The Great Political Myth, Part II
By Robert Ringer
To the delight of the hard left, the fork-in-the-road debate continues in the Republican Party: “Shall we be inclusive (read, bring people into the party who believe in big government, higher taxes, more government regulation, more government takeover of private industry, and more interference in the lives of American citizens) or shall we remain steadfast to traditional conservative principles?”
The great fear, of course, is that if Republicans try to please their core constituents (Gee, why would anyone want to do that?), they will never regain the White House, the Senate, or the House of Representatives.
If Republicans want to put the final nail in their extinction coffin, they need only to continue playing the role of progressive-conservatives. That is term, of course, a contradiction in terms, which is why voters find it so offensive. Many party members believe that the way to power (which, unfortunately, is what politics is all about) is to be better bone throwers than Democrats.
That’s right, throw bones to “the poor,” the unemployed, “minorities,” union members, the elderly, people whose houses are in foreclosure … and on and on the list goes. Bone throwers all have one thing in common: tired arms.
When a country is flooded with chazzers (see Part I of this article), each bone that is thrown only succeeds in bringing cries for still more bones … until, alas, there are no more taxpayer bones to pick. And when there are no bones to pick, there are no bones to throw.
In his book Liberty and Tyranny, Mark Levin says, “Today his [the modern liberal’s, or Statist’s] pace is more rapid, for resistance has slowed. And at no time does the Statist do an about-face. But not so with some who claim the mantle of conservatism but are, in truth, neo-Statists, who would have the Conservative abandon the high ground of the founding principles for the quicksand of a soft tyranny.”
Levin is right on target. The far left never retreats … it is patient … it has been trudging forward in America for at least a hundred years. By contrast, a significant percentage of conservatives retreat at the drop of a moral accusation.
Levin goes on to quote Michael Gerson, former chief speechwriter for George W. Bush, from his book Heroic Conservatism: “… if Republicans run in future elections with a simplistic anti-government message, ignoring the poor, the addicted and children at risk, they will lose, and they will deserve to lose.”
Gerson has it 180 degrees wrong. Republicans who are intimidated into believing that government-enforced collectivism, guided by corrupt politicians, is the ultimate moral option when it comes to governing, they are certain to fulfill James Carville’s prophesy that Democrats will rule for decades to come. Even more likely is that the Democrats will establish totalitarian rule in the next four to eight years.
Take Sarah Palin, for example, someone whom I genuinely admire and for whom I had high hopes. When Palin recently appointed a liberal judge, Morgan Christen (who once served on the board of Planned Parenthood, no less!), to serve on the Alaska Supreme Court, it was a strong hint that she has bought into the myth that the bone-throwing strategy is the shortest route between Alaska and the White House.
If so, it would be sad, because I have long suspected that, in her heart of hearts, Sarah Palin is a libertarian-driven conservative. In fact, she has been an ally of the Alaska Independence Party and the Libertarian Party of Alaska for years. But does she have the courage to continue those ties, or will she desert the proponents of liberty when she smells the aroma of federal power close by? We shall see soon enough.
If Republicans continue to badmouth and distance themselves from staunch conservatives — including, and especially, those on talk radio and Fox News — while assuring the public that they do not question Barack Obama’s “good intentions” for America, they will lose big in 2010 and 2012 (provided free elections even exist in 2012).
How can Republicans win in the upcoming elections? By preaching the simple message that the federal government must obey the Constitution. Which means having the courage to say, without apology, such things as:
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to first reduce, then completely phase out, all welfare programs. This includes unemployment benefits, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and all other transfer-of-wealth schemes.”
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to eliminate the minimum wage, which only succeeds in creating unemployment and hurting the economy.”
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to get the government completely out of the economy and promote an economy that is unfettered by draconian government regulations.”
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to limit federal authority to those granted it by the Constitution and return sovereignty to the individual states.”
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to cut off all federal funding for abortions.”
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to phase out Social Security and allow people to keep, save, and invest their own money as they see fit. This would be done over a period of fifty years, at the rate of 2 percent per year, so that people who have been counting on Social Security in their old age will not be left out in the cold.”
“If elected, I will do everything in my power to reverse any legislation that is now in place regarding government health care. This includes the elimination of Medicare and Medicaid, both of which are unconstitutional.”
