It may no longer instruct (p. 68), but the liberal mind continues to amaze. Just in one sitting I come across two splendid examples, both intended to defend our president against his alleged enemies, none of them foreign, all of them domestic. In the first, the columnist Ms. Maureen Dowd heaps scorn on Justice Antonin Scalia yet has the cheek to call him “venomous.” Justice Anthony Kennedy, as the “swing vote” on Obamacare, gets off easier. Suddenly Dowd turns silly, asking “Could the dream of expanded health care die at the hands of a Kennedy?” Teddy must be sitting up in his grave. In the second example, the New Yorker ‘s Elizabeth Kolbert, in the weekly’s lead editorial, goes after Republicans who say Mr. Obama’s energy policy is the product of radical ideology and responsible for our nation’s rising gasoline prices. That’s all “hokum,” she notes, as if “the President could, if he wanted to, reduce the price of oil.” But she doesn’t stop there, expressing joy instead that he doesn’t want to. “When it comes to gas prices, it’s been clear for, well, let’s just say forever that the cost of gasoline in America is actually too low. Cheap gas generates sprawl and traffic. It discourages the use of mass transit…” Before you know it, it causes global warming. So what’s one American’s radical ideology is another’s “rational policy option,” as she terms it. At least with Ms. Kolbert, we know where she stands. She simply wants to overturn the American way of life. Conversely, her party rebels at any challenge to its way of doing business. For his troubles, a Jimmy Stewart-like Paul Ryan is described by our president as a purveyor of Social Darwinism, a Trojan horse, a wild-eyed radical. (Do these people ever stop projecting?) Last year, Ms. Dowd said Ryan was “trying to push the cost of Medicare and Medicaid onto the old, the sick, and the disabled,” thus inspiring the recent liberal ad depicting a man who could be mistaken for Ryan pushing an helpless old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. Through all this, none of the Ryan vilifiers ever engage his arguments. It’s enough to read any of Ryan’s plain-spoken observations—here’s a pearl from this month’s symposium (p. 14), “Government has never come up with a magic formula for lowering costs and improving quality”—to know immediately that the likes of Ms. Dowd have no answer, and so they carry on as if such arguments did not exist. But they do exist, and that’s why we’re here today. For all their fulminating against “the rich,” Obamaworlders insist money is no obstacle. Easy for them to say, when it’s always somebody else’s money they have in their sights. But money is an obstacle when government is bankrupt and all signs point to even more alarming indebtedness in the coming years and decades. In one vision, government coddles us all, from cradle to grave, and in return, we show our gratitude by re-electing those who take such good care of us and even let us ride on mass transit. The other vision says, “Enough already; this is not how our country was built and not how any self-respecting human should be forced to live.” If we are to continue as free citizens, we face facts now and formulate policies consistent with the meaning of freedom. It’s a very American thing to do (p. 56), and as readers of our special symposium will learn, at the heart of the alternative policies to the Entitlement State laid out here is a lovely notion called Choice. Back when they were liberals, Liberals used to treasure it too.
Original post:
The Choice Is Ours
Jonah Goldberg has a new book out coming out tomorrow – the full title is The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas – which will be seen by many to be a sort of sequel to his previous (and very useful work Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning . I say ‘sort of sequel’ because The Tyranny of Cliches is not exactly an expansion of Liberal Fascism as it is a book that references a lot of the same events and themes as its ‘predecessor,’ only from the angle of ‘how progressives manipulate language’ as opposed to ‘how progressives manipulate history.’ Capsule review: The Tyranny of Cliches does an excellent job in puncturing several progressive delusions about their ideology, including the one about how progressives don’t really have an ideology in the first place; you want to read it. The central message of The Tyranny of Cliches is Progressives have a consistent ideology, which they then proceed to pretend is not an ideology at all, but instead mere ‘Pragmatism.’ The reason why this is important is because ideologies can be and are rigorously questioned and challenged as a matter of course; but if one can instead get people to treat an ideological position as merely being something that ‘everybody knows,’ then it theoretically becomes easier to get people to unquestionably endorse said position. Hence, ‘tyranny of cliche:’ cliches are of course self-contained and internally consistent thoughts* that most people in a culture understand and accept. Having progressive ideas and concepts slip into that shared consensus would go a long way towards having those ideas and concepts adopted and used.
