It's been obvious for months that Democrats are looking an an annus horribilis next year. Their politics of privilege, their society of subsidy, their legalized looting has elected generations of Democrats to power. But now it looks like it is collapsing, all at once.
Because the government has run out of other peoples' money.
Democrats have pressed every policy button they know, but it doesn't look like anything will change the economy for November 2012. And why should it? Why should business expand and hire when a gigantic tax cliff is coming in 2013, as the Wall Street Journal reminds us.
Democrats are in the same position as the Republicans in 1931. For decades the Republicans had seduced the working man with the protective tariff, telling him that the tariff protected his wages from low-wage Europe. But, of course, when the Progressive era Federal Reserve finance system screwed up in 1929-32 the working man got hammered. And he returned the compliment by hammering the GOP and handing over the keys of the kingdom to the Democrats.
Now the Democrats are facing a similar fate. For years they have promised the average working man that their Social Security, their Medicare, their unemployment and workers compensation benefits would be a solid safety net under the vicissitudes of life. Now those promises are proving to be empty. It's not just that Social Security and Medicare are broke. The problem is that all these benefits hit the economy as taxes on jobs, the payroll taxes that mostly get paid by employers and that make them hesitate before hiring.
Yeah! We'll make sure those stingy employers pay for your benefits! That's what Democrats have told the workers. And it's all a lie. The workers would have done better by saving their own money and buying their own insurance. Because you know what? If they had, then all that money their employer paid in taxes would be their own money, saved in bank accounts and mutual funds and life and disability insurance.
Well, after the special elections on Tuesday, all Democrats now know they are in trouble. Unfortunately for them the US is out of smoke and mirrors. We'll have to get out of trouble the hard way, with work and saving, and cuts to wasteful government programs. There is no other way.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Taxing "Millionaires and Billionaires"
Now that President Obama has actually come out with a proposal for taxing "millionaires and billionaires" we can get a handle of his proposal. Just how much does he propose to tax those folks who are already at the point where average citizens may ask how much more do they need.
According Carol E. Lee and Janet Hook in the The Wall Street Journal the president's proposal to phase out deductions for those earning more than a taxable income of $250,000 a year expects to collect $400 billion over ten years.
According to the SOI Table 5 (xls) IRS analysis of individual income tax returns, the floor of the top one percent of taxpayers is around $200,000. It's been going down recently, of course, due to the Great Recession. In 2007 to 2009 the Feds collected about $400 billion each year from the top one percent. So the Obama tax increase on millionaires and billionaires, $400 billion over ten years, is going to increase the federal income tax bill on the millionaires and billionaires by about ten percent. The increase is not nothing, and it's not outrageously punitive.
Problem is, of course, that the millionaires and billionaires in question are exactly the people we are counting on to start hiring at some point in the future when they have got off their capital strike. So ramping up their taxes can't really help in the jobs department.
Here's what I think. I think that the Republican House should pass the president's tax increase on millionaires and billionaires. I think they should say: here Mr. President. Here is what you want. Tax the rich. See how many jobs it creates.
Tax-the-rich is pure left-wing politics. It's required for lefties because the left has to believe that it is a lack of tax payments from the rich that is keeping the poor poor. If you don't believe that, and you don't believe that corporations are screwing the workers and the consumers then you don't have a reason to pass swingeing legislation to tax and regulate and crush those evil capitalists and their partners in crime, millionaires and billionaires.
You'd just think that, wow, in the last two hundred years under the reign of the corporations daily income has gone from about $3 to $100 in constant dollars. Somebody was doing something right.
The truth is that left-wing politics is "living by looting" in exactly the same way as the "barons of the crags" once lived by looting the travelers on the alpine passes. The problem is, of course, that when you live by looting instead of working to make products and services for other people, it turns you into a monster. Thus it turns out, according to Peter Schweizer's Makers and Takers, that liberals are meaner and less honest than conservatives. Looting for a living does that to you.
