democrat or Vote Liberty--You Can't Do Both

Hayek famously dedicated his book, "The Road to Serfdom" to "Socialists of all parties," and Republicans have earned every bit of criticism they get.  They have eagerly participated in the horrible progressive experiment of the last 100 years.  They say they've changed, and I'm willing to give them one more chance.  With the Democrats, we are guaranteed to continue our death spiral.

100 Years of Progressive Statism is Enough!

Let’s consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in whichpeople were free to keep everything they earned, because there wasno income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with theirown money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. 

People were generally free to engage in occupations and professionswithout a license or permit. There were few federal economicregulations and regulatory agencies. 

No Social Security, Medicare,Medicaid, welfare, bailouts, or so-called stimulus plans. No IRS.No Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, andLabor. No EPA and OSHA. No Federal Reserve. No drug laws. 

Fewsystems of public schooling. No immigration controls. No federalminimum-wage laws or price controls. A monetary system based ongold and silver coins rather than paper money. No slavery. No CIA.No FBI. No torture or cruel or unusual punishments. No renditions.No overseas military empire. No military-industrial complex.  (Reason - Up from Serfdom)

We have made great strides since the 1880's, but government has grown into a leviathan, trampling the First, Second, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendment in the process, while stretching out the Commerce and General Welfare clauses into a penumbra so large they block the sun.

The federal government doesn't care more about your state than you and your fellow residents do.

The federal government does not care more about your kids, their education, their souls and their futures than you do.

No government can order your life better than you.  No government cares more about your life, liberty, family and property than you, and no police force is in a better position to defend them from immediate attack than you are.

Liberals' Last Stand: Americans are Stupid

Alas, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. We should have been carried away to a liberal utopia amid billowing clouds of fluffy hope and change by now...

It’s the damned people...

Others are aiming their sound and fury at the American people. According to Maureen Dowd, “Obama is the head of the dysfunctional family of America — a rational man running a most irrational nation, a high-minded man in a low-minded age.

The country is having some weird mass nervous breakdown.” Jonathan Alter argues that the American people “aren’t rationally aligning belief and action; they’re tempted to lose their spleens in the polling place without fully grasping the consequences.” And Slate’s Jacob Weisberg has written that “the biggest culprit in our current predicament” is the “childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.” (Peter Wehner - Contentions)

Wehner goes on to list the hobgoblins that inhabit the fevered imagings of the New York Times and MSNBC crowd, bogeymen such as the founding fathers, Glenn Beck, and Vast Righwing Conspiracies.

For liberals crying that Wehner is mischaracterizing them, along comes leftwing wackadoo Michael Tomasky to corroborate Wehner’s findings...

I expected some anti-Obama backlash. I never thought his election meant we'd "moved beyond race" or the rest of that nonsense. I anticipated that a segment of the population would simply be pissed off that he was in the White House. But I really didn't think it would be like this.

I did not expect to see this much hatred, this depth of conviction that the president of the United States is an enemy of his own country, this intensity of bigotry directed at American Muslims, this degree of belief in obvious and poisonous lies.

And it's not isolated. At all. About 30% of Americans call themselves tea-party supporters. Given that the tea party movement is almost all white, and that the country is about 70% white, this means that around 43% of white Americans subscribe to this basic view. That's nearly half.

Oh boo hoo! Cry us a liberal river of tears, Michael. We’re racist because we won’t stand idly by while red statists flush our nation down the toilet? 100 years of progressivism brought us here, and you are stupid enough to cry for more.  Good thing Tomasky blogs at "Comment is Free."  Only the foolish would pay for such twaddle.

We’re spoiled brats, according to Obama hopium smoker Eugene Robinson.

Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they're ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans -- for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn't an "electoral wave," it's a temper tantrum.

There we are America! The problem is we are too stupid to see that the cure for overspending and government failure is more spending and more government.

This is the problem with progressivism: It’s “my way or the highway” with these people. If you don’t start goosestepping you’re a racist moron. Do they really think insulting half the country is a winning strategy?

The left has another problem: If you promise people all that stuff, you better deliver; the dependent class is still waiting with their hands out. You can’t eat hope and you can’t feed your family with Obama’s change. Of course, they’ve been promising but not delivering for decades. And the things they have delivered are bankrupting the country. Progressives are trapped rats, and all they have left is to lash out at patriotic Americans.

Tea Party America: Free Markets, Free People

The Tea Party movement scares the establishment, including country club Republicans and big business

But if you look at the past half century or so you have to think: How come even when Republicans are in charge, even when they're dominant, government has always gotten larger and more expensive? It's always grown! It's as if something inexorable in our political reality—with those who think in liberal terms dominating the establishment, the media, the academy—has always tilted the starting point...  (WSJ - Peggy Noonan)

The 1900's:  A Progressive Century
The 20th century saw the founders' constitutional republic grow into a monster, gobbling ever more money and personal freedoms.  Sure, some good things happened:  Womens suffrage, civil rights, taking care of the elderly.  But we also got a pay-for-play government of czarist fiat and special exemptions.  America's ruling oligarchy makes money crafting dense bureaucratic sludge and then selling indulgences to the moneyed class who don't want to eat it.

