Almost two years ago, the Los Angeles Times ran a story entitled “Poster Species For A Planet,” warning that the polar bear is likely to be the first “victim” of global warming. This, we’re told, is because the Arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate, according to “projections,” “forecasts,” and “trends.” What they don’t mention is that most of the climatology models used for these “predictions” are about as accurate as a blind-folded dart thrower. Still, the alarmists continue to clamor for an audience, and action. What happens, though, when we look at the facts we do have, and look at them objectively?
Question: What percentage of citizens are aware that the Antarctic snow pack is increasing by about 5 feet per year? Or, that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet gained about 45 billion (with a "b") tons (tons!) of ice between 1992 and 2003? Moreover, how many citizens are aware that the Antarctic ice sheets are several kilometers thick in some places, and that they contain about 90% of the world’s ice?
Other glaciers are growing elsewhere in the world, as well, including the Helm and Place glaciers in Canada; Argentina’s Perito Moreno glacier; Antizana in Ecuador; Mt. Blanc in France; Silvretta in Switzerland. Norway’s glaciers are growing at a record pace, and the Maali glacier in Russia is “surging.” Glaciers are also growing in New Zealand, the United States and Greenland.
Why isn’t this newsworthy? Is it because there is a “consensus” with regard to global warming, and “the debate is over”?
Not yet, it ain’t.
In 1999, paleoclimatologist Michael Mann authored a paper claiming that the 1990s were the "warmest decade in a millennium" and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000.
Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the United Nation’s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day.
Unfortunately, Mr. Mann’s paper eliminated the Medieval warming period, which resulted in a statistical model (a graph) showing a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. The “hockey stick” graph was instantly hailed as the Holy Grail for global-warming alarmists: It was placed in the U.N.’s 2001 report on climate change and was even used in Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It has, of course, cropped up all over the place since then.
The problem is, Mr. Mann’s work is plagued by statistical errors and his methodology was found to be biased toward hockey sticks. This is all the more problematic for the “true believers” in the Glabal Warming Crusade, who have bravely soldiered on in the face of this inconvenient truth. In 2007, Al Gore won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize for perpetuating climate change alarmism. (Those of you who were surprised by either of these “awards,” please raise your hand.)
As if Mr. Mann’s shenanigans weren’t enough, we also know – thanks to meteorologist Anthony Watts – that a great many of the “official” ground weather stations scattered around the nation and used by NASA to measure the average annual temperature in the U.S. are not providing credible data. Mr. Watts and his volunteers have checked out some 500 of these stations (out of 1,221 total) and found that nearly 70% of the sites fail to meet governmental standards because they are actually in place and taking measurements from atop rooftops, or are situated near air-conditioning exhaust fans, or are within 100 feet of buildings, and on and on it goes.
There’s more.
A 2008 survey show that Arctic Sea ice has, in fact, recovered from its lowest recorded level and is now “10 to 20 centimeters thicker in many places than it was at this time last year,” according to an article in Canada’s National Post, quoting the Canadian Ice Service. A year ago, China had one of its most brutal winters in the last 100 years, and snow cover over Siberia, Mongolia, China and North America is at the highest levels since 1966. Also, the average temperature in January 2008 was about one-third of a degree cooler than the average temperature for the 20th century – and this was the second coldest January in the last 15 years. Meanwhile, respected Canadian and Russian scientists are predicting a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
Anyone with even the most basic understanding of heating and cooling is likely to be skeptical of the “global warming crisis.” Let’s look at it in a practical manner. Most of us have heating and cooling systems in our home. When we set our thermostat for a specific temperature, the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system works to achieve the desired temperature. If it’s cold in the house, the heat will kick in until that temperature is reached. Conversely, if it’s too hot, the air conditioning will come on to help cool down the house. As accurate as modern thermostats are, and as efficient as today’s HVAC systems are, there is still going to be some degree of “overshoot.” In other words, these systems can’t stop on a dime at the precise temperature we have selected; the temperature will continue to increase or decrease, by a slight amount, after attaining the target. Now, all of this happens within a very small, relatively closed (or homogeneous) system. Can you imagine trying to heat or cool an open system? A system as vast and complicated as planet Earth? This assumes, of course, that we know the optimum (average) global temperature at which to set the planet’s thermostat to begin with, which we don’t. But we do have a pretty good idea: The Earth’s average global temperature hasn’t changed more than a couple of degrees, give or take, over the last 1,000 years (including the Medieval Warm Period and the Mini-Ice Age).