Oh, and one other item: “If elected, I will appoint a special counsel to investigate ACORN and all of its affiliates, with a special emphasis on its close ties to the Obama administration.”
That’s the short list, but I think you get the idea. Republicans need to remember Ronald Reagan’s words: “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
At this very moment, Republicans have a golden opportunity to embarrass James Carville by putting the Democrats out of office for decades to come. But it will not happen if they play the Wile E. Coyote role and once again try to convince the public that they can be just as “progressive” as their Democratic colleagues. People are mad as hell, and in a mood not to take it anymore. But there’s nothing they can do about it if they are not given an alternative to collectivist Democrats.
Obama is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, but the question is: Will conservatives take the gift or will they make it possible for the Democrats to once again be able smirk and say, “Beep, beep”?
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… just in case anyone may have forgotten the enemy….
LESSON ON SOCIALISM
“An economics professor said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked – and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer for all, for society. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.
He said that all grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone was given a B. The students who studied hard were upset, and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who hadn’t studied much for the first test had studied even less, and the ones who studied hard weren’t motivated to study hard again, and they decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed …. and the professor told them that the socialism they wanted would ultimately fail, as they had, because the reward of success normally goes to those that work harder, but when government takes the reward away; few will try so no one will succeed.”
bluesman, that is brilliant! I teach part time a local college and I am going to try this experiment next year. I might not have a job after that, but it sure will be fun.
“The most committed wins…” –Annette Bening, “Sharon Bridger,” “The Seige”–1998.
“This is REALITY, Greg…”–Henry Thomas, “Elliot,” “E.T.”–1982.
The American Dream has always been the same–to live comfortably without having to work.
Capital achieves this by eliminating risk, competition, “burdensome regulation,” and monopolizing the greatest number of labor-hours of others for the least possible amount of money, without regard for the quality of life of the “serfs.” The lower the wage, the more hopeless the situation for the serfs. Serfs must toil for upwards of 60-70% of their waking hours, just to feed and house themselves. Oh, and by the way, the serfs had better dress nicely for work (at their own expense) or be fired. We can’t have the riff-raff spoiling the view for the privileged. It’s not slavery–it’s just the next best thing–the privileged can live comfortably and simply not worry about the people, since the people are nothing more than a “cost of doing business.” We’re not humans, just debits on a balance sheet. The more it can be sanitized and computerized, the easier it is for the privileged to control the “view,” pretending the work force exists only on paper, “somewhere else,” leaving only a lovely landscape with manicured grass, glassy lakes, and picturesque sunsets.
Government (the people) attempt to achieve this by allocating available resources more-or-less equally, based on status as “human beings.”
So your thesis is the following: since sharing the wealth results in little-or-nothing being done because there’s no incentive, your answer is to go ENTIRELY the other way, where it’s “every man for himself,” and where rewards are based SOLELY on risk (and victory) rather than work. In your estimation, hard work isn’t worthy of reward, unless you had to risk your own shirt in the process. In your model, a worker is not a person–he is a “business expense,” like a desk or a fax machine.
The “evils” you bemoan, such as the minimum wage, universal access to basic health care, etc, presuppose that the individual, if he’s willing to “work hard,” will be able to afford to live, despite the fact that basic survival in this country costs far more than working full-time at minimum wage (a “cost” to people like YOU) can pay for. You believe that the “market” will eventually drive wages up based on competition. That works if the population is low, and the labor force is confined geographically.
But the population is HIGH, and cheap labor is readily available outside the US. Hell, it’s available INSIDE the US, because there are plenty of illegal immigrants (whom people like you will hire in a heartbeat, as a convenient and handy method of avoiding “government interference”) willing to work for peanuts and table scraps.
So let’s get REAL, here, Robert. The “American Dream” is not “working hard”–there are millions of Americans willing to work hard if you’re willing to pay them a decent living. But you’re not. You don’t want to pay for them at ALL. As far as you’re concerned, anybody not willing to take PERSONAL RISK (i.e., gambling) is not worthy of an income. If he just goes to work and then goes home, he’s not “sweating” or “worrying” enough, so he deserves to live in squalor.
