Welcome to the cabaret my friends, the magical mystery tour.
Athens on the Potomac
November 13, 2012
After Obama’s election win, the head of the major union umbrella body, Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President, called for increased taxes on the rich, no cuts to entitlement programs, and a relaxed attitude to the budget deficit. In other words, welcome to Greece writ large.
Obviously, along with numbers of union bosses, he sees himself as a future commissar once the capitalist system has been destroyed. There can be no better illustration as to why the GOP should hold fast to its conservative economic principles, despite all the post-election blues and soul searching.
After all, what are these principles that so offend the sensibilities of the left. They are small government and individual self-reliance. They are designed to produce a more self-fulfilled, prosperous society, better able to help those in real need. These are principles worth prosecuting and defending.
The economic principles of the Democratic Party, and of the left more generally, are wrapped around big government dispensing largesse to increasing numbers of the population. This is regarded as a caring and empathetic response to disadvantage. But there is no end game. The whole rationale depends on government getting bigger and bigger. The effect is to undermine self-reliance and promote dependency. That is caring and empathetic only in the mind of would-be despots.
Moreover, dispensing largesse doesn’t pay the bills. To what extent do leading Democrats, and all those on the left, factor paying the bills into their worldview? I simply don’t know. I have never been able to pin them down
No comments:
Post a Comment