Some among us believe that global warming means the end of the world as we know it. However, the fact is, modern day temperatures fit easily into the known range of natural historical variation. The overall stability of our global temperature is quite amazing, and to believe that we, mankind, are capable of instituting any kind of change upon the planet’s thermodynamics is not only arrogant, but grossly misguided. Thankfully, some cooler heads are beginning to prevail.
In March 2008, over 400 scientists, economists and other experts met in New York City for the International Conference on Climate Change. The primary topic of the conference was “Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?” and the focus was on challenging “the claim that global warming is a ‘crisis.’” The event was sponsored in part by the John Locke Foundation, the George C. Marshall Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, and included Vaclav Klaus, perseident of the Czech Republic; Dr. Robert Balling, professor of Climatology at Arizona State University; Dr. Vincent Gray, executive director of the New Zealand Climate Coalition; and Dr. Willie Soon, chief science advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute.
The Petition Project (found at www.oism.org/pproject) is a direct refutation of the IPCC’s gallery of charlatans who have been attempting to legitimize global warming hysterics via their own, clannish “consensus.” The petition states:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
To date, over 31,000 scientists have signed the petition.
As if there were any doubt about the dubious nature of this “crisis,” or if there were any question that the “debate” is far from over, along comes a big fat nail for the Climate Change coffin: Climategate.
In November of 2009 it came to light that the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia appeared to be involved in a rather large conspiracy to “massage the data” involving their anthropogenic (read: Man-made) global warming, uh, “research.” As it turns out -- thanks to numerous documents and emails that were hacked off of a server used by the CRU -- the global warming crisis “consensus” appears to be more a matter of self-serving propaganda than of sound science.
It seems that a number of these “scientists” colluded with each other in order to present an image of solidarity. Apparently they decided that their “consensus” wouldn’t hold up very well to, well, scientific scrutiny, so they made a conscious decision to withhold critical scientific observations, manipulate climate data to make it appear that their case for global warming was far stronger than it really is, circumvent and/or block key peer reviews that dissented with their sky-is-falling thesis, and deleted emails and other related data in order to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests (presumably for third-party review).
Interestingly enough, the aforementioned Michael Mann figures prominently in a number of these documents. Perhaps we should honor Mr. Mann for his persistence and start referring to it as “Mann-made global warming”?
When it comes to our climate, we simply do not have all of the evidence, and much of the evidence that we do have is incomplete -- or, in some cases, corrupt, or knowingly falsified to suit a particular agenda. That there are a number of valid questions with regard to the study of climatology is self-evident, and it undoubtedly requires further rational study. We should be asking if climate change is a normal and natural occurrence. We know that there have been "warm periods" and we know that there have been "ice ages." We know, for example, that the agricultural landscape of Northern Europe was once far more temperate than it is today, and that at one time the Vikings had farming settlements in Greenland. But then the Earth cooled down, the Vikings left Greenland, and the Brits switched from growing plantains to growing barley. Were they responsible for climate change then? Are our activities contributing to climate change today? If so, can we stop it? Should it be stopped? How do we know that a slightly warmer or a slightly cooler global temperature wouldn’t actually be better for the planet? And just what is our plan, anyway, if anthropogenic attempts to modulate the transglobal climate produces a less-than-desirable outcome? Do we get a "do-over"?