That’s what you’re saying when you complain about the fruits of your “labors” being “confiscated” by the government. But it’s not the fruits of YOUR labors that are “being confiscated,” it’s the fruits of your WORKERS labors, conveniently routed into your pocket.
THAT’S the “American Dream”–to get RICH. Did you “work hard” to get rich? Sure you did, nobody’s debating that. The problem is that it’s practically impossible for anyone to get rich based on his efforts alone. In order to get rich, you have to leverage and aggregate the labors of OTHERS, at the lowest possible cost, and have the rewards flow to YOU.
What you’re saying is that in America, everybody is free to RISK, but only those who RISK should be rewarded–work itself is not worthy of reward, or even basic necessities like surgery for a hot appendix. That’s the flaw in your model–you say that workers are “independent contractors,” when they are anything but. If workers were really independent, they’d be able to choose not to work for somebody who isn’t willing to pay a living wage.
BUT THIS IS REALITY, GREG!! Workers don’t have the luxury of quitting a crappy job, because the bills come every month, and rent, utilities, food, etc are not “free market commodities.” The cost of living is what it IS, we don’t get to DECIDE what it is, UNLESS we band together in GROUPS (like, say, a democratically elected GOVERNMENT, or a UNION, or any one of a number of entities you see as “evil”).
So let’s GET real. Right now, our top talent flocks to Wall Street (rather than becoming doctors or researchers or whatever) because the greatest rewards come from gambling. Wall Street is gambling, plain and simple. Put lipstick on the pig all you want, but “investors” don’t invest to “prime the economic pump,” or “stimulate innovation.” They invest in order to get money flowing in their direction,period–money they didn’t have to spend time or effort to get, but rather based on somebody ELSE’S time and effort. And if you gamble and lose, there’s another gambler waiting right behind you–the roulette wheels are spinning 24/7–anybody with “chips” (you know all about “chips,” don’t you, Robert?) can belly up and place a bet. The supply of gamblers isn’t drying up–all that’s drying up is the supply of people who can actually DO SOMETHING, MAKE SOMETHING, PRODUCE…ANYTHING CONCRETE. Those, you want to starve to death by saying “screw the minimum wage.”
Now what was that bad stuff you were saying about “Socialism?” Wasn’t it something about “profiting from somebody else’s labors?”
“The most committed wins”–the most aggressive (not the most capable, or talented, or smart) get the spoils. Those willing to risk it all, throw caution to the wind, take a chance, and hope that OTHER PEOPLE with money will shuttle it to YOU, buying whatever you had some Chinese peasant slap together for you at $0.06/hour, are the only ones who deserve to “keep the fruits of ‘their’ labors,” right?
Some people (I’d say about 90%) just want to live a life–go to work, do something productive, and come home to a decent apartment. But you don’t think those folks deserve any comfort. You “worry” about your investments, and that’s what you think deserves compensation. It’s the ONLY thing you deem worthy of a comfortable income.
Boo hoo. I feel SO sorry for your “worry.” Rotsa ruck, now that your customer base is becoming unemployed by the millions. I hope you can eat stock certificates.
Further thoughts…
The “ideal,” in your mind, is that taxes are low, the social safety net doesn’t exist (because it costs too much) and employers are free to pay whatever pittance they can get away with.
You think this will provide the greatest good for the greatest number. You’d be right if the cost of living was somewhere in the neighborhood of, say, $60 a month, including rent, food, utilities, hospital care, dental care, car insurance (can’t have the riff-raff crashing their Hundais into our Mercedes without being “responsible,” can we?).
As long as the cost of living (a roof, a diet, and the ability to afford antibiotics when we get a staph infection, which might otherwise be lethal without treatment) is lower than the lowest full time wage, I guess that model would work.
I guess you’re figuring that by doing away with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ADC, Unemployment, and free clinics, we could just about make that, eh?
Hmm. Nope. I think you’d also have to axe the total defense department budget, cut out all the tax loopholes for major corporations, and lower the number of attorneys by about 95%–then maybe we’d have it licked…somebody’s gotta pay for THOSE things, too, and if you had your way it’d be the burger flippers at Jack-in-the-Box. Right?
Both the Republican and Democratic parties (there is no such thing as the “Democrat” party–I looked it up) are committed, to the death, to “redistributing wealth.” The only difference between the two is in who GETS the wealth. And which party you support pretty much depends on your bank balance.