According Carol E. Lee and Janet Hook in the The Wall Street Journal the president's proposal to phase out deductions for those earning more than a taxable income of $250,000 a year expects to collect $400 billion over ten years.
According to the SOI Table 5 (xls) IRS analysis of individual income tax returns, the floor of the top one percent of taxpayers is around $200,000. It's been going down recently, of course, due to the Great Recession. In 2007 to 2009 the Feds collected about $400 billion each year from the top one percent. So the Obama tax increase on millionaires and billionaires, $400 billion over ten years, is going to increase the federal income tax bill on the millionaires and billionaires by about ten percent. The increase is not nothing, and it's not outrageously punitive.
Problem is, of course, that the millionaires and billionaires in question are exactly the people we are counting on to start hiring at some point in the future when they have got off their capital strike. So ramping up their taxes can't really help in the jobs department.
Here's what I think. I think that the Republican House should pass the president's tax increase on millionaires and billionaires. I think they should say: here Mr. President. Here is what you want. Tax the rich. See how many jobs it creates.
Tax-the-rich is pure left-wing politics. It's required for lefties because the left has to believe that it is a lack of tax payments from the rich that is keeping the poor poor. If you don't believe that, and you don't believe that corporations are screwing the workers and the consumers then you don't have a reason to pass swingeing legislation to tax and regulate and crush those evil capitalists and their partners in crime, millionaires and billionaires.
You'd just think that, wow, in the last two hundred years under the reign of the corporations daily income has gone from about $3 to $100 in constant dollars. Somebody was doing something right.
The truth is that left-wing politics is "living by looting" in exactly the same way as the "barons of the crags" once lived by looting the travelers on the alpine passes. The problem is, of course, that when you live by looting instead of working to make products and services for other people, it turns you into a monster. Thus it turns out, according to Peter Schweizer's Makers and Takers, that liberals are meaner and less honest than conservatives. Looting for a living does that to you.
Monday, September 12, 2011
9/12 Plus 10
I've found myself unwilling to do a 9/11 retrospective. I suppose that's because, for me, conflict is conflict, war is war. 9/11 was not so much an outrage as a marker.
There is--there has always been--violent disagreement about what the world is and what the world should be. And this disagreement is usually conducted by young hot-heads. In our day these hot-heads are the sons of the educated elite. Thus it was that the 9/11 terrorists were mostly the sons of well-to-do Saudis.
Today the world is divided. It is divided mostly between those that are trying to understand the meaning of the industrial revolution and those trying to oppose the industrial revolution. Some people say: there has been a profound revolution in the way that the human race lives its life, due to the scientific and energy revolutions. We need to discover how to live our lives in recognition of that fact. There are others, and many of them live in the West, who say that industrialism, capitalism, and prosperity have combined to divorce humans from their humanness and from God, and that only a violent turn away from democratic capitalism can save us.
In my view, the present democratic capitalism based upon Judeo-Christian culture is the best thing going. Every effort in the last two hundred years to attack it or to substantially restructure it has been a bloody failure. The great religious movements of socialism, communism, and fascism failed after monstrous religious wars and outrages. Now we are in the middle of another religious movement, the Islamic reaction against Judeo-Christian democratic capitalism.
The immediate reaction of the United States government after 9/11 was to ramp up its security apparatus, both foreign and domestic, and we can see now that the results were mixed. At home the government has erected a huge bumbling inspection regime that has humiliated the American people in dozens of ways. Abroad the government has found that wars against Islamist-harboring thug dictators is a lot more complicated than anyone would want.
Domestically, the government seems to think that the only way to protect the American people is to herd them around like cattle. Abroad it has found that military force leaves a horrible political vacuum in its wake. These failures of post 9/11 US policy are not scandalous. All government action is drenched in failure. But there seems to be an important lesson that the US government is slow to learn.
Humans are not cattle. Americans showed, from the first moments after the first plane exploded on the World Trade Center, that they are capable and resourceful in responding to the terror threat. The passengers on Flight 93 understood, from communications with the ground, that they had to stop the flight and they did, sacrificing their lives in the process. They ended the "airplane hijack" era in which hijackers were the actors and passengers were the non-actors. It was passengers that subdued the underpants bomber. Government policy must pivot to encourage and respect the abilities of the resourceful American people.