We don’t know all of the answers to any of these questions. We're not even sure that we're asking the right questions, yet. But here come the Liberals, once again mounting an ill-advised charge into the unknown armed with little more than a misplaced sense of self and an unbridled enthusiasm for controlling everyone else’s behavior. I wonder how many of these folks are aware that there has been not so much as a tenth of a degree increase in “global warming” for the last 10 years? They’ve probably buried that inconvenient little truth or purged it from their thought process; after all, Liberals seldom let facts get in the way of a feel-good crusade to save people from themselves.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Hockey Sticks, Principal Components, and Spurious Significance” by Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, Geophysical Research Letters, VOL. 32, 2/12/05
“Hockey Stick Hokum” Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 7/14/06
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations, 1990
“Global Warming, Inc.” Review and Outlook, The Wall Street Journal, 11/21/07
“Earth in the Balance” by Richard S. Lindzen
“Chill Out Over Global Warming” by David Harsanyi, The Denver Post, 12/26/06
“Random Thoughts” by Thomas Sowell, 12/4/07
“The ‘Hockey Stick’: A New Low In Climate Science” by John Daly
www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
Climate Science Weblog climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere
http://www.surfacestations.org/
www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
“Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age,” by Lorne Gunter, National Post February 25th, 2008
www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=332289
“A Total Crock of Doo-Doo!” by Nick Nichols, March 1st, 2008
“Cool News About Global Warming,” by Bill Steigerwald, 3/4/08
http://www.wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Liberal "Compassion"
Another “given” is that the Left is more charitable than the Right. Everybody knows that Liberals are more sympathetic, more compassionate, and in general simply more “giving” than the uncaring, unsparing, cold fish Republicans. Everyone knows this to be true; it’s practically ingrained in our political DNA. Yet, what if that assumption were completely backwards? What if the truth were something completely different than what we have been led to believe?
In his book, Who Really Cares, Arthur C. Brooks examines the data on who really does give their time, money and energy to respond to America’s social needs. When he began looking into charitable behavior a decade ago, he fully expected to confirm his long-held beliefs that political liberals “cared more about others than conservatives did,” but somewhere along the way he was mugged by reality. “These are not the sorts of conclusions that I ever thought I would reach,” he says, but admits that in the end, “I had no option but to change my views.”
Mr. Brooks used a wide range of metrics, from rates of charitable giving to hours of volunteer work donated. He also identified four distinct forces which appear to correlate to charitable behavior: religion, skepticism about the government’s role in economics, a strong family life, and personal entrepreneurship. Those Americans who have all four, or at least three of the four, are much more likely to behave charitably than those who do not.
Some numbers: People who attend church regularly are 25% more likely to donate money and 23% more likely to volunteer time; the religious give away four times more money than the secular do; Conservative households give 30% more to charity than do Liberal households; working families without welfare support give three times as much to charity than do welfare families with the same total income. Another telling statistic is that among the states George Bush carried in 2004, those he won with more than 60% of the vote gave 3.5% of their income to charity, while those states who supported John Kerry with more than 60% of their vote donated 1.9% to charity.
When confronted with facts, and logic, and reason, the true mark of intelligence is whether or not one’s opinion can change (as Mr. Brooks’ did). A common problem with so many of us is that we suffer from an almost ingrained reluctance to recognize the truth of an uncomfortable reality when it is presented to us; it is as if we have become locked into an unwavering commitment to avoid any acknowledgement of that which contradicts our long-held opinions and beliefs. I know, I know: Statistics never lie, but liars often use statistics. I’m not saying that Who Really Cares gives us a complete picture, but it certainly goes a long way toward refuting certain assumptions about “generous liberals” and “stingy conservatives.”