You think that by simplifying the system, letting it go to seed, letting the market take care of the economy…in short, letting Darwin reign, the greatest “virtue” would prevail.
What universe do you live in? You rail about “government control,” but the operative word here isn’t “government,” it’s CONTROL.
We live in a feudalist society–we have since the middle ages (Western Civilization began in the Dark Ages, not “Ancient Greece”). Those who control the lion’s share of the wealth are able to manipulate the system so that wealth continues to flow in their direction. They are able to control the population by forcing them to live hand-to-mouth.
The way I see it, there is only one freedom that lower income Americans enjoy–the ability to avoid children. As long as you don’t have to worry about feeding a family, you’re free to move to where there’s work, or live off the grid, or walk from town to town, playing poker for a living.
As soon as your first child is born, your freedom is over (unless you’re already independently wealthy, which is why, I guess, young men used to “seek their fortune” before marrying, in days of yore). Once you’ve procreated, the control shifts to whoever holds your time card, and you bloody well know it. That guy can keep you jumping through hoops until you die, and when you’re used up, he can simply plug somebody else into your “slot” in the machine.
But you’re against abortion, and probably birth control as well, I’d guess. Great. So if you’re poor, sex is off the table too. Just another perk of the “American Dream.” Make your fortune, THEN have sex. Or perhaps we could just revert back to the days where young men “sowed their wild oats,” leaving the wenches to deal with the consequences, eh? Would that turn the clock back far enough for you?
Sorry, my mind wandered off…
So–until and unless you become wealthy enough to live at least five years without working a day (i.e., you have money to “invest”) you are a cog in the machine that somebody else owns, and you’ll be stuck on that spindle until you die.
For low income Americans, there are precious few options other than the above. The best option, by far, is to sell illegal drugs. The customer base is huge, the product is readily available, and the profit margins are enough to provide a comfortable living, if you “work hard” enough. Of course, the risks are high (incarceration, or death by AK47) but the rewards are pretty good, which fits right into your economic model, doesn’t it? No wonder so many “young entrepreneurs,” finding very few available alternatives, are willing to “take the plunge.”
This is 2009, not 1809. We can no longer “Go West, Young Man.” The Pacific Ocean has BEEN discovered, there is no more pioneering to be done, no more unsettled land to exploit (after ethnically cleansing those inconvenient Native American residents), no more “gold in them thar hills.”
(Hmm…maybe up in Palin country you can still trade in pelts and wampum…)
The age of rugged individualism is OVER. America is settled now, coast to coast. It’s time for you and your ilk to wake up, and realize that if we don’t work together, we’re all going down.
Or you can just keep your head in the sand, and pretend 299,999,999 other Americans are nothing more than inconvenient obstacles for you to navigate around in your Porsche.
Whatever. I’m done. I just couldn’t let your flailing emotional rant go unanswered. One good rant deserves another.
I do not agree with anything Mr ringer has said In part II, but unfortunatly I believe he is right.
I like the comment that was left. I have been a liberial all my life and believe socilism is the answer, but that story about the class that failed has started me thinking.
When I get distracted by all the nonsense going on in the world, I go to:
thefreemanonline.org/featured/i-pencil/
to read the “I, Pencil” essay by Leonard Read. If anything going on now or proposed for the future doesn’t fall into harmony with that wonderful viewpoint, I know it’s wrong.
I really don’t understand why/how anyone would support either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. They truly are tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dumber. Myself, I’m a Libertarian which can be defined as a person socially liberal, fiscally very conservative and a big supporters of the Constitution and strong national defense. Both major parties are awash in corruption; mistreat the taxpayer as a basic policy and promise, promise, promise while destroying free enterprise and spitting on the Constitution.
For the Republican’s defense I’ll say this: they were at times in the past bastions of Conservative effort. In their detraction, the idiocy with 2nd Amendment rights; and seeking to interfere with a woman’s right to control her own body.
For the Democrats, they would have allowed stem-cell research, lo these many years and support Roe vs. Wade which are reasonable stances. The curses they bring to society are their single-minded effort to destroy the Constitution, while taking everything taxpayer’s earn and spread it to those who earn nothing and destroy capitalism and destroying the American Dollar.