” It seems to me that the Federal Government just doesn’t want to know who is here illegally or not. ” — Chief Justice John Roberts Like a poker player who keeps getting dealt nothing better than a pair of threes, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli has had a bad month. His attempt to defend the indefensible “individual mandate” provision of Obamacare has left even the most confident liberals worried that the Supreme Court will overturn at least that part of the law, and perhaps all of it. And on Wednesday, Verrilli was tasked by the Obama administration to play an only slightly better hand as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments (transcript here ) in the federal government’s challenge to four provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, SB 1070 . (The four provisions at issue are Sections 2(B), 3, 5(C), and 6.) The lead attorney for Arizona, former Solicitor General Paul Clement, spoke first, primarily answering questions about whether the law, in particular its Section 2(B) which requires law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of people they’ve stopped for other reasons if a “reasonable suspicion exists that the person…is unlawfully present in the United States,” would cause citizens and resident aliens to be detained for longer than they otherwise would be. Clement said the answer would generally be no, and in all cases would be subject to Fourth Amendment limits on reasonable detention. Clement was also asked by several Justices about federal preemption, in other words whether the Arizona law unconstitutionally interfered with federal responsibility in the area of immigration, though even the liberal Hispanic Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not seem convinced that was the case. The day got no better for General Verrilli when he said that it is the federal government’s position that Arizona does not have the power to remove illegal aliens from within its borders because “the Constitution vests exclusive authority over immigration matters with the national government.” Justice Antonin Scalia pounced: “But all that means is that the Government can set forth the rules concerning who belongs in this country. But if, in fact, somebody who does not belong in this country is in Arizona, Arizona has no power? What does sovereignty mean if it does not include the ability to defend your borders?” Scalia noted further that “The Constitution recognizes that there is such a thing as State borders and the States can police their borders, even to the point of inspecting incoming shipments to exclude diseased material.” Verrilli complained that Arizona is “pursuing a policy that maximizes the apprehension of unlawfully present aliens so they can be jailed as criminals in Arizona unless the Federal Government agrees to direct its enforcement resources to remove [them].” Chief Justice John Roberts then cut to the heart of the matter: “Well, if that state does — well, that’s a question of enforcement priorities.” Verrilli turned his argument toward the mandatory nature of SB 1070, namely that law enforcement officials must check the immigration status of someone detained for another reason when there is reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. Justice Alito asked if it would be a violation of federal law if, as is permissible under current law, every Arizona law enforcement official voluntarily checked on the immigration status of every person that they would mandatorily have to verify under SB 1070. Verrilli admitted “No, it wouldn’t be.” Further, Chief Justice Roberts noted that federal immigration authorities are not required to take any action if they choose not to, even if the person is illegally present, and suggested that the law therefore does not overstep federal authority. One can imagine a wry smile crossing Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s face when Roberts twisted the knife: “It seems to me that the Federal Government just doesn’t want to know who is here illegally or not.” Verrilli’s response was shorthand for the federal government wanting to be able to set the state’s priorities, even if that meant not enforcing federal law despite damage to the state. Scalia was, as usual, ready with an incisive rebuttal: Anyway, what’s wrong about the states enforcing Federal law? There is a Federal law against robbing Federal banks. Can it be made a state crime to rob those banks? I think it is. But does the Attorney General come in and say, you know, we might really only want to go after the professional bank robbers? If it’s just an amateur bank robber, you know, we’re going to let it go. And the state’s interfering with our whole scheme here because it’s prosecuting all these bank robbers. Even the left-leaning Justice Stephen Breyer was unconvinced of the Obama administration’s position, wondering aloud how a provision that would require policemen call to check immigration status can be said to conflict with a federal rule that allows policemen to call to check immigration status. As Verrilli kept going with the same weak argument, Justice Sotomayor let him know the score: “[Y]ou can see it’s not selling very well — why don’t you try to come up with something else? Because I, frankly — as the chief has said to you, it’s not that it’s forcing you to change your enforcement priorities. You don’t have to take the