By the way, would you happen to know who donates more blood to the American Red Cross?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Who Really Cares?” by Arthur C. Brooks
“Yes, There Are Two Americas” by Wilfred M. McClay, The Wall Street Journal
In his book, Who Really Cares, Arthur C. Brooks examines the data on who really does give their time, money and energy to respond to America’s social needs. When he began looking into charitable behavior a decade ago, he fully expected to confirm his long-held beliefs that political liberals “cared more about others than conservatives did,” but somewhere along the way he was mugged by reality. “These are not the sorts of conclusions that I ever thought I would reach,” he says, but admits that in the end, “I had no option but to change my views.”
Mr. Brooks used a wide range of metrics, from rates of charitable giving to hours of volunteer work donated. He also identified four distinct forces which appear to correlate to charitable behavior: religion, skepticism about the government’s role in economics, a strong family life, and personal entrepreneurship. Those Americans who have all four, or at least three of the four, are much more likely to behave charitably than those who do not.
Some numbers: People who attend church regularly are 25% more likely to donate money and 23% more likely to volunteer time; the religious give away four times more money than the secular do; Conservative households give 30% more to charity than do Liberal households; working families without welfare support give three times as much to charity than do welfare families with the same total income. Another telling statistic is that among the states George Bush carried in 2004, those he won with more than 60% of the vote gave 3.5% of their income to charity, while those states who supported John Kerry with more than 60% of their vote donated 1.9% to charity.
When confronted with facts, and logic, and reason, the true mark of intelligence is whether or not one’s opinion can change (as Mr. Brooks’ did). A common problem with so many of us is that we suffer from an almost ingrained reluctance to recognize the truth of an uncomfortable reality when it is presented to us; it is as if we have become locked into an unwavering commitment to avoid any acknowledgement of that which contradicts our long-held opinions and beliefs. I know, I know: Statistics never lie, but liars often use statistics. I’m not saying that Who Really Cares gives us a complete picture, but it certainly goes a long way toward refuting certain assumptions about “generous liberals” and “stingy conservatives.”
By the way, would you happen to know who donates more blood to the American Red Cross?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Who Really Cares?” by Arthur C. Brooks
“Yes, There Are Two Americas” by Wilfred M. McClay, The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Who Pays Taxes?
Another canard of the Left that is endlessly perpetuated in the MSM revolves around tax fairness. At the mere mention of tax cuts the Left gets apoplectic. “The rich get richer,” they like to say, “while the poor get poorer.” Is this just political rhetoric, or is there something to their assertion?
I’m no economist, but it’s really not all that complex.
According to the latest available tax data, the richest 1% of Americans pay about 40% of all income taxes collected. If we look at the top 5% of earners, we see that they paid about 61% of all taxes. Overall, the top 10% of taxpayers are responsible for 71% of all tax revenue. Let that soak in for a moment: The top 10% of taxpayers are responsible for 71% of all tax revenue. Got that? OK. Meanwhile, the bottom half of all American households account for just 3% of tax revenue, with roughly 122 million Americans -- 44 percent of our population -- having no tax liability whatsoever. None. Zero. Nada.
Remember these numbers the next time you hear the Left braying about “tax cuts for the rich.” The top 50% of taxpayers pay 97% of the taxes, and the bottom half essentially pay nothing. Is that fair? Not to muddy the waters too much, but here’s something else to ponder: Rich or Poor, doesn’t it follow that, in order to get a tax cut, you have to be a tax payer to begin with?
Speaking of taxpayers, noted economist Arthur Laffer has written extensively on the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues: The eponymous “Laffer Curve” clearly illustrates that, as tax rates increase, tax revenue collected by the government also increases, but it also shows that tax rates increasing after a certain point would cause people not to work as hard or not at all, thereby reducing tax revenue. For example, if tax rates reached 100%, then everyone would choose not to work because everything they earned would go to the government.
In a 2007 article in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Laffer addressed this very point. It turns out that the top 1% of taxpayers have increased their contributions from 17.58% of all federal income taxes in 1981, to 39.38% of all income taxes in 2005. Meanwhile, over the same 25 year period (17 of which were presided over by a Republican POTUS, by the way), the tax burden for the low- and middle-income earners (the bottom 75%) has tumbled, from 27.71% of all tax revenues collected to 14.01%.
