Posted on 02/15/2019 3:35:37 PM PST by huckfillary
If you think that the “tax the rich”rhetoric from the left-wing of the Democratic Party is primarily about economics you would be sadly mistaken. After all, there isn’t enough tax revenue in the highest income bracket, even with a 90% marginal rate, to fund anyone’s pet social program for more than 48 hours. Do progressives know this? Of course they do.
The same observation holds true for the so-called ”Green New Deal” legislation recently proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the outrageous media darling from Queens. It’s true that this grab bag of environmental regulation, if enacted, would likely cost trillions and produce a systemic change in the American life-style. But you miss the deeper message if you think that the actual purpose of this legislative monstrosity is to save the planet before it expires in 12 years.
No, the current wave of extreme progressivism has a far more nefarious goal than simply higher taxes on the super-rich or carbon taxes to scrub down the environment. Indeed, the long-run objective of the new socialists and the gang of social justice warriors (SJW) is to gradually delegitimize the very foundations of modern capitalism by obliterating conventional notions of property rights, fairness and justice. If this sounds far-fetched you have not really been paying attention.
It is often assumed that capitalism is founded rock solid on economics. Not necessarily. Strictly speaking, economic considerations, though important, are secondary. Instead, it’s the relatively unique system of individual property rights that primarily legitimizes all capitalist institutions.
Take, for example, the most obvious and essential capitalist institution: the private stock corporation. It is solidly rooted in the notion that individuals have rights; that these rights include the right to incorporate; the right to instruct managers of corporations to maximize profits; and the right of owners to sell their shares. These individual rights (entitlements) are the “moral” foundation for the existence and operation of all modern business organizations.
This particular theory of property rights was made explicit in the 18th and 19th centuries by philosophers such as Adam Smith, John Locke and John Stuart Mill. It holds generally that it is morally appropriate for individuals to own property including, of course, their own labor; to exclusively determine its use; and to enjoy the benefits (income or otherwise) earned from production or exchange. Adam Smith, who taught “moral philosophy” (not economics) at Glasgow University in Scotland termed these rights “natural” and once famously observed that free markets and voluntary exchange were morally appropriate because they were “consistent with liberty and justice. ”
Modern progressives and socialists reject this classical approach to rights theory. They hold, instead, that rights to property (and capitalist institutions such as the corporation) are arbitrary constructs of an elite and conservative legal system; that there is nothing “natural” or legitimate about them; and that, therefore, they have no special moral status. But if they have no special moral status, then neither does the income and privileges that these “rights” currently generate for owners. Indeed, government may now alter these arbitrary property arrangements and redistribute income and privileges to, say, anyone in the name of fairness and social justice.
It is now apparent that this radically different approach to property rights can be employed by critics to rationalize higher taxes on the rich, a drastic reduction in CO2 emissions, an increase in the legal minimum wage to $15/hour, and even the federally chartering of corporations (an Elizabeth Warren pet proposal) in order to make them “socially responsible.” Indeed, there is almost no tax or regulation that cannot be justified from this perspective. And that’s precisely the point.
In conclusion, the social justice warriors and the new socialists are not primarily concerned with economics as such. The tragic lessons of, say, Venezuela are not their concern. Instead, their objective is to continue to delegitimize the classical foundations of property rights and then implement, through legislation and the courts, a radically different theory of justice in social affairs. Whether such a program will be successful has yet to be determined.
So...they tax the shit out of us because some nut case in Congress believes the world will end in 12 years.
I wonder, when the world doesn’t end in 12 years will they give us our money back?
Or do we get to hang those that lied to us?
When Maria Bartiromo pointed out to Barak Obama that tax collections went up when tax rates were lowered, BO answered that the purpose of the increased taxes wasn’t to raise collections but to keep the rich from getting richer. This was prior to his election.
The election of Trump derailed the left’s plan to destroy the Republic and join the globalists. They will do anything to accomplish regaining that. Brexit, Italy’s refusal to allow unlimited migration and the Eastern European countries also rejecting that have set back the globalist which is why Soros is trying to get that back on track through the EU.
It didn’t derail anything. It sidelined part of it for a bit.