person into custody. So what’s left of your argument?” One almost felt bad for General Verrilli when he tried to respond with an argument about harassment, despite a clear answer to Justice Scalia at the beginning of the questioning that the federal government was not making any arguments based on racial profiling. When he tried to make that case, Sotomayor interjected, “Please move…” It could not have been an accident that Verrilli tried to play the profiling card in response to the Court’s only Hispanic Justice, but even she wouldn’t hear it. Questioning moved on to focus on Section 3 of SB 1070, which makes illegal presence in Arizona a state crime (in addition to being a federal crime), and again Verrilli’s argument was that the state was imposing on the federal prerogatives regarding registration of aliens. It went no better for him. When Justice Scalia noted that perhaps it is an issue of Arizona helping to enforce federal law because the federal government doesn’t have the money to do so itself, Verrilli stretched to suggest that Arizona’s jailing more people than the federal government would jail for illegal immigration “poses a very serious risk of raising significant foreign relations problems.” Chief Justice Roberts asked whether the administration’s argument was about foreign relations or lack of resources, and Justice Scalia asked, “Well, can’t you avoid that particular foreign relations problem by simply deporting these people?” But this time the knife-twisting came from Justice Kennedy: “So you’re saying the government has a legitimate interest in not enforcing its laws?” Verrilli returned to the foreign relations issue, arguing that “Between 60 and 70 percent of the people that we remove every year, we remove to Mexico. And in addition, we have to have the cooperation of the Mexicans.” Scalia asked the obvious question: “So we have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico. Is that what you’re saying?” One can only imagine the sinking feeling in Donald Verrilli’s stomach. One of the more interesting arguments arose regarding Section 5 of SB 1070, which imposes penalties on an illegal alien for seeking or performing work in Arizona. The federal argument is that Congress addressed this issue and decided only to impose penalties on those employers who hired illegal aliens, thus implying that it is federal law not to impose penalties on the illegal aliens themselves. Verrilli’s time ended before any Justice asked a question on this issue, but based on earlier questions the Court seemed no more sympathetic to this argument than any of the others. Paul Clement got several minutes of rebuttal time, which he began by saying that “the Government’s rather unusual theory that something that’s okay when done ad hoc becomes preempted when it’s systematic, I think that theory largely refutes itself.” He reiterated that the impact on the federal government of the Arizona law is nothing more than “giving [them] information on which to bring their enforcement priorities to bear.” He also made a point (which he had touched on briefly earlier in the questioning) that is a key political issue in states that have a substantial conservative population but also large cities run by liberals: SB 1070 is designed in part to trump local laws that have the effect of creating “sanctuary cities” that discourage or prevent their law enforcement officials from enquiring about a detained or arrested person’s immigration status. Chief Justice Roberts ended the arguments with “Thank you, Mr. Clement, General Verrilli. Well argued on both sides.” Mr. Clement’s position was indeed well argued, and seemed at least somewhat persuasive to the two liberal judges most involved in questioning. As for Mr. Verrilli, perhaps he did the best he could with the hand he was dealt. After all, when you work for an administration that — in true “Progressive” fashion — considers the Constitution nothing more than an impediment to its goals, it is not easy to argue in front of Justices who, to a greater or lesser degree, take the Constitution seriously (even if not always consistently). It is often a losing game to predict the eventual outcome of a Supreme Court case based on questioning, but if the tenor of Wednesday’s questions and the quality of Wednesday’s answers are any indication, a ruling in favor of Arizona — at least on the highly disputed Section 2(B) — by at least a 5-3 margin seems in the cards. (Justice Kagan has recused herself from the case because of her role in the Obama administration’s original challenge to the Arizona law. Because a lower court has overturned some parts of Arizona’s law, a tie 4-4 vote would functionally be a loss for the state.) Perhaps more interesting than the impact on SB 1070 itself will be the broadness of the eventual ruling. Given the aggressive questions and comments by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, and Scalia — and the lack of substantial opposition by the liberals on the bench — the Supreme Court’s conservative wing may use this case as an opportunity to reintroduce Congress, the Obama administration, and the nation to the Tenth Amendment and the important role of states in our republic. Should the majority use this ruling to broaden states’ rights and powers, the Obama administration and liberals across the nation may rue the day they ever kicked this particular legal hornets’ nest.
