Explaining the Democrats????? Success (The Ugly Truth).

[_Droopy]

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thor ... democracy/

Posted By Bruce Thornton On November 12, 2012

The election post-mortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans’ defeat, from the “woman problem” and the “Hispanic problem,” as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney’s fatcat persona and his inept campaign. But there’s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient Athens––Obama and the Democrats promised voters more free stuff.

The differences between the political mechanisms of ancient Athens and those of America today do not erase the similarities of mentality and sensibility popular rule creates in its citizens. Most important is the way democracy leads to radical egalitarianism: the belief, as Aristotle put it, “that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.” Because citizens are equal in their possession of political rights and some level of access to the machinery of the state, they then desire to be equal in every way. Yet everyday experience shows that there exist real differences of talent, ability, beauty, brains, hard work, and sheer luck among people, and these differences account for their varying levels of economic and social success. Hence the desire to use the coercive power of the state to level these differences, especially through the appropriation and redistribution of wealth through government distributed entitlements. The right to equality of opportunity then becomes the right to equality of result, with the power of the state as the instrument of achieving that utopian goal, usually at the expense of freedom.

Traditionally democracies have been faulted precisely for this tendency to use the power of the state to redistribute wealth and so erase the most glaring difference among citizens, that between the rich and the poor. Such policies are also attractive because they serve the shortsighted, personal material interests of the citizens, often at the expense of the state as a whole. As Thucydides’ recreations of debates in the Athenian Assembly during the Peloponnesian War show, decisions of life and death, like the disastrous invasion of Sicily in 415 B.C., were often the result of a selfish calculus of how the individual voting citizen would personally benefit, no matter how dangerous to the future wellbeing of the state such decisions might be. During the 4th century B.C., Athenian citizens could expect even more state pay almost every day of the year. They were paid to serve on juries, attend Assembly meetings, go to the theater, and participate in religious festivals. Even when the threat of Philip II’s aggression against Athens became clear, it was dangerous for any politician to propose transferring money from the fund for paying theater and festival attendance to the military fund. By the time Athenians had realized the danger of Philip’s power, it was too late. The Athenians lost the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., and with it their political freedom and autonomy.

For ambitious politicians, moreover, taking money from some citizens to give it to others was a way to further their careers. Demagogues and would-be tyrants aggrandized power explicitly by promising the masses that they would take from the “rich” and give to the poor. They typically preyed on the class envy and resentment of the latter, as the 4th century B.C. orator Isocrates wrote: “Wherefore these men [demagogues] would be most happy to see all of our citizens reduced to the condition of helplessness in which they themselves are powerful. And the greatest proof of this is that they do not consider by what means they may provide a livelihood for those who are in need, but rather how they may reduce those who are thought to possess some wealth to the level of those who are in poverty.” Or as Obama might put it, “spread the wealth around.”

The 2nd century B.C. historian Polybius famously described the threat to freedom and order that results from an ambitious politician exploiting the selfish interests of the people by promising them the wealth of others: “For the mob,” Polybius writes, “habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence.” Today, violent revolution is unlikely, not least because it is unnecessary. The expansionary federal government and its hoards of bureaucratic minions have replaced the ruthless tyrants of antiquity, creating the “soft despotism” de Tocqueville warned against. This entitlement leviathan increases its power and reach by giving more and more benefits and services to more and more people, all funded by expropriation of wealth from the productive.

Moreover, modern free-market capitalism and its dynamic of competition have sharpened the differences between “rich” and “poor,” even though by any historical measure those we call “poor” today would have been considered more than comfortable in the past. Yet these disparities of wealth are even more painful for today’s democratic egalitarians, who chafe at what they see as unfair inequality. Hence the appeal of dirigiste or socialistic economic policies, which promise to erase a humiliating “income inequality” and provide the wealth citizens can’t obtain for themselves but that they envy and resent when possessed by others. In addition, as Jean François Revel points out, the suspicion of free-market economies and the lingering affection for socialism “relate to warding off two fears that are present in each of us: the fear of competition and the fear of responsibility. These feelings are not just vague apprehensions; they are dominating anxieties. Membership in a redistributive economy allays these fears and reduces stress. The statist machine promises the psychological comfort of not having to bear the burdens of responsibility for oneself.” Redistribution of wealth, then, provides both material and psychological benefits.

This summary of democracy’s dysfunctions is relevant as well to the decades of our wanton entitlement spending that has accelerated during the last four years. In 2010, government at all levels transferred more than $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services to recipients. Since the 1960s, the government has spent nearly $20 trillion on the War on Poverty. The federal government now runs about 80 programs providing aid to the poor, and government at all levels spends nearly $1 trillion annually to fight poverty. Food stamp spending has doubled during Obama’s first term, reaching $75.7 billion for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2011. From 2007 to 2011, spending on unemployment has nearly quadrupled to $120 billion. And don’t forget the ongoing costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which in fiscal year 2011 ate up 43% of the federal budget at a cost of $1.56 trillion. On top of these already existing entitlement programs, Obama spent nearly $1 trillion on a stimulus package that benefitted political clients like state government workers, and another $25 billion on the auto bailout that mostly rewarded yet another political client, the UAW. As for Obamacare, the CBO calculates it will cost about $2 trillion over ten years, and still leave 30 million people without health care. As a result of Obama’s increases in these wealth transfers, federal spending has now reached 24% of GDP.