The 21st Century:  A Tea Party Nation?
Big Business is scared of the tea party, because we know their big government crony crapitalism has nothing to do with free market capitalism and the rule of law.  Progressives are pro-big business; tea partiers are for free markets and free people.  We want a capitalism ruled by the invisible hand and continually cleansed and purged by Schumpeter's creative destruction.  Big business wants to gorge itself on government money while hiding from competition behind government-constructed ramparts of bureaucracy.
 
Here are some excerpts from the Wall Street Journal that should make all tea partiers proud and happy.

some executives and lobbyists say they are growing spooked by the populist rhetoric they are hearing from some tea-party Republicans.

Some candidates have said they want to take aim at a $30 billion annual package of tax breaks for a range of businesses—among them Wall Street firms, the timber industry, fast-food restaurants and the owners of NASCAR racetracks.

Good!  They should be scared.  Government has no business handing out taxpayer money to any of those businesses.

Trent Lott:  Poster Boy for Country Club Republicanism

"They may view some of the tax incentives as some type of corporate welfare," said Trent Lott, the former Senate Republican Leader and now a lobbyist. "But if you care about jobs and the economy, you have to give people incentives."

It's all corporate welfare, Trent!  You're exactly the kind of Republican lawmaker we're glad to see gone!  And Lott is oh so wrong about "giving people incentives."  We have aspirations and we bring them to the marketplace.  We produce goods and services useful to our fellow man, and we are rewarded.  Nobody needs motivation!  We want to feed ourselves and our families, and make a better life for ourselves, that is motivation enough.

Here  is Idaho State Rep. Raul Labrador, a tea party favorite for election to US Congress...

Mr. Labrador said he opposed all government programs that help one segment of the business community over another. "I'm against all of them," Mr. Labrador said in an interview. "I don't think the government should be picking winners and losers." 

He included tax breaks for particular industries. "We should have taxes low for everybody, and not just for a particular industry or segment," he said.

Mr. Labrador understands that the rule of law is not a Swiss cheese, but a simple set of rules that everybody in the marketplace must follow, no exceptions!  May God bless us with many such politicians

Free Market Conservatism will win this battle
We will win this battle, my friends, and here's why:  We stand for the power of people, they stand for an ever increasing power of the state.  We throw our bums out, they refuse to.  We have an overarching philosophy of Hayek and the founders, they have Chomsky and Michael Moore.  It's no contest.

 
WSJ - Tea Party's Rise

Free Markets: Dispatches from Left Blogistan

As you all know, I frequently travel the twisted and slippery trails of Left Blogistan, trying my damnedest to bring enlightenment to the ignorant. Fredd sez I'm wasting my time, and he's probably right.

There's an overabundance of economic ignorance on the left, and that is where I end up fighting most of my battles (the "blame Bush for everything" blather is so incoherent it's not even worthy of arguing).

The left seems particularly enraged over free markets and the fact that Uncle Sam can't hold down greedy employers and force them to pay exorbitant wages and benefits that totally ignore market forces.

Here's the crown jewel of progressive ignorance quote:

As for sleazy, scumbag, anti-American "Right to Work" states stealing work from northern states, well, I say there shouldn't be sleazy, scumbag, anti-American "Right to Work" laws in the first place, so for me it's a moot point.

This kind of thinking is what led to fascism in Europe

Ein volk! Ein Reich! Ein Union!

In a free market, businesses and people are free to go where they want. Progressives would put them under the boot heel of the state and their crony crapitalist-syndicalist lackeys.

The unions priced themselves out of the market while the business owners got fat and lazy. They blew it and now they are seeing the consequences.

Progressivism is Anti-American
My liberal interlocutor went on to declare “Right to Work” laws unconstitutional, and that goes to the heart of modern-day progressivism:

Dragooning free people into labor unions “for their own good,” is perfectly legitimate. But declaring we all have a right to work without joining The Peoples’ Auxiliary of the Democratic Party is unconstitutional.

They are nuts, folks. They’ve come unhinged...

Michael Savage is right. Liberalism is a Mental Disorder

Government as God

Pope Pelosi

They’re already calling Sharron Angle a kook, and this will only add to it:

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's campaign criticized his GOP challenger Sharron Angle on Wednesday for telling a religious broadcaster that the Obama administration is violating the First Commandment by expanding federal programs and making "government our God." (LVR Journal)

Progressives have made a god of government
They deny our basic rights under natural law and insist the US Constitution is outdated. That leaves us with government decree backed by black-robed mullas wielding gavels.