The very BEST a choice between the two major parties can ever be is the lesser of two evils. Why even vote under those circumstances?
Bob VanDeHey
The article just above dropped out “the idiocy that equates 2nd Amendment rights with grenade launchers and automatic weapons in the hands of private citizens.”
Speaking of political myths:
Politicians, with few exceptions, sincerely believe that spending large amounts of money on plans, programs, grants, initiatives, and et cetera is necessary. And spending, they think, is what gets them reelected by their constituents.
A good example of this is President Ronald Reagan when he signed on to record federal spending budgets that congress sent up to the oval office; afterward, he promptly called for a balanced budget amendment. Why did he need a balanced budget amendment? What was wrong with his veto pen? Was it out of ink? Yes, out of ink, just like the pens of that socialist duet, father and son, President George I & II. Watching those two was like watching Cowboy Royalty on a socialist spending spree to make America “a kinder and gentler” country. Talk about Orwellian propaganda, I mean, this kind of stuff can’t even be made up.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is another prime example of a political myth. Arnold was a man who used to agree with, and fully endorse, the thinking of men like Milton Friedman. You can watch a great YouTube video in which a young and vibrant Arnold makes the statement that Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” lecture series featured on PBS “validated everything he ever believed in.”
Look at Arnold now, a proponent of raising taxes “temporarily,” which is nothing more than a euphemism for more socialist gradualism.
Socialism is a powerful force, it takes those who project themselves as anti-spending and reveals them for what they truly are: political myths.
Real men, like President Andrew Jackson, know how to get things done. President Jackson, not only balanced the budget, but fully paid off the national debt and restored the Gold Standard. Yes, I can hear the cat-calls and howls of protest regarding strong-man Jackson, Jacksonian Democracy, Indian brutality, expansionism, and the like, but at least Jackson was a man who could balance a budget. He understood that a balanced budget was absolutely crucial to the long-term best interests of America.
And Although Jackson had his faults, America has not had a president that was half the man he was for many years now, nor do I expect it will have one anytime soon. That’s why America will continue muddling down “the road to serfdom.”
When America finally reaches the end of the road, one of two things will happen: A socialist strong man will gain widespread support from among the people and rise to the level of absolute dictator or option two is that a strong man, like Andrew Jackson, will gain support and rise to the level of a great freedom fighter; whereupon, socialism will die a bloody death—– only to be resurrected sometime in the future.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once said many years ago, “freedom and socialism are incompatible.”
My educated guess is that freedom and socialism are so incompatible that only one thing will resolve the incompatibility. Blood.
That’s right, one day there will be no more muddling, one or the other, socialism or liberty, will be terminated.
“Gerson has it 180 degrees wrong.”
No, I think Gerson has it about 90 degrees wrong. Part of the problem with “conservatism” (besides its un-hip-sounding name) is that the unwashed uninformed think it doesn’t provide the answers to social problems.
Where opposition to collectivism has failed the most recently is in not articulating WHY libertarianism is more moral, more compassionate, and ultimately more beneficial to society.
We can attract the electorate without compromising our principles, but we have to give them a reason. For example, the Republicans never came to grips with reforming a health care system that government monopolies (namely, Medicare) had put beyond the reach of many Americans. So few of the ignorant middle that forms the electorate understand how applying libertarian principles will benefit them and society in the long run. For illustration, government schools emphasize community service by holding up collectivist examples, rather than libertarian ones as models of success.
Bottom Line: Until the terms of the conversation are changed, we must argue our societal benefits, not just the theoretical virtue of our cause.
I lived my first 26 years in a “socialist utopia” in the great country of Romania. Eventually as predicted the “S.U.” degraded to absolute totalitarianism of CEASUSESCU the “great” leader and ended in his summary execution.
This particular transition was practically bloodless the reason being that all the support of the power structure of the leader vanished. The economic situation became so dire that even the “elite” political/economic class had to recognize the complete failure of the “dictatorship of the People”
That is the scenario I can foresee in our great country also.
The complete personal RESPONSIBILITY for one’s life was abandoned/taken over by the Gov. promises and most of us became more or less irresponsible babies in the lap of a NANNY government.
Everything else is the consequence of this fact.