I never thought I would live to see the day when a major party would fully commit itself to a pro-tax, big government strategy and expect to win with it. However, this is the bold approach Democrats are taking. It is obviously based on the assumption that a majority of Americans are as dumb as doorknobs.
They are blaming Bush for the economic downturn, even as almost all economists agree the economy began its descent about nine months before Bush took office. They are attacking the tax refund as a “fiscal calamity” and a “national disaster.” The hand-wringing remarks of Joseph Lieberman, the lugubrious senator from Connecticut, are typical. On national television, he declared: “We’ve got to go back and look at the Bush tax cut, which I think will be seen from the hindsight of history as the most serious mistake the federal government” ever made.
Perhaps he will ask for the rebate money to be returned in full to the government, with interest. Perhaps, as a beneficent gesture, penalties for cashing the check will not be applied. Praise government!
The reality is that the budget surplus for 2001 is the second largest on record. Because surplus Social Security money is being used to pay down the national debt, next year, the amount of taxpayer dollars required to pay interest on that debt as a percentage of the total economy will be the lowest since 1980.
One of the most unfathomable mysteries in recent political history is this: Why did a majority of women persist in supporting Bill Clinton despite evidence that he treats most of the women in his life like doormats? Now, arising out of the throes of political battles, another enigma vies for membership in the list of all-time great political imponderables: Why are Democrats unable to understand that it is possible to balance a budget by reducing spending?
On past occasions, I have attempted to characterize this stupefying liberal limitation in this fashion: If an infinite number of Democrats sat before an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite period of time, sooner or later, one of them would type out the sentence, “A budget may be balanced by reducing spending.”
However, nothing would change. You see, I simply postulate that one of them would type out the message. I am not prepared to say that any of them would understand what had been written, no matter what infinities are assumed.
There are several theories dealing with this trillion-dollar question. One theory says that liberal Democrats are actually latent communists, committed to an ideological goal which precludes the idea of doing or even thinking about anything to reduce the size or scope of government. It is like unto a religious faith that it is the role of government to take all of the money there is and spend it for the betterment of the world and all who live therein, including animals.
The late Whittaker Chambers is now recognized as an American hero. He revealed himself as fully and as eloquently as anyone ever has in explaining the appeal of communism and how he reasoned and prayed his way back to freedom and God. He wrote that the revolutionary heart of communism is embraced in a simple statement uttered by Karl Marx: “It is necessary to change the world.” That is the communist vision.
Chambers tells us a disturbing thing: “An educated man, peering from the Harvard Yard, or any college campus, upon a world in chaos, finds in the vision the two certainties for which the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a reason to die. No other faith of our time presents them with the same practical intensity … ” Communism gives man a down-to-earth faith in himself and restores “his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God.”
The economic vision lives. During times of economic stress and decline, while private businesses are trimming the workforce, cutting programs and slashing spending, it does not occur to the apparatchiks controlling America to do any of these things. If anyone should make sacrifices and do without, it should be the masses, not the government.
The godless vision lives. In times of feast and times of fast, the No. 1 priority is to preserve and protect the sanctity of the government and its custodians. This is in recognition of the government as the centerpiece of the American dream, the hope of the world and the source from which all blessings flow. Hallelujah!
As for Bill Clinton and women and doormats, I don’t have a clue.