In military operations it is clear that military questions cannot be divorced from political questions. And beyond both is the battle of ideas. We westerners must politely but firmly assert our ideas and values against the ideas and values of the Islamic extremists. And that means everyone, from the pope on down.
The result of the great battle between democratic capitalism and socialism has now been won. The two great cultures of India and China were initially seduced by the socialists, the revolutionary communists in China and the democratic socialists in India. In the years since each country abandoned socialism their peoples have vaulted into the democratic capitalist world with an energy that leaves the rest of the world breathless.
The same will doubtless be true when the peoples of Islam abandon their fight against democratic capitalism. We may hope that in doing so they will bring a critique to democratic capitalism that will improve it.
But meanwhile the West must oppose the forces that wish to demolish our democratic capitalism.
There is--there has always been--violent disagreement about what the world is and what the world should be. And this disagreement is usually conducted by young hot-heads. In our day these hot-heads are the sons of the educated elite. Thus it was that the 9/11 terrorists were mostly the sons of well-to-do Saudis.
Today the world is divided. It is divided mostly between those that are trying to understand the meaning of the industrial revolution and those trying to oppose the industrial revolution. Some people say: there has been a profound revolution in the way that the human race lives its life, due to the scientific and energy revolutions. We need to discover how to live our lives in recognition of that fact. There are others, and many of them live in the West, who say that industrialism, capitalism, and prosperity have combined to divorce humans from their humanness and from God, and that only a violent turn away from democratic capitalism can save us.
In my view, the present democratic capitalism based upon Judeo-Christian culture is the best thing going. Every effort in the last two hundred years to attack it or to substantially restructure it has been a bloody failure. The great religious movements of socialism, communism, and fascism failed after monstrous religious wars and outrages. Now we are in the middle of another religious movement, the Islamic reaction against Judeo-Christian democratic capitalism.
The immediate reaction of the United States government after 9/11 was to ramp up its security apparatus, both foreign and domestic, and we can see now that the results were mixed. At home the government has erected a huge bumbling inspection regime that has humiliated the American people in dozens of ways. Abroad the government has found that wars against Islamist-harboring thug dictators is a lot more complicated than anyone would want.
Domestically, the government seems to think that the only way to protect the American people is to herd them around like cattle. Abroad it has found that military force leaves a horrible political vacuum in its wake. These failures of post 9/11 US policy are not scandalous. All government action is drenched in failure. But there seems to be an important lesson that the US government is slow to learn.
Humans are not cattle. Americans showed, from the first moments after the first plane exploded on the World Trade Center, that they are capable and resourceful in responding to the terror threat. The passengers on Flight 93 understood, from communications with the ground, that they had to stop the flight and they did, sacrificing their lives in the process. They ended the "airplane hijack" era in which hijackers were the actors and passengers were the non-actors. It was passengers that subdued the underpants bomber. Government policy must pivot to encourage and respect the abilities of the resourceful American people.
In military operations it is clear that military questions cannot be divorced from political questions. And beyond both is the battle of ideas. We westerners must politely but firmly assert our ideas and values against the ideas and values of the Islamic extremists. And that means everyone, from the pope on down.
The result of the great battle between democratic capitalism and socialism has now been won. The two great cultures of India and China were initially seduced by the socialists, the revolutionary communists in China and the democratic socialists in India. In the years since each country abandoned socialism their peoples have vaulted into the democratic capitalist world with an energy that leaves the rest of the world breathless.
The same will doubtless be true when the peoples of Islam abandon their fight against democratic capitalism. We may hope that in doing so they will bring a critique to democratic capitalism that will improve it.
But meanwhile the West must oppose the forces that wish to demolish our democratic capitalism.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Another Laundry List
Man and boy, I've been watching presidents stand at the rostrum of the House of Representatives for about 40 years. And I'm getting a bit tired of it. Why is it considered statesmanlike to go through yet another a laundry list of warmed over government programs and imagine that this contributes to national welfare?