To pay for all this largesse, the federal leviathan borrows money, as Obama has done to the tune of over $5 trillion. But it also redistributes income through the most progressive tax system among advanced economies. In 2009, the bottom 20% of taxpayers earned approximately 5% of the nation’s income but paid just 0.3 percent of all federal taxes. Households in the middle 20%, which earned almost 14.7% of national income, paid only 9.4% of federal taxes. Americans in the top 20%, earned 51% of the nation’s income, but paid 67.9% of all federal taxes. As for the evil 1%, they earned 13.4% of all income and paid 28.9% of all federal taxes. As a result, nearly half of all taxpayers contribute next to nothing to the costs of funding the government’s entitlements.

Another way to see how the tax system redistributes wealth, consider how much each group receives in federal spending compared to how much they pay. According to the Tax Foundation, households in the lowest 20% of income received roughly $8.21 in federal, state and local government spending for every dollar of taxes paid in 2004, households in the middle 20% received $1.30, and households in the top 20% received $0.41. In other words, tax payments exceeded government spending for the top 40%, meaning there was a net fiscal transfer of between $1.031 trillion and $1.527 trillion from one group of taxpayers to another. If this isn’t income redistribution from the “rich” to the “poor,” nothing is.

But like an ancient demagogue haranguing the Athenian Assembly, during the campaign Obama demonized Mitt Romney as the heartless tool of the rich who cared nothing for ordinary Americans, a plutocrat itching to cut programs for the poor, sick, and disabled, and shutter factories to send jobs to China, all so he could cut taxes and increase profits for the “millionaires and billionaires.” And Obama promised even more government booty, now disguised as “investments” to be paid for by appropriating even more money from those same greedy plutocrats. It was class-warfare at its nastiest, and it worked. Indeed, according to Jay Cost, it worked with the “lower-to-middle class, socially conservative whites” almost 10 million of whom, Cost calculates, stayed home because Obama had turned Romney into a super-rich “other” alien to the experience of the struggling masses.

Of course, people voted for reasons other than economic self-interest and the promise of more benefits to come. But thousands of attack ads turning Romney into the Grinch who wanted to steal the perpetual Christmas of entitlements paid for with other people’s money, along with the promise to make the “millionaires and billionaires” pay their “fair share,” were enough to make millions of voters ignore Obama’s manifest economic malfeasance, even as fiscal disaster looms ever closer. The ancient critics of Athenian democracy wouldn’t be surprised.

[_bcspace]

The solution is to develop a comprehensive media attack, much larger than Fox News and Talk Radio combined, to counter the cultural attack from Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the unions. It must also run 24/7 every day of every year and not just election season. It must target all groups.

[_honorentheos]

The solution is to develop a comprehensive media attack, much larger than Fox News and Talk Radio combined, to counter the cultural attack from Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the unions. It must also run 24/7 every day of every year and not just election season. It must target all groups.

So...shout louder, shout at everyone and don't stop shouting?

Focusing on volume and market saturation over message content worked so well for you in the swing states this last cycle, so why not?

[_Droopy]

The solution is to develop a comprehensive media attack, much larger than Fox News and Talk Radio combined, to counter the cultural attack from Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the unions. It must also run 24/7 every day of every year and not just election season. It must target all groups.

Exactly, bc. For some years now, the Left has had two 24/7 satellite television stations, broadcasting news, documentaries, roundtable discussions, symposiums, and talk show content on a continual basis. Those are Free Speech TV (FSTV) and Link TV respectively. These are not "liberal" in the sense of the old center-left Cold War era democrat coalition view, but leftist- radical - representing the mainstream views of the modern Democrat party and the American/western Left generally.

This means that as one surfs through the big screen TV, one finds ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, Link, and FSTV and then Fox, the one news source at which one can find both sides of an argument and which features openly conservative anchors. Meanwhile, the Left overwhelmingly controls and biases the content of the vast majority of Hollywood films and television programs, K-12 public education and the colleges of education; utterly dominates the humanities and social science professorate, the foundations, and most of the politics present in pop music.

It is now time (high past time, in my view) that conservatives/libertarians begin funding, erecting, and maintaining a plethora of alternative institutions, including a much more vibrant and conspicuous alternative media (news, commentary, and entertainment, including film and television production), K-12 education, higher ed, and alternative economic resources.

This election represents a clear tectonic shift in the general intellectual and moral tenor of a critical mass of the population, and I do not think that the Republican party is in any way adequate to address this present state of affairs. That party is now, in my view, all but irrelevant.