Of more interest is that the effective average tax rate for the very top earners has remained relatively the same. How can that be? The somewhat simplistic answer is that higher income folks tend to have more avenues available to reduce their tax liabilities, such as 401(k), IRAs, Keough plans, itemized deductions, lifetime gifts, charitable gifts, trusts, tax free bonds, and all sorts of deferred income compensation plans. By controlling their reportable income they are able to control the amount of taxes they pay, which is why their effective average tax rate is so stable. However, their total tax payments are “incredibly volatile.” What does this mean? If taxes are raised beyond what “the rich” think is fair, they will report less income to compensate for it.
The bottom line is, when you raise taxes on upper-income earners, and lower taxes on the low- and middle-income earners, you will see huge revenue losses from both accounts: The top earners will simply restructure their income to report less of it, and the bottom 75% will pay less in taxes as a matter of the reduced rate.
This is the essence of why tax policy is so critical, and why it should be set as a matter of national interest instead of being used as rhetoric or talking points that play on the ignorance of a certain political constituency. Consider, for example, the 2003 capital gains tax cut. In 2002, the tax rate on capital gains was 20%. The capital gains reported by income-tax filers (the gains “realized” by investors) was $269 billion, and the government’s revenues from those gains was $49 billion; by 2005, the reported gains were $690 billion, with revenues of $101 billion going to the Treasury. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the 2007 numbers to be $863 billion realized and $127 billion collected.
What are we to make of this? On the one hand, we could say that the stock market rose during that period, along with the larger economy. But doesn’t that fly in the face of the constant harping in the MSM about how terrible the economy was during the Bush administration? How, then, do we explain this conundrum? Did the capital gains tax cut result in more revenue as a result of sound economic policy or was it simply due to a growing economy? The Left spent a lot of time talking about how mediocre the economy was during this period, and they are adamantly against tax cuts -- for “The Rich,” of course -- so which one of their beloved talking points are they willing to abandon?
The simple, economic reality is that the lower tax rate made it more appealing to investors to unlock their gains, cash out of profitable investments and reinvest the net proceeds. This resulted in a powerful windfall for Uncle Sam.
Ah, ha! But wouldn’t we have seen an even more dramatic increase in revenue had we left the capital gains tax at 20%?
No.
If we examine the CBO estimates for revenues from 2003-2007, assuming a 20% tax rate, the prediction was $260 billion. Instead, the revenues will top out at $470 billion over that same period. That 5% reduction is more than made up for because there are many more transactions to tax, this being the result of conditions favorable to profit-taking and reinvestment.
Perhaps one of the more interesting things to note is that during the heart of this period (2005), nearly 80% of the tax returns reporting capital gains were from filers earning less than $100,000 a year. So much for “Tax cuts for the rich.”
Another point that is crucial to any discussion of economic standing is economic mobility. What the Left doesn’t like to admit (and is never acknowledged in MSM stories about “impoverished Americans”) is that Americans rarely stay in the same economic stratus. We are quite fluid and we often move between classes. In other words, the rich don’t necessarily stay rich, and the poor certainly don’t stay poor. Remember: Just because you are rich, or poor, you won't necessarily stay that way.
The fact is the demographics of economic mobility paint a far more intriguing picture than what we see on the nightly news. For example, more than half of the people in the top 1% in 1996 were no longer there in 2005. Statistics show their average incomes actually dropped by 26%. How can that be? There are a variety of reasons, but often these people were “just visiting” this particular high-income bracket, and it was usually the result of a one-time event such as the sale of home, or some other unexpected spike in income. The point is, many of these people do not make up an enduring class of “elites,” any more than lower income Americans are likely to remain “lower income.” (Of the latter, their incomes nearly doubled over the same time period, increasing by an average of 91%.)