Here we had President Obama, sucking empty on the sine qua non of any presidency: a healthy economy. And what does he come up with? More subsidies. More spending. More urgency.
The astonishing thing about his speech on Thursday evening to a joint session of Congress is what he did not do. He did not act to relieve the huge costs that government places upon the private sector, the chunk that government takes of every paycheck, of every product sold, of every service delivered. That is what is killing the economy. Reality finally caught up with the progressive game that worked so well for so long. You impose enormous costs upon producers and consumers, distributing favors to your supporters with the proceeds, and then take the credit for prosperity and growth.
Maybe the progressive game still works in normal times. But not after a teeth-rattling financial meltdown.
Yes, Virginia, it's true that government is indispensable to a healthy economy. But its role is stage-setting, providing the property laws, the stable financial basis platform which players in the game of capitalism can rely.
President Obama is still going full bore on his progressive agenda, shoveling out money at Democratic constituencies. His speech was no pivot, but more of the same, throwing good money after bad. It's a measure of the impossible position he's in. He can't do the things he ought to do: reverse ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, anti-energy regulation. Because if he did that he'd lose his Democratic base. Why? The support for these programs among Democrats is not practical and empirical. It is religious.
In a sad way, Republicans and conservatives can take comfort from the president's speech. Here we are, two and a half years into his term of office, with failures littered all over the political landscape, and he still doesn't get it. It makes you confident about the results of November 2012.
I am starting to believe in a 55-45 America: A 55-45 percent Republican presidential popular vote, a 55-45 Republican Senate, and a 55-45 percent Republican House.
Here we had President Obama, sucking empty on the sine qua non of any presidency: a healthy economy. And what does he come up with? More subsidies. More spending. More urgency.
The astonishing thing about his speech on Thursday evening to a joint session of Congress is what he did not do. He did not act to relieve the huge costs that government places upon the private sector, the chunk that government takes of every paycheck, of every product sold, of every service delivered. That is what is killing the economy. Reality finally caught up with the progressive game that worked so well for so long. You impose enormous costs upon producers and consumers, distributing favors to your supporters with the proceeds, and then take the credit for prosperity and growth.
Maybe the progressive game still works in normal times. But not after a teeth-rattling financial meltdown.
Yes, Virginia, it's true that government is indispensable to a healthy economy. But its role is stage-setting, providing the property laws, the stable financial basis platform which players in the game of capitalism can rely.
President Obama is still going full bore on his progressive agenda, shoveling out money at Democratic constituencies. His speech was no pivot, but more of the same, throwing good money after bad. It's a measure of the impossible position he's in. He can't do the things he ought to do: reverse ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, anti-energy regulation. Because if he did that he'd lose his Democratic base. Why? The support for these programs among Democrats is not practical and empirical. It is religious.
In a sad way, Republicans and conservatives can take comfort from the president's speech. Here we are, two and a half years into his term of office, with failures littered all over the political landscape, and he still doesn't get it. It makes you confident about the results of November 2012.
I am starting to believe in a 55-45 America: A 55-45 percent Republican presidential popular vote, a 55-45 Republican Senate, and a 55-45 percent Republican House.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Will Liberals "Go Off the Deep End?"
Over at the American Spectator the "Green Lantern" worries that liberals will go off the deep end if their Obama loses next year.
Really? I don't think so. It's true that leadership Democrats successfully prodded their liberal rank-and-file to protest the whisker-thin victory of George W. Bush in 2000, so that liberals spent eight years in a fantasy-land of "Selected, not Elected", Bushitler and Darth Vader Cheney.
Yes, it's true that liberals have mostly "continue[d] to prosper while moving rapidly toward the angry left." over the past decade. It's true that they all vomit out standard Democratic talking points: the Tea Party is "crazy"; Gov. Walker (R-WI) is "insane"; the president's troubles are all due to "racism". But that's why we have elections.