[_Droopy]

The solution is to develop a comprehensive media attack, much larger than Fox News and Talk Radio combined, to counter the cultural attack from Hollywood, the mainstream media, and the unions. It must also run 24/7 every day of every year and not just election season. It must target all groups.

So...shout louder, shout at everyone and don't stop shouting?

Focusing on volume and market saturation over message content worked so well for you in the swing states this last cycle, so why not?

No one, honorentheos, not bc, not me, not any conservative intellectual, pundit, academic, or grassroots activist of which I'm aware (save for some within the inside-the-beltway-conservative pundit culture) has any illusions at this point that rational, civil, serious, critical debate of opposing viewpoints between the Left and those who oppose it is any longer possible.

This board, given its unusually extreme character, both as to anti-Mormonism and the concentration of leftist political views within it, is, from my continual extensive reading, perusing of leftist blogs, and the general attitudes and perspectives present among large numbers of Democratic voters and activists, an accurate measure of settled, established beliefs attitudes, and psychology among the American Left generally.

You're inability, as with so many others on this board, to do nothing more than crow while avoiding (as is usual), serious intellectual wrestling with opposing ideas, is nothing more for conservatives than to be expected.

The Republican establishment and its "conservative" spokespeople within the Republican intelligentsia are now saying nothing more than what they've been saying for many years: that we lost because of the presence of conservatives and conservatism within the party, and the party needs now to become more like the Democratic party if it is to field electable candidates.

Both parties are now done, as far as I'm concerned, and are, from an LDS perspective, now part of the GAAC, a system of which I want no part.

[_honorentheos]

You're inability, as with so many others on this board, to do nothing more than crow while avoiding (as is usual), serious intellectual wrestling with opposing ideas, is nothing more for conservatives than to be expected.

Droops,

Let's take one paragraph from your wall of whale-blow of an OP for discussion:

Another way to see how the tax system redistributes wealth, consider how much each group receives in federal spending compared to how much they pay. According to the Tax Foundation, households in the lowest 20% of income received roughly $8.21 in federal, state and local government spending for every dollar of taxes paid in 2004, households in the middle 20% received $1.30, and households in the top 20% received $0.41. In other words, tax payments exceeded government spending for the top 40%, meaning there was a net fiscal transfer of between $1.031 trillion and $1.527 trillion from one group of taxpayers to another. If this isn’t income redistribution from the “rich” to the “poor,” nothing is.

Let's look up the Tax Foundation's actual study: Tax Foundation

Since you imply that you are interested in discourse, only lacking willing and honest partisipants willing to consider your point of view, I'd like to propose we discuss that paper itself. And let's couple it with this link:

Use the Chart Option

Put in a dollar amount, say $10,000, and let's use the two to discuss tax distribution vs spending distribution. At it's core, I think a good question is, "What is the best metric to use in measuring successful tax spending? Is fairness the correct metric".

Also, I'm in and out today. Commitments and what.

[_Eric]

[_Ceeboo]

Now THAT was funny!



Peace,
Ceeboo

[_Droopy]

And?

I put in $3,000, and got back the following:

Military $810.00
Includes $20.48 for Nuclear Weapons

Medicare and Health $642.00
Includes $0.04 for Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program

Social Security, Unemployment and Labor $366.00
Includes $17.78 for TANF (Welfare)

Government $135.00
Includes $0.94 for Postal Service

Veterans Benefits $132.00
Includes $10.97 for Education, Training, and Rehab for Veterans

Food and Agriculture $129.00
Includes $80.67 for SNAP (Food Stamps)

Housing and Community $117.00
Includes $10.56 for Disaster Relief

Education $75.00
Includes $0.45 for Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Energy and Environment $57.00
Includes $6.00 for Energy Conservation

Transportation $39.00
Includes $0.32 for High Speed Rail

International Affairs $36.00
Includes $0.31 for Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Science $30.00
Includes $17.70 for Space Flight Research

Interest on Debt $434.00

What we have here then, is $810 for the fundamental function of a legitimate government - the protection of its citizens from national security threat - and, roughly $1,800 eaten by the welfare state, entitlements, social security (which is essentially a welfare program), "government", interest on the debt (which Obama has flung into orbit), and "science," "energy and environment," "transportation," and "education," any of which contain both programs that could be justified, rationally or constitutionally, but all of which are riddled with pork, rent seeking, crony capitalism, and constitutional dubiousness (the departments of education and energy, respectively, shouldn't even exist at all. Nor should the EPA).

I made arbitrary (and generous) cuts to the numbers in some of these, just to be fair and allow some room for legitimate functions here, while taking account of substantial quantities of pure fraud ("Science," for example, is going to contain tens of billions of dollars of government research grants targeted at keeping the AGW gravy train on its rent-seeking and power concentrating tracks ($106.7 billion between 2003 and 2010. 72 billion just since 2008)).

[_Droopy]

quote="Ceeboo quote="Eric"




Now THAT was funny!

Nice photo of your cult leader. Are you bowing before him now?