Most so-called "progressives," portray themselves as the "intellectual" elite, although they are totally bereft of any real knowledge or understanding of the great ideas which were the seedbed of Ameria's successful 200-year experiment in liberty. We can read Burke's "Speech on Conciliation" to confirm the economic success of America--even before 1776 and 1787.
Today's liberals, especially these so-called "progressives," with all of their domination of academia and Far Left politics, seem to fit into a category described in an essay by T.S. Eliot on Virgil:
"In our time, when men seem more than ever to confuse wisdom with knowledge and knowledge with information and to try to solve the problems of life in terms of engineering, there is coming into existence a new kind of provincialism which perhaps deserves a new name. It is a provincialism not of space but of time--one for which history is merely a chronicle of human devices which have served their turn and have been scrapped, one for which the world is the property solely of the living, a property in which the dead hold no share."(Bold added for emphasis)Without intellectual anchoring in the enduring ideas which provided the philosophical foundation of America's Declaration of Independence and Constitution, their vain imaginations of superiority only expose their limited world view.
Yet, the America which rose from obscurity to greatness, from crude hoes and axes to putting a man on the moon, and from oppression by King George to a symbol of liberty for millions all over the world--that America provides shelter for them, even as they attempt to "change" her into something unimagined by the Founders.
If they were allowed to succeed in their own little provincial experiment, their posterity never would know the "blessings of Liberty" proclaimed by the Preamble to America's Constitution.
Now would be a good time for all of us to read (or re-read) Dr. Russell Kirk's "The Conservative Mind, which can be read online, by the way.
In Kirk's last chapter he reviews the works of poets and writers, quoting lines which now seem to bear a striking resemblance to Progressive players on the stage in American politics today.
For instance, in Robert Frost's "A Case for Jefferson," Frost writes of the character Harrison:
"Harrison loves my country too
But wants it all made over new.
. . . .
He dotes on Saturday pork and beans.
But his mind is hardly out of his teens.
With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it made over new."
Yes, the pseudointellectuals of academia, the media, and much of Congress, by their own admission, have fancied themselves "intellectuals."
By their words and actions, however, they display that provinciality Dr. Kirk recalls as having been described by T. S. Eliot (see above) as being one of time and place, having no intellectual grounding in ideas older than their own little experience in dabbling and discussing Mao, Marx, and other theoreticians.
America's written Constitution deserves protectors whose minds are out of their "teens" in terms of their understanding of civilization's long struggle for liberty.
It certainly deserves protectors who do not consider it a "flawed" document because that Constitution does not permit the government it structures to run rough shod over the rights of its "KEEPERS, the People" (Justice Story).
Blasting it "all to smithereens" seems to be the goal of the Far Left.
Progressives/Leftists rely on what they must believe to be the ignorance of the American people when they make such ridiculous and condescending claims. They are being outwitted, however, by an increasingly knowledgeable citizenry who are using the miracles of technology to study for themselves ancient and modern writings on the ideas of liberty versus those of tyranny. As Jefferson wisely observed:
"History, by apprising the people of the past, will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." - Thomas Jefferson
>
This is the crux of the problem: the Dems AND the GOP simply do not recognize private property rights, enshrined in Natural Law and the fundamental basis of liberty. Free-market capitalism recognizes and respects the sanctity of private property and the primacy of the individual v. society/the State.
>
Yep, but let’s vote in more ‘(C)’...we’ll make it up in VOLUME.
What’s that definition of “insanity” again??
Afraid you are right.
Bump
The role of the first faction is to get the grassroots SJWs worked up during the primaries so that they're enthused enough to vote for the second during the general election. This means that economics is negotiable to the Left. The social and cultural agendas are non-negotiable.
Whether we know it or not this could be our last hurrah. Obama’s minnions are still in place like sleeper cells. The protections they put in place to protect their criminal empire we can see today, Mueller, FBI, DOJ, we know who the guilty are but that’s were it ends no one goes to jail. They will be back after trump and with a vengeance. We will never come this way again if they are not completely crushed, prosecuted, jailed and the minnions flushed out and removed from their agencies. This is just an inconvenient lull, a bump in the road for them
You sound rather like Sadhu Sundar Selverage
Great post!
That has been my song for a long time. I think Trump is the only entity that can kill the monster. However, what he would have to do to slay the Beast would end the Republic just as surely as a 2020 election that returns the Senate, the House and the Presidency to the Democrats.
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.