I recall back a few years ago when the Religious Right got up an initiative to limit abortion in Washington State. It went down 25-75. That was the end of social-conservative politics in the Soviet of Washington. It's amazing what an election will do. If Obama goes down 45-55 in November 2012 it will have a similar effect on liberals, Oh sure, they will snap at you about the asininity of President Perry/Romney, whoever. But they will be cowed. They will be beaten. They won't be staging stupid terrorist tricks, because they will have read the election returns. They may say that the American people are racists or mentally ill. People say things like that, to keep up their spirits. But they will know they are beaten.
In my view, the presidency of Barack Obama is the best thing that could have happened to conservatism. Liberals got to do everything they had ever wanted. They passed the Holy Grail of universal health care. They passed their trillion-dollar Keynesian stimulus. They whacked Wall Street with swingeing new regulation. They flooded the nation with windmills and very fast trains.
And the whole thing flushed down the toilet. ObamaCare is a disaster. The stimulus came and went. Dodd-Frank ended up entrenching "Too Big to Fail" and President Obama is backtracking on draconian EPA regulations.
Don't forget how this all appears to liberals. They thought that with intelligent people, finally, in charge, the nation would turn around from the incompetent Bush years. Teach those greedy bankers a lesson, give the economy a shot of sponduliks, and here we go for reelection. They cannot believe that it has all gone wrong.
But they will. And come 2013, after the liberal annus horribilis, liberals will be sadder and wiser. And a lot less cocky.
Environmentalists, now embarrassed about being arrested in front of the White House for opposing their favorite President's policies, will be right back where they want to be -- throwing their bodies at the juggernaut of the American economy. Young fanatics will be blowing up pipelines and power plants because they are unable persuade 300 million Americans to give up prosperity and live on wind and sunshine.
Really? I don't think so. It's true that leadership Democrats successfully prodded their liberal rank-and-file to protest the whisker-thin victory of George W. Bush in 2000, so that liberals spent eight years in a fantasy-land of "Selected, not Elected", Bushitler and Darth Vader Cheney.
Yes, it's true that liberals have mostly "continue[d] to prosper while moving rapidly toward the angry left." over the past decade. It's true that they all vomit out standard Democratic talking points: the Tea Party is "crazy"; Gov. Walker (R-WI) is "insane"; the president's troubles are all due to "racism". But that's why we have elections.
I recall back a few years ago when the Religious Right got up an initiative to limit abortion in Washington State. It went down 25-75. That was the end of social-conservative politics in the Soviet of Washington. It's amazing what an election will do. If Obama goes down 45-55 in November 2012 it will have a similar effect on liberals, Oh sure, they will snap at you about the asininity of President Perry/Romney, whoever. But they will be cowed. They will be beaten. They won't be staging stupid terrorist tricks, because they will have read the election returns. They may say that the American people are racists or mentally ill. People say things like that, to keep up their spirits. But they will know they are beaten.
In my view, the presidency of Barack Obama is the best thing that could have happened to conservatism. Liberals got to do everything they had ever wanted. They passed the Holy Grail of universal health care. They passed their trillion-dollar Keynesian stimulus. They whacked Wall Street with swingeing new regulation. They flooded the nation with windmills and very fast trains.
And the whole thing flushed down the toilet. ObamaCare is a disaster. The stimulus came and went. Dodd-Frank ended up entrenching "Too Big to Fail" and President Obama is backtracking on draconian EPA regulations.
Don't forget how this all appears to liberals. They thought that with intelligent people, finally, in charge, the nation would turn around from the incompetent Bush years. Teach those greedy bankers a lesson, give the economy a shot of sponduliks, and here we go for reelection. They cannot believe that it has all gone wrong.
But they will. And come 2013, after the liberal annus horribilis, liberals will be sadder and wiser. And a lot less cocky.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
CLOUDs in the Cloud Chamber
The Wall Street Journal's reporter Anne Jolis puts it so innocently. The physicist folks at CERN finally got around to testing the theory of Henrik Svensmark, that cosmic rays (charged particles entering the earth's atmosphere) "seed" clouds by creating cloud pre-nuclei as they speed through the atmosphere.
