The other day I
posted that President Obama wasn't really interested in raising much revenue or in deficit reduction in his "Fiscal Cliff" brinksmanship. What he really wanted, I said, was merely to raise taxes on some portion of the population in the name of "fairness," and thereby set the precedent for the government's nosing through your finances to determine if what you earned or what you possessed was "fair," by the government's standard. The problem with that precedent, I said, isn't so much that it is bad for prosperity (which of course it is), but that it is bad for liberty--it sets up the government as the final arbiter of who has too much and who has too little, depriving everyone of their liberty and making all of us serfs.
I now see that at least one Democrat, blogging at the Washington Post, admits that this was all along the true purpose of the charade we just witnessed. In his post,
"Why Democrats insist on upper-income tax hikes", Jamelle Bouie (guest-blogging for Greg Sargent) confesses:
Rhetoric aside, there’s no doubt Democrats know that — barring a hike to pre-Reagan levels — there’s not much revenue to gain from restoring upper-income taxes to Clinton-era levels. And when it comes to deficit reduction, full employment — and robust growth — is the best solution. If upper-income tax hikes serve a purpose, it’s to slow the income gains of the wealthiest Americans, who — for the past decade — have reaped the lion’s share of gains from economic growth.
If the presidential election did anything, it put inequality on the table as a national issue, and the fiscal cliff is one battle — albeit, by proxy — in a larger fight. And, unlike most issues in politics, the lines are clear — Republican disregard for inequality is matched by Democratic attempts to, however gently, apply the breaks [sic].
So the fiscal cliff battle was just part of a larger "fight" to "apply the brakes" to "the income gains of the wealthiest Americans." Democrats are not interested in economic recovery or deficit reduction. Rather, the election "put inequality on the table as a national issue."
All of this is Leftist code for "What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine if I think it's fair." Left out of the discussion is any support for the notion that the "income gains of the wealthiest" come at the expense of anyone else--but that is the clear implication of the need for putting on the "brakes." What if the "income gains" came about because some people, for example, invented the iPod, and iTunes, and then the iPhone, and opened the door to hundreds of thousands of apps no one even thought of before, and thereby single-handedly revolutionized multiple industries while inventing others, creating a lot of wealth for themselves,
but making the lives of millions and millions of people all over the planet exponentially better than before? Put the brakes on, please; we don't want all those people to have their lives bettered in ways they could not have imagined
just 10 years ago because a few brilliant people might make some money.
To these Democrats, "equality" is a self-evident virtue to which all must aspire. Yet equality is not the principle upon which this country was founded. It was founded on the principle that all men are endowed by their Creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, rights which neither men nor governments can take away. Indeed, it is impossible for government to pursue "equality" without
obliterating these rights. "Equality" therefore is the antithesis of Americanism. It is the foundation of every impoverished, authoritarian Leftist dystopia on Earth and the first "principle" of every swindler who can't or won't succeed by doing, so seeks to succeed by taking. "Equality" is just envy, dressed up with false appeals to virtue. It is evil, and it is this evil that Republicans, and all Americans, should fight when opposing efforts to slow--to punish--anyone's "gains."
Let us pray we have more resolve for this fight in the next battle.
