My friend is wrong at numerous levels.

by Skip

I received this after yesterday’s show from my Illinois based based friend (to be sure, more liberal than I, but still a good friend):

Skip – too much focus on individualism is just republican speak for "get all you can".  We’d be allot [sic] better off if we stopped being so self-centric and focused on what’s good for the majority.  Voting for extending the tax cuts for the middle income is a prime example – the majority.  Holding out for the few rich is just wrong.

In just 4 short sentences, my friend showed an amazing wrong headedness that I would not have expected from a fellow software guy.  We sometimes  disagree on a number of issues, but lately, he’s been sounding (if possible!) even more militant than I am on a lot more topics (I guess that I’ve been more successful than I’ve thought!).  Thus, to read this evoked a "huh?" moment on my part. A few quick thoughts:

  • I rather took offense at the "get all you can" and "self-centric" part of this quick email.  

Frankly, I just don’t agree with the notion that this is being "self-centric" at all.  If it was a "get all you can" moment, why BOTHER with fighting with the Progressives about who gets to keep the money they have earned and who hasn’t?

More importantly, there is the intimation in that sentence that striving to be the best is a wrong headed notion in the first place.  My friend is one I know to be a hard worker.  He has worked hard for what he has earned – yet now he calls his own efforts "too much focus on individualism" – even as he demonstrates the opposite in his work life?  He has provided value to society via his work ethic and skills to pay him individually – rather than taking that money and saying "Hey, he worked hard for this, but I’m giving it to your group instead".  I rather believe that if that happened, he’d be a bit more "individualistic" in his outlook (and with good reason), as this is not being "self-centric’ but telling the Government "You have enough – learn to live within your means".

It also had the inference that, once again, we have too conflated Government, taxes, and general charity into a jumbled mess and have called it "Society".

  • I also took offense to the "Holding out for the few rich is just wrong" part as well.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" – and that meant equality before the Law. It SHOULD be equality before the Tax Man as well.  In this case, we should all be treated equally in "takings" – instead of the class warfare that seemingly he has fallen for.  It this case, it IS self-interest at work: "it is fine with me to take from others such that I do not have to" (I know my friend – he is not one of the targeted rich minority in this case).  The Left decries that amount of money that the rich "has made" from these tax cuts.  Nonsense – they earned this is the first place! 

After all, who SHOULD hold first rights to that money?  In the larger sense, should it be those that have earned it, or should it be Government that deems "ok, we will ALLOW you to keep what you have earned?".  Some will hate the analogy, but when someone else determines what your toil allows you to have, and simply allocates some portion that you can keep for yourself, does that mean you are "free"?  Or simply an indentured servant?

  • I also disagree with the meme in general – "Bush’s tax cuts".  The history is that that these were enacted in 2001 and 2003.  These acts of allowing folks to keep more of their own earned money up and down the entire economic chain are hardly recent acts of Congress.  Yet, the argument is all about tax CUTS and not about the tax RAISE that is about to happen.

Heck, the logic is just not there – we’re 8 and 11 years down the road from when the marginal tax rates were lowered FOR EVERYONE.  If we’re going to go this down this illogical road, why not go all the way back to the beginning of the last century when income taxes started out rather than just back to the Clinton or Reagan administrations? 

  • Also, "the majority"?  That means that we have succumbed from being a Republic to a mere democracy – the tyrannical rule of the majority.  Under this rubric, without any limitation, we can go to the illogical end "when those in the majority believe that they can vote themselves the largesse of the public treasury…", we will all lose.

However, it seems, that if it comes to the economic status of those that have earned their wealth (e.g., entrepreneurs who risked much), we can discriminate easily against them simply on the meme of "well, they can afford it – why SHOULDN’T we take it from them?"  After all, the top 1% is already paying 40% of all income taxes (while earning substantially less than that percentage as income as a whole) and that the top 10% are paying 70% of all income taxes – that just isn’t fair at all to those that earn less, is it?

And make no mistake – instead of treating all equally (or "with equality", to use the latest buzzword from the Left), many wish to revert away from that simple truth simply because they will benefit from it.  WHY should I have to pay when I can get others to pick up my tab simply by having legislators take it from them legally?  

We have moved far from the time when we agreed, as a society, that we should keep what we have earned BECAUSE we have earned it.  We have moved far, as a society, to one now believing that it is ok to simply take from some to simply because someone has deemed it fair…

…or that they are not of or in the majority.

It also seems, much to the detriment of us all, that the prevailing issue is that the Government is entitled to take more and more is the front and center one and that it should go forward without complaint or discussion is Goodness personified and glorified. Especially when it is not me but you (shades of that old joke of "I don’t have to outrun the Bear, I only have to outrun you).

Yet, it seems that these same folks that approve of the above are the same that complain that its twin implication, that restriciting Government Spending is the cause for the Taking, is Evilness Incarnate and should never be brought up in polite society and never in front of children.

No, my friend, simply giving up on the Principle that we should all share equally would simply be giving up. I care not to further to feed the beast, be it with my money or someone else’s.

I hope he responds with a counter argument…

Author

  • Skip

    Co-founder of GraniteGrok, my concern is around Individual Liberty and Freedom and how the Government is taking that away. As an evangelical Christian and Conservative with small "L" libertarian leanings, my fight is with Progressives forcing a collectivized, secular humanistic future upon us. As a TEA Party activist, citizen journalist, and pundit!, my goal is to use the New Media to advance the radical notions of America's Founders back into our culture.

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