Do tell. So, after half a century of particle accelerator chappies using cloud chambers to track high- energy charged particles we have to test whether charged particles entering the atmosphere leave tracks of visible moisture? You mean charged particles out in the atmosphere behave just like they do in cloud chambers? Golly, those physicists are smart.
CERN has notoriously taken over a decade to run this experiment. You can understand why. Confirmation of Svensmark's hypothesis means that climate is driven in large part by the solar cycle. When there are few sunspots, we know, more cosmic rays penetrate to the atmosphere. So if cosmic rays seed cloud formation and clouds reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth, why, maybe the Little Ice Age, coinciding with a major solar minimum, was caused by excessive cloud formation from cosmic rays. Better soft-pedal that one. We government-funded physicists wouldn't want to tread on the gravy train of our government-funded climate scientist friends.
It looks like the whole climate-change hysteria is reaching the end game. That's why the climate scientists reacted hysterically to the recent Spencer-Braswell article on cloud feedback. Just as well, really. We could use the money to repair the government's balance sheet.
I wonder what the liberals and the environmentalists will come up with next.
At the Franco-Swiss home of the world's most powerful particle accelerator, scientists have been shooting simulated cosmic rays into a cloud chamber to isolate and measure their contribution to cloud formation.
Do tell. So, after half a century of particle accelerator chappies using cloud chambers to track high- energy charged particles we have to test whether charged particles entering the atmosphere leave tracks of visible moisture? You mean charged particles out in the atmosphere behave just like they do in cloud chambers? Golly, those physicists are smart.
CERN has notoriously taken over a decade to run this experiment. You can understand why. Confirmation of Svensmark's hypothesis means that climate is driven in large part by the solar cycle. When there are few sunspots, we know, more cosmic rays penetrate to the atmosphere. So if cosmic rays seed cloud formation and clouds reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth, why, maybe the Little Ice Age, coinciding with a major solar minimum, was caused by excessive cloud formation from cosmic rays. Better soft-pedal that one. We government-funded physicists wouldn't want to tread on the gravy train of our government-funded climate scientist friends.
It looks like the whole climate-change hysteria is reaching the end game. That's why the climate scientists reacted hysterically to the recent Spencer-Braswell article on cloud feedback. Just as well, really. We could use the money to repair the government's balance sheet.
I wonder what the liberals and the environmentalists will come up with next.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
When Liberals are the Oppressors
Liberal ideas were developed in the good old days when landowners, slave owners, and business owners were the bad guys. So liberals developed the notions of protest, civil disobedience, and passive resistance as the means by which the oppressed, assisted by their educated allies, could register their protest against injustice, expose the hypocrisies of the powerful, and win through to a just society.
But now a new justice movement has emerged onto the political radar. Only this time it is not a liberal movement, enthusiastically supported by our liberal friends. Instead this movement, the Tea Party movement, is anti-liberal. It has arisen to oppose the injustices of liberalism.
As you might expect, our liberal friends are not reacting very well. Protest, civil disobedience, mass meetings are one thing when they are used for a progressive purpose. When used by conservatives--even conservative religious women--liberals talk of "incivility", of "terrorism", of racism, and worse.
Over the last week we have seen a ton of bad behavior from liberals on this matter. Exhibit A is probably the head of the Teamsters union, Jimmy Hoffa, who introduced the President of the United States by calling workers everywhere to a war on the Tea Party.
Hey, we all like to throw out red meat to our supporters. But using war metaphors is considered inappropriate for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. So why is it OK for a labor union leader?
Then there's the remarks of Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting.
Mike Adams, a professor of criminology, is a practiced provocateur. His latest wheeze is to exploit the new federal edict on sexual harassment, requiring vigorous prosecution on campus using a "preponderance of the evidence" standard. So, writes Adams, that means that when an impressionable young woman hears her lefty professor refer to Tea Party members as "tea-baggers," a reference to oral sex, that young woman is clearly being sexually harassed.