Here's an Example
That a Judge would make the following statement that presumes such government power is itself a dangerous sign of the times. If this is not government as god, I don’t know what is:

[A]ffording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs. (USA Today)

Of course, he is right in the constitutional sense: Government may not infringe upon the free exercise of religion in this country. But it is scary that a judge would even entertain such a thought or be required to reaffirm such a fundamental right.

This new commandment handed down by Judge Walker reeks of I AM:

"gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

And if this isn’t an angry god firing thunderbolts down from Mount Sinai, I don’t know what is:

A MORAL VIEW THAT SAME-SEX COUPLES ARE INFERIOR TO OPPOSITE-SEX COUPLES IS NOT A PROPER BASIS FOR LEGISLATION...

How about a Muslim man having four wives?  I assume calling that inferior would also not be a proper basis for legislation.  Hello Sharia USA!

Obama and Pelosi, Political Godlings

Here's a Speaker Pelosi quote from Politico:

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

Here is Senator Obama's quote upon his winning the nomination:

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that [...] this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal"

These and other progressive pronouncements of grandeur falling upon a worshipful, unquestioning electorate belie a Government God that is way more dangerous and intolerant than the real one in heaven.

The Agony and the Arrogance

Our government doesn't know what it's doing, but it keeps doing it anyway...

Here’s a bit of wisdom from that infamous economy wrecker, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Wall Street), upon passage of the Banking “Reform” Bill:

"It will take the next economic crisis, as certainly it will come, to determine whether or not the provisions of this bill will actually provide this generation or the next generation of regulators with the tools necessary to minimize the effects of that crisis." (Fox News)

Reminds me of Pelosi saying we’d have to pass health care so we can see what’s in it.  So they create hundreds of thousands of pages of red tape and tens of thousand of new bureaucratic overlords, and they don’t even know if it will work or not.   It wouldn’t be so bad if they were they were funding this progressive alchemy with their own money, on their own progressive commune out of sight of decent society...

Question: If this fixes “Too Big To Fail,” why does the bill include a huge fund for bailing out or dismantling banks that become too big to fail?


A Surplus of Government Arrogance, A Deficit of Humility
Amity Shlaes, as usual, provides a searchlight of reason that cuts through the progressive fog:

Good policy is what might be calledhumble policy. It starts with admitting what we don’t know. Thatincludes who will lead growth in 2011 or 2012, where that personlives, and how he or she will get capital. 

Humble policy thengoes on to concentrate on trying to let our economy become thatbroad space that future businesses and industries still unknown,might find inviting. 

Her steps to humility start with cutting taxes and regulation, "including the new health-care mandate."  This puts money in the hands of employers and removes uncertainty that this bureaucratic behemoth has created.  It puts more money and personal decision-making back where it belongs:  to the individual.

The next humble step would be to set policy to benefit theoverall economy, not any specific group.

The third humble policy is demanding a serious commitmentfrom lawmakers to abandon fiscal stimulus.

The fourth humble move is up to voters. It is to reduceexpectations about entitlements. 

Progressives lack the humility to acknowledge what Thomas Sowell has learned through a lifetime of study.  Each human being has a fundamental right to order his or her own life:

Freedom is not simply the right of intellectuals to circulate their merchandise. It is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their 'betters.'" -- Dr. Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

A free and orderly marketplace arrives at better decisions than any government program ever has.

"Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace.

No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." -- Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed, p. 112

For more on the topic of Government Hubris, I highly recommend George Will’s excellent column, The High Price of American Hubris

They Can't Even Decide What to Call Themselves

Social engineers used the word Progressive to describe themselves when they started their long march over 100 years ago.  

They discredited the word "Progressive" through the actions of such progressive racist luminaries as Margaret Sanger and US President Woodrow Wilson.  The Mussolini worship certainly didn't help the cause, so they abandoned the moniker and misappropriated the label, "liberal."  I say misappropriate because there was and is nothing liberal about them other than kinky sex, drug use, unbridled christian bashing and the killing of the unborn.

They certainly are not liberal when it comes to appreciating a diversity of thought.  Thou shalt not question global warming!  Reverend Al Gore says so!

Their defense of our natural rights to homosexuality and drug use would ring truer if they would also recognize the right to freely speak about God in the public square, and more importantly, the right to be left alone and to not be pestered and pick-pocketed by government busybodies.

There is nothing more doctrinaire, dogmatic and downright illiberal than today's activist American liberal.  

Now that they have besotted and besmirched the word "liberal," (it's an insult now), they've gone back to using "progressive," banking on the American public's famous ignorance of history.

As C.S. Lewis observed, it's not progress if you're moving forward down the wrong road going the wrong way.