The Liberal Game Made Obvious. Straight to the heart. (Like a case of psoriosis)

In his debate with Jonathan Chait, who calls it rational for liberals to express hatred for George W. Bush, Ramesh Ponnuru flushes out into the open the hidden passional life of liberals.

Chait tries to say Bush is a "phony," but as compared to Al Gore this claim can't persuade rational people. Chait tries to say Bush is more "radical" than he let show during his campaign. But as compared with the euphemisms and evasions of the Left — who admit to only "moderates" in their ranks — this rings hollow. The Left always hides its leftward aims. The Left hides behind Sunday-school teachers, southerners, and generals as its national candidates.

Chait tries to say that Bush is an easterner pretending to be a Texan. But the truth is that one of the most admirable things about both Presidents Bush is that, early in their lives, when they could have sheltered back East under their blue-ribbon family trees, both chose the most difficult environment in America for easterners — the Texas oil fields. Texas oilmen love to taunt Yankees. Nonetheless, Bush the elder ended up in Houston, but Bush the younger went back to Midland, Texas. There are no travel agencies in Europe that have brochures on Midland.

Chait says that the younger Bush was handed everything, did nothing meritocratically. Yet no one handed young Bush his thorough drubbing of Ann Richards in the Texas gubernatorial debate. The same with his crushing of Al Gore, supposedly the debater par excellence, in three presidential debates.

Sensing desperation, Chait's comments about the younger Bush's accent, posture, and mannerisms come down to ethnic prejudice and intellectual bigotry. None of this is remotely rational.

So then Chait is forced to reveal that the party of hate has one truly important, even sacred, agenda, that Bush has frustrated: high taxes on the rich. Bush has cut the taxes of millions of taxpayers at a proportionate rate, which of course benefits more those who pay more taxes, and benefits most those who pay most taxes, the hated rich. For Chait, that makes Bush worthy of hate.

Now this reason, too, is a little odd. From President Jefferson to President Theodore Roosevelt there was no income tax in America, and it never entered into the heads of the Democratic or any other party that a limited government should confiscate money from some Americans on the pretext of giving it to others. Nor that in so doing government should pry relentlessly into every item of income. (Where are today's civil libertarians on this massive invasion of privacy? What reasons could possibly justify this massive governmental intrusion into the most basic liberties?)

Chait explains it this way: Only if the "affluent" (his word) pay a lot more in taxes, can government have enough resources to "help the poor." If Bush does away with progressive taxation, then the middle class will have to pay more taxes, and that will doom government programs. The middle class will rebel. As Chait puts it:

Shifting the federal tax burden downward makes middle-class taxpayers less likely to support future government programs, since they will have to pay for it themselves, rather than having a disproportionate burden picked up by the affluent. There is the liberal agenda in essence. The liberal secret. The liberal passion.

The rich should be the indispensable heroes of liberals, because the rich are the linchpin of the liberal agenda, the one true hope for liberal success. Liberals need the rich. Take away high taxes from the rich, and the liberal program flounders, Chait suggests. Why, then, do liberals hate the rich? It's easier to understand why sheep hate to be shorn, than why liberals hate those they shear.

Personally, I like liberals, and am grateful for their contributions to national discourse. A monologue in which only neoconservatives talked (i.e., reformed liberals) would be comparatively boring.

(1) The first pretense is that most of all liberals want to help the poor. For self-critical people, this fails the laugh test. It is true that for the elderly, liberal programs have worked very well, and improved the condition of millions — except that these programs (Social Security, Medicare) are so badly designed that they are exorbitantly wasteful, and are now on a course to bankrupt the country, as the numbers of the recipient elderly grow, and those of the paying young shrink.

And consider the state of the young poor, ages 18-34, after our 40-year "war on poverty." In many ways their condition is worse than it was in 1966. Violent crime batters them three or four times harder than before. Their families are less often fully formed, and many, many more of them are growing up in single parent families than in 1966. The liberal-run public schools are sliding downwards in several dimension — good order, academic seriousness, and knowledge of our country's history and philosophy.

If the money spent on the war on poverty had been distributed directly to the poor it would have given every poor family (there are about seven million of them) something like $30,000 per year. That would have ended "poverty" as an income category, though perhaps not in its behavioral dimensions.

Do liberal programs help the poor, as Chait assumes? For the young, the evidence runs in the opposite direction.

(2) The second pretense is that the Left consists mainly of intellectuals, activists, and others who are not particularly rich, so that when liberals speak of "the rich" they may speak of them as "others," as in (with venom in the voice) "tax cuts for the rich!" As it happens, the political campaigns of the Left depend far more on high earners and big givers than the campaigns of the right. Being on the left has deeper cultural than economic roots.

Meanwhile, middle-class liberals disproportionately control the administration of government programs and private philanthropies, again spending the money of others, and not infrequently adding to the increased dependency of those they mean to be helping.

