Posted on 06/14/2010 5:55:03 AM PDT by Rummyfan
The Professors Are In Charge
We are being run by the mindset of the faculty lounge, as if the philosophy or English department has taken over running the country. Let me adduce some random examples.
Taxes
Tax proposals in haywire fashion are thrown out almost every day from various Obamians, as if at a faculty bull session over coffee. Can we count them all — much less can small businesses plan to hire a worker when they don’t know how much more they will shortly owe the government?
Here is what we hear from Barack Obama: a restoration of the death tax. Trial balloons for a national sales tax or a VAT. How high will capital gains hikes go? Rates are to go back to or beyond (?) the Clinton income tax schedules? Was the cap to come off income exposed to the full FICA bite, and was it to be set at $150,000, $200,000, or $250,000? What exactly is the new health care surcharge? And when and if these federal income hikes are added to the states’ raises in state income, property, and sales taxes, what will the aggregate tax bite be? Does anyone know? Do any of these guys care how “they” are going to make enough money to pay “us”?
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
ping
A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Socialism, Communism, Marxism = SLAVERY
Ambiguity in speech, not clarity was preferred; the ability to adduce ten different points of view was always considered superior to deciding on one. Tantrums, the occasional obscenity, the knife-in-the-back memo always assumed a sort of rule that such rascality never earned a punch in the face; the art was to be as cruel as possible without resort to violence. Yet when gut-check time came to vote openly yes or no and take the consequences, most voted present by skipping out or abstaining.
Faculty lounge...what a perfectly apt description. Not 1 yesrs’ worth of real live executive experience among them.
Not really appropriate analogy since Communists imprison or kill faculty. But his point is valid. Pipedreams and glorification of the Communist fantasy of enlightened elitists governing the masses.
I like this article. Not only does VDH beautifully articulate my own various rantings, but he links them in a way that makes a great deal of sense to me. It’s not that I don’t like academics, it’s just that they seem, sometimes, to inhabit a parallel reality.
My feelings are best summarized in this quote from “Ghostbusters”, which occurs when the three parapsychologists have their grant terminated and are fired by the university. Speaking is Ray Stantz (the Dan Aykroyd character):
Dr Ray Stantz: “Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there. I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results!”
Always loved that line!
For progressives, the issue is never whether to increase taxes: it’s all about which taxes to increase. There never will be enough money to fund all the bright ideas that progressives generate for making society better, especially since such ideas never have to pass a market test that would permit policymakers to assess which ones had benefits exceeding their costs or even how to rank them in terms of cost-effectiveness.
The reality is that in a free society, any idea that provides benefits that exceed its costs is likely to be produced by the market. Moreover, resources will tend to flow to activities where the excess of beneifts over costs is largest (that, after all, is where the biggest profit potential lies). All other ideas will be weeded out. Unfortunately, it is these ideas that progressives seize upon too often as “needing” to be provided by government (read: paid for coercively rather than voluntarily).
btt
...thanks Rummyfan!...what site does VDH’s writings appear on mostly?...I’d like to read more of his work...I’m married to a PhD English professor and she could tell you first hand just how accurate this essay is.
He writes for National Review and for Pajamas Media (the site in this instance). Those are the two I know for sure and where his work appears regularly. There may well be others.
We have made the office of the president imperial and the other branches corruptible.The founding fathers would be sickened and appalled by this form of government that the people hold up as representative of our American values and virtues.We teach and give nothing to the future now but tyranny and despair.
They would call it what it is, slavery. Because that is what communism, socialism and marxism is SLAVERY.
...thanks Rummy fan...I look foreward to reading more of VDH’s work.
They actively promote the most visible political champion(s) of the Revolutionary Left, while earnestly believing that their influence will blossom once their heroes are victorious. After all, they supported the winners and held the same banner aloft in solidarity with them.
And of course they are uniformly shocked to learn that they will number among the be the first to be silenced, at that fateful moment when useful idiots cease to be useful.
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