So, let’s answer the accusation: Are the rich getting richer? Yes. Absolutely. The rich Democrats and the rich Republicans are, indeed, getting richer. So, too, are the poor Democrats, and the poor Republicans (as are the poor Libertarians, the poor Greenies, the poor Socialists, and the poor of every other political stripe). In fact, across every stratum imaginable, we -- all of us -- are getting richer. A recent study released by the Economic Mobility Project shows that the median family income has increased from $55,600 in 1968 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars) to $71,900 today. That’s a nearly 30 percent increase, but it’s even more staggering when you consider that there were 3.1 persons per family in 1968 and only 2.1 persons per family today (owing to an increase in childless couples and single parents). The net result is that the average family’s income today is spread among fewer people and is, therefore, far more potent.
But that’s the average family. What about the Rich, and the Poor? The Economic Mobility study found that income for all quintiles have risen. In truth, the study shows that the higher the economic standing, the higher the increase in income, but doesn’t that make sense? If someone invests $10,000 and their rate of return is 10%, they will make $1,000 from that investment. If another person invests $1,000, and gets the same return on their money, they will make “only” $100 from their investment. The reality is, both have benefited by the exact same percentage, relative to their ability to invest, yet some decry the “unfair advantage” realized by the person who could afford to invest more.
The percentage increase for each quintile is as follows: 52 percent for the top fifth, 39 percent for the second fifth, 29 percent for the middle fifth, 22 percent for the second lowest, and 18 percent for the bottom fifth. An interesting side-note to the study found that “children born into the bottom fifth are more likely to surpass their parents’ income than are children from any other group.” There's that "mobility" thing, again.
Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.” He understood the most basic of economic realities: Most of us don’t start off rich, nor do we have to stay poor. “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life,” he said, “free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.” This precept, this simple proclamation about America’s promise to its citizens, is called Lincoln’s “True American System.” Most of us have probably heard this sentiment by a slightly different term: The American Dream.
When we examine the facts about taxes, and income, it becomes increasingly obvious that we as a nation continue to be better off economically than previous generations, and that for most of us our overall standard of living continues to improve throughout our lives. Why, then, does the Left feel so compelled to bury or distort this extraordinarily good news and perpetuate a sort of class envy, pitting the (currently) wealthy against the (currently) poor?
The Left persists in the intellectually vacuous and divisive notions of “two Americas” and of “fighting for economic equality” because the rhetoric of class warfare is too valuable and far too effective, politically, to ever abandon it. It is also in line with their larger narrative. After all, what would they do without their carefully crafted pretext of “standing up for the little guy”?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future” by Arthur B. Laffer, 6/1/04
www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1765.cfm
“Taxes and Income” Review and Outlook, The Wall Street Journal, 12/10/07
The Congressional Budget Office http://www.cbo.gov/
“Congressional and Leftist Lies” by Walter E. Williams, 11/14/07
“That ‘Top One Percent’” by Thomas Sowell, 11/27/07
“Turning Good News Into Bad” by Linda Chavez, 11/30/07
The Economic Mobility Study http://www.economicmobility.org/
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics psidonline.isr.umich.edu
“The Tax Threat to Prosperity” by Arthur B. Laffer, The Wall Street Journal, 1/25/07
www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp
“The Inequality Myth” by Brad Schiller, The Wall Street Journal, 3/10/08
I’m no economist, but it’s really not all that complex.
According to the latest available tax data, the richest 1% of Americans pay about 40% of all income taxes collected. If we look at the top 5% of earners, we see that they paid about 61% of all taxes. Overall, the top 10% of taxpayers are responsible for 71% of all tax revenue. Let that soak in for a moment: The top 10% of taxpayers are responsible for 71% of all tax revenue. Got that? OK. Meanwhile, the bottom half of all American households account for just 3% of tax revenue, with roughly 122 million Americans -- 44 percent of our population -- having no tax liability whatsoever. None. Zero. Nada.