Adams wants this followed up. For either we will get rid of a bunch of obnoxious lefty professors or our liberal friends will suddenly discover that a higher standard of proof is needed in sexual harassment cases.
Nothing here is all that remarkable. It's what you expect from a ruling dynasty when it loses the Mandate of Heaven and finds that the peasants are restless. Agitators! Traitors! Murderers!
Right now I am listening to a grand liberal apology on audio from The Great Courses, The Meaning of Life, by Prof. Jay Garfield of Smith College. We've just got to Gandhi and his non-violent protest against British racism and colonialism. In the rehearsal of Gandhi's life Garfield talks about how the British divided the Indians, religion against religion, caste against caste, even extending to dividing Bengal in 1905. Government should not divide people like that. "Government could not be an institution that allows some people to benefit and others to suffer."
The Greek philosopher George Maroustos once said that you can't tell how good a dog is when it's out hunting. You can only tell when it's being hunted. The measure of liberalism will be how it deals with political and moral adversity, when it is challenged to live up to its values by forces with which it disagrees.
Things are not looking good right now, as liberals find that they are being hunted. Liberals are responding to their troubles badly. My guess is that we ain't seen nothing yet.
But now a new justice movement has emerged onto the political radar. Only this time it is not a liberal movement, enthusiastically supported by our liberal friends. Instead this movement, the Tea Party movement, is anti-liberal. It has arisen to oppose the injustices of liberalism.
As you might expect, our liberal friends are not reacting very well. Protest, civil disobedience, mass meetings are one thing when they are used for a progressive purpose. When used by conservatives--even conservative religious women--liberals talk of "incivility", of "terrorism", of racism, and worse.
Over the last week we have seen a ton of bad behavior from liberals on this matter. Exhibit A is probably the head of the Teamsters union, Jimmy Hoffa, who introduced the President of the United States by calling workers everywhere to a war on the Tea Party.
Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,
Hey, we all like to throw out red meat to our supporters. But using war metaphors is considered inappropriate for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. So why is it OK for a labor union leader?
Then there's the remarks of Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting.
Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now with this tea party movement would love to see you and me — I’m sorry, Tamron — hanging on a tree.
Mike Adams, a professor of criminology, is a practiced provocateur. His latest wheeze is to exploit the new federal edict on sexual harassment, requiring vigorous prosecution on campus using a "preponderance of the evidence" standard. So, writes Adams, that means that when an impressionable young woman hears her lefty professor refer to Tea Party members as "tea-baggers," a reference to oral sex, that young woman is clearly being sexually harassed.
Obviously, when a male political science professor dismisses a female supporter of the Tea Party as one who enjoys oral sex, he has offended her. And that falls squarely within the university definition of sexual harassment.
Adams wants this followed up. For either we will get rid of a bunch of obnoxious lefty professors or our liberal friends will suddenly discover that a higher standard of proof is needed in sexual harassment cases.
Nothing here is all that remarkable. It's what you expect from a ruling dynasty when it loses the Mandate of Heaven and finds that the peasants are restless. Agitators! Traitors! Murderers!
Right now I am listening to a grand liberal apology on audio from The Great Courses, The Meaning of Life, by Prof. Jay Garfield of Smith College. We've just got to Gandhi and his non-violent protest against British racism and colonialism. In the rehearsal of Gandhi's life Garfield talks about how the British divided the Indians, religion against religion, caste against caste, even extending to dividing Bengal in 1905. Government should not divide people like that. "Government could not be an institution that allows some people to benefit and others to suffer."
The Greek philosopher George Maroustos once said that you can't tell how good a dog is when it's out hunting. You can only tell when it's being hunted. The measure of liberalism will be how it deals with political and moral adversity, when it is challenged to live up to its values by forces with which it disagrees.
Things are not looking good right now, as liberals find that they are being hunted. Liberals are responding to their troubles badly. My guess is that we ain't seen nothing yet.
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