WASHINGTON — I was innocently making my way through the weekend newspapers when I came upon a “think” piece in the Washington Post by a dreamer named Chris Mooney, a self-confessed “liberal.” Yes, he actually admitted to it. He has conferred with psychologists to ascertain the difference between liberals and conservatives. By the way, it is always a tip-off when one writes that he has resorted to psychologists, as opposed to political philosophers, to explain what are after all political differences. What the writer is saying is we now have “science” on our side, as opposed to mere learning, and the scientists’ findings are unassailable — and, as it turns out, claptrap, tendentious, self-regarding claptrap. Now comes Mooney’s claptrap: “There’s now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information in divergent ways and to differ on any number of psychological traits.” To come to the point, liberals “score higher on a personality measure called ‘openness to experience.’” And conservatives, “in contrast, tend to be less open — less exploratory, less in need of change….” We conservatives appreciate “order and structure….” You will recall how open to experience liberals have been when we attempted to introduce vouchers, charter schools, missile defense, and supply-side economics. Liberals are wildly curious about conservative positions on all manner of issues, and as for openness may I suggest you light up a fat cigar, say in an outdoor café, or ride your bicycle without a helmet. See how open our liberal friends are then. Fortunately, this past weekend I also read the Wall Street Journal (that is how open “to experience” I am) and came across an interview with the distinguished British political philosopher — and I might add — American Spectator contributor , Roger Scruton. Scruton, as luck would have it, had some arresting things to say about the differing mentality of liberals and conservatives. All without having to resort to the partisan findings of lightweights and imposters. He said of liberalism: “My own view is that left-wing positions largely come about from resentment — I agree with Nietzsche about this — a resentment about the surrounding social order. They have privileges, I don’t. Or, I have them and I can’t live up to them. Things should be organized differently. And there’s always some sense on the left that power is in the wrong hands.” That comports very well with my long-held thesis that there is only one political value that all liberals through the generations continue to profess. It is not personal liberty. It is not public order. It is disturbing the peace. Think about my aforementioned fat cigar. A generation ago no self-respecting liberal denied our ability to smoke in public, and a lady with a cigar was widely admired. Today it is a capital offense or should be. Liberals’ one unchanging political value is to disturb the peace, and let us pause to note that in almost any civilized criminal code disturbing the peace is a misdemeanor. In Araby it is probably a capital offense. Scruton’s observation about the liberals and their resentments is a perfect opening for introducing a lady who this week needs no introduction, Hilary Rosen, the Democratic strategist who said of Ann Romney that she “has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing.…” Mrs. Romney raised five boys, beginning when both she and her husband were undergraduates. Oh, and let us not forget the comic genius, Bill Maher, who added Ann Romney “has never gotten her ass out of the house to work.” These liberals may suffer superior “openness to experience,” but it is limited to things their leaders approve of, and more fundamentally they are very angry. They are angry with anyone who presumes to seek high public office against them — even the candidate’s wife. They are angry because they are losing.