(3) The third pretense is that liberals possess a superior degree of virtue. Assuming this pretense, liberals hold conservatives to be "mean-spirited," and attribute to GWB the most contemptible vices of "any president in this century." As Democrats say, "The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans."

There is plenty of reason for strong differences in public-policy judgments. The law of unintended consequences sets up even the most rational of plans for pratfalls. A sense for "how things work" is therefore of more practical value than mere verbal fluency. Meanwhile, in matters of judgment, good people differ. So, why exactly does the Left always have to claim superior virtue?

And in what exactly does liberal virtue consist? In taxing other people, not oneself, people for whom one has contempt, in order to transfer their money to "the poor and needy." (Or, rather, only a portion of that money; don't forget the heavy administrative costs.) Liberal programs, Thomas Sowell has written, are oddly designed, feeding the horses as a way to feed the swallows.

And in what exactly does Bush's vice consist? In exposing this racket, and in putting an end to it.

Bush has provided a compelling alternative vision: personal and familial independence (through school vouchers, personal Social Security accounts, personal medical accounts, and the like), under which the condition of the poor and the needy is far more likely to improve than under the current ill-designed system, "the liberal plantation," which keeps as many as possible in dependency.

>>>>>Chait's comments about the younger Bush's accent, posture, and mannerisms come down to ethnic prejudice and intellectual bigotry.

Typical of the average liberal.

>>>>Chait is forced to reveal that the party of hate has one truly important, even sacred, agenda.....high taxes on the rich.

Liberals hate anyone who succeeds without the government's permission.

A brilliant column that reveals liberals as the despicable hate-mongers that they truely are.

This should hopefully spur some interesting discussion.

One point on the line "the road to hell is paved with Republicans." I've heard it before but it doesn't really make any sense to me since if it's paved WITH Republicans, that would presumably mean that it's either made from their slaughtered bodies (by the Democrats) or that it is made in cooperation with Republicans.

Either way, the Dimocrats are saying that their ideas are really the way to hell.

Change that with to by and at least you have a coherent insult (though still not particularly pithy or creative).

The liberals have been so clever at duping the masses into thinking that they (liberals) are just looking out for their(masses)good. However, the good news is that, because of more news sources giving factual reporting and balanced perspective, the liberal agenda is becoing exposed for what it really is - control over the dependent.

The reality is that there is no "middle class" in the minds of the libs. To them there are only two classes: those from whom they take money and those to whom they give it. They then put up roadblocks (such as p*ss-poor government schools)to prevent the people in the receiving class from getting into the providing class. Afterall, the more people receiving, the stronger their support.

The reality is that there is no "middle class" in the minds of the libs.

Libs will not change their stupid ways unless they actually feel the pain of a bad decision. For instance, a Lib could be for firearm confiscation until he gets robbed at gunpoint. The pathology of the typical Lib is to do-good with someone else's money wiht no sense of personal consequence since they are not footing the bill. The limosine liberal wants your kids to attend failing public schools and to pay extra taxes simply because those things do not apply to them. Between the private schools for their children and their tax attorneys and legal entities, the same rules do not apply to them.

...to [Liberals] there are only two classes: those from whom they take money and those to whom they give it. They then... prevent the people in the receiving class from getting into the providing class.

Geez... that's the most insightful post I've read today.

Thanks.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Bookmarked.

As between a person who identifies with we-the-people, the middle class or aspiring middle class American on the one hand, and the acolyte of the power of PR on the other, which one will aspire to be a celebrity? And how could an acolyte of Public Relations--who thinks that a printing press or a broadcast license is a license to control the sheeple--possibly respect voters? The answer is that they cannot, and they do not.
Socialists ("liberals"?--same difference) disdain, and lust for the power to control, the people. But, lacking titles of nobility, socialists find democratic legitimacy necessary for their ambitions. This implies the need for the socialist to patronize--speak in the name of, even as he disdains--society (a.k.a. We the people).
While it is true that Liberal "bias" in "the press" is the political expression of the prevailing propaganda wind produced by comercial short-deadline journalism, the nexus between media and porlitical liberalism is not limited to that business interest. Those who lust for power are attracted both to liberal politics and to journalism and the acadamy. The revolving door between "the press" and liberal--but not conservative--politics inheres in that nexus.

Why Broadcast Journalism
is Unnecessary and Illegitimate(reply #299)

"the younger Bush's accent, posture, and mannerisms come down to ethnic prejudice and intellectual bigotry"

Amazing! If anyone in the Bush admin had said anything about anyone's accent, posture, or mannerisms as being some kind of gauge of them as a person .. the media/dems would have crucified them.

They've had to resort to this because they can't find any dirt on Bush. This stuff is truly vile and the fact they are so desperate they are willing to expose this .. boggles my mind.

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