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All the Angry Liberals
On Monday, the United States Senate voted on S.2230 , the Orwellian-of-title “Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012.” (More precisely, senators voted on whether to invoke cloture and end debate on the measure.) Based on the so-called “Buffett Rule,” the bill, authored by Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and cosponsored by the most left-wing members of the Senate, aims to raise the taxes of American taxpayers who earn $1,000,000 or more in a year by forcing anyone who meets the income thresholds to pay a minimum percentage of their total income to the federal government. The tally was 51 votes in favor, short of the required 60 votes, with 45 senators voting against this naked and divisive class warfare. It was a party-line vote other than Susan Collins (RINO-ME) who voted with the Democrats while Mark Pryor (D-AR) voted with the Republicans. (Neither is up for re-election in 2012.) Two Republicans, one Democrat, and Joe Lieberman did not vote, with Lieberman issuing a statement that he was against the Buffett Rule. Specifically, the bill would create a 30-percent income tax rate which phases in beginning at one million dollars of income and is fully effective at $2 million of income. Other than the “phase-in” the tax calculation is simple: If you make more than a million dollars, take your adjusted gross income, subtract charitable deductions, then multiply by 30 percent. From that amount, subtract the income tax, payroll tax, and Alternative Minimum Tax already due or paid, but add back your itemized deductions. (Taxes paid to foreign governments, income taxes withheld from your paycheck, and tax refunds for fuel used on farms and other non-road purposes are not added back to income for “Fair Share” calculations.) Then write a check for that amount to the United States Treasury. For those Americans who are unfortunate enough to have great success in their businesses or investments, this bill effectively disallows deductions for mortgage interest, retirement account contributions, adoption expenses and other common itemized deductions except for donations to charity. Between one and two million dollars of income, the additional tax is reduced based on how far along that scale you are, so that at $1.5 million, your “fair share” punishment is half of the amount calculated based on the above formula. One revolutionary aspect — in the sense that V.I. Lenin or Fidel Castro was a revolutionary — of the “Fair Share Act” is that it does not add a marginal rate increase to those earning above the Democrats’ demonization threshold. Instead, it retroactively increases the tax rate on the first dollar earned, while simultaneously increasing the amount of the victim’s earnings that is subject to taxation. It is a plan that is corrosive to our nation, pitting Americans against each other. It is a plan that will have negligible economic impact, raising less than 1 percent of the anticipated accumulated deficit over the next decade… and even that assumes away the anti-growth impacts of such an anti-entrepreneurial tax. The likely result is even worse than these estimates. And because so many Americans no longer know what has made our nation a success, it is a plan that, even as it fails legislatively, may work politically. To the extent that very-high-income Americans have an effective tax rate that is lower than class warriors think it “should” be, it is primarily from the portion of their income that comes from capital gains (and to a lesser extent from dividends). History has shown us that raising capital gains taxes does not generate more tax revenue. The vaunted Clinton budget surplus, for example, only arose in the second half of his presidency after he signed the 1997 law that cut the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 20 percent. According to a Heritage Foundation study , the Treasury Department estimated that the tax cut would cause a small net loss of revenue to the government, estimated at about $30 billion in the fourth year after implementation. Instead, from 1996 to 1999, capital gains tax receipts increased by over 71 percent while GDP growth accelerated and unemployment dropped. To be sure, not all of the increased economic activity and stock price increase of the period was due to the capital gains tax cut. But some of it surely was, a contention boosted by the fact that capital gains tax receipts also jumped almost 25% in just two years following President Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. But this isn’t really about revenue for the Obama administration, and it never has been. When asked in 2008 about whether he would raise capital gains taxes even if it doesn’t raise revenue, he said yes “for purposes of fairness.” Unfortunately for our republic, American citizens’ economic literacy — which should be the body politic’s primary anti-venom against President Obama’s snake oil — is just where the liberals want it, which is to say non-existent. Progressives have spent a century stripping public education and the ivory towers of universities of economic rationality. Such rationality — including the obvious lessons of an untaught history — would reinforce the limited-government principles of our Founding which are directly antithetical to the Progressive vision. Economic and political restraint go hand in glove, as well understood by those who penned our national rulebook called the Constitution. For those of you who went to public school and finished high school in the last 20 years, you know that the Constitution is a barely legible piece of paper, written by a bunch of dead rich white guys. You know that it means what a few people in black robes say it means (regardless of its plain language). And you probably don’t know that the left sees it as “political witchcraft” and an obstacle to their long-held dreams of political nirvana in which the smart people (no conservatives or libertarians need apply) wield power over the rest of us — for our own benefit, of course. In short, you know just what John Dewey (hero of Marxists ) and his disciples wanted you to know — and maybe less, but certainly not more. By offering “everything for everyone for free” (a slogan I actually saw on a 20-foot wide banner during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver), Democrats — with the unforgiveable passivity of decades of Republicans — are creating the political nightmare foreseen in a quote usually attributed to Alexander Tytler: “A democracy…can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits…with the result that a democracy always collapses….” A Gallup poll released on Friday suggest that a majority of Americans favor the thinking behind “Buffett Rule,” including nearly 63 percent of independent voters (with only 33 percent of independents opposing it.) While Karl Marx smiles, Tytler nods grimly, thinking “I told you so.” Another Gallup poll asked people whether they thought their tax bills were too high, too low, or about right. At 47 percent, the “about right” response matched its high for the past decade, and at 46 percent, the “too high” contingent was on the low end of its range. This is, of course, following the Bush tax cuts and before the implementation of the massive Obamacare tax hikes we’re soon to be hit with. For the left, if 47 percent think that tax rates are about right — and especially if the “rich” think so, which the poll suggests — they must be far too low. If there is a true warning sign in this second poll, however, and a message likely to keep Democrats going all-in with the class warfare rhetoric, it is that the income group most likely to say that the tax code is “unfair” and that their own taxes are too high is the lowest income group, those earning less than $30,000 per year. 2012 marked the first time since Gallup began asking the question that those who pay the least in tax had the strongest opinion that the tax code is “unfair.” It is safe to assume that the unfairness they refer to is not that they are not paying enough in tax, or that the current system is the most “progressive” in our nation’s recent history (in terms of what income groups pay what percentage of income taxes), or that their votes are being bought with other people’s money, or that perhaps they should also share some of the cost of our national defense. Yes, those Americans who pay almost nothing in federal income taxes are the most likely to think that they should pay even less and that those who already shoulder nearly the entire burden should shoulder more. According to the National Taxpayers Union , in 2009, those Americans who earned under $32,396 comprised the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers ranked by Adjusted Gross Income. As a group, that 50 percent of taxpayers paid 2.25 percent of all federal income taxes. Their share of taxes has been steadily dropping, going from 4 percent in 1999 to 3 percent in 2005 to 2.25 percent in 2009. In 2009, there were 59 million tax returns filed which either had zero federal tax liability or which resulted in a net tax refund. And this only includes those who file tax returns; millions of low-income Americans file no tax returns. I wonder how many of these people were counted in Gallup’s survey. The fact that these are the people who are most upset about their tax bills — while the top 1 percent of American earners pay more federal income tax than the bottom 90 percent, and the top 0.1 percent pay more than the bottom 75 percent — says all you need to know about how close we are to losing our country. With the ongoing failure of their “Republican war on women” theme (thanks in part to Hilary Rosen and Bill Maher making clear what Democrats actually think of women), the Obama administration aims to win reelection by returning to the left’s longest-running strategy: pitting Americans against each other with beggar-thy-neighbor class-based jealousy. Politicians, including Democrats, of years past have understood the danger of raising taxes, and the benefits of cutting them. John F. Kennedy understood: “The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital from static to more dynamic situations, the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.” Or, if you don’t want JFK, how about this ultra-conservative quote: “Next year’s tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital… I am confident that the enactment of the right bill next year will in due course increase our gross national product by several times the amount of taxes actually cut.” Reagan? Goldwater? Thatcher? Coolidge? Romney? Actually, that’s JFK too. Quoting John F. Kennedy’s many pro-growth tax policy views should become part of Republican talking points each and every day, reminding independent voters just which party has really become “extreme” on the economic issues that trouble Americans each and every day. The class warfare — which JFK would disdain — embodied by the “Fair Share Act” is transparent. It is reprehensible. It is un-American. And the bill itself failed in the Senate. But politically, thanks to ignorant voters who know exactly what the left wants them to know, it just might work.