Remember these numbers the next time you hear the Left braying about “tax cuts for the rich.” The top 50% of taxpayers pay 97% of the taxes, and the bottom half essentially pay nothing. Is that fair? Not to muddy the waters too much, but here’s something else to ponder: Rich or Poor, doesn’t it follow that, in order to get a tax cut, you have to be a tax payer to begin with?
Speaking of taxpayers, noted economist Arthur Laffer has written extensively on the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues: The eponymous “Laffer Curve” clearly illustrates that, as tax rates increase, tax revenue collected by the government also increases, but it also shows that tax rates increasing after a certain point would cause people not to work as hard or not at all, thereby reducing tax revenue. For example, if tax rates reached 100%, then everyone would choose not to work because everything they earned would go to the government.
In a 2007 article in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Laffer addressed this very point. It turns out that the top 1% of taxpayers have increased their contributions from 17.58% of all federal income taxes in 1981, to 39.38% of all income taxes in 2005. Meanwhile, over the same 25 year period (17 of which were presided over by a Republican POTUS, by the way), the tax burden for the low- and middle-income earners (the bottom 75%) has tumbled, from 27.71% of all tax revenues collected to 14.01%.
Of more interest is that the effective average tax rate for the very top earners has remained relatively the same. How can that be? The somewhat simplistic answer is that higher income folks tend to have more avenues available to reduce their tax liabilities, such as 401(k), IRAs, Keough plans, itemized deductions, lifetime gifts, charitable gifts, trusts, tax free bonds, and all sorts of deferred income compensation plans. By controlling their reportable income they are able to control the amount of taxes they pay, which is why their effective average tax rate is so stable. However, their total tax payments are “incredibly volatile.” What does this mean? If taxes are raised beyond what “the rich” think is fair, they will report less income to compensate for it.
The bottom line is, when you raise taxes on upper-income earners, and lower taxes on the low- and middle-income earners, you will see huge revenue losses from both accounts: The top earners will simply restructure their income to report less of it, and the bottom 75% will pay less in taxes as a matter of the reduced rate.
This is the essence of why tax policy is so critical, and why it should be set as a matter of national interest instead of being used as rhetoric or talking points that play on the ignorance of a certain political constituency. Consider, for example, the 2003 capital gains tax cut. In 2002, the tax rate on capital gains was 20%. The capital gains reported by income-tax filers (the gains “realized” by investors) was $269 billion, and the government’s revenues from those gains was $49 billion; by 2005, the reported gains were $690 billion, with revenues of $101 billion going to the Treasury. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the 2007 numbers to be $863 billion realized and $127 billion collected.
What are we to make of this? On the one hand, we could say that the stock market rose during that period, along with the larger economy. But doesn’t that fly in the face of the constant harping in the MSM about how terrible the economy was during the Bush administration? How, then, do we explain this conundrum? Did the capital gains tax cut result in more revenue as a result of sound economic policy or was it simply due to a growing economy? The Left spent a lot of time talking about how mediocre the economy was during this period, and they are adamantly against tax cuts -- for “The Rich,” of course -- so which one of their beloved talking points are they willing to abandon?
The simple, economic reality is that the lower tax rate made it more appealing to investors to unlock their gains, cash out of profitable investments and reinvest the net proceeds. This resulted in a powerful windfall for Uncle Sam.
Ah, ha! But wouldn’t we have seen an even more dramatic increase in revenue had we left the capital gains tax at 20%?
No.
If we examine the CBO estimates for revenues from 2003-2007, assuming a 20% tax rate, the prediction was $260 billion. Instead, the revenues will top out at $470 billion over that same period. That 5% reduction is more than made up for because there are many more transactions to tax, this being the result of conditions favorable to profit-taking and reinvestment.
Perhaps one of the more interesting things to note is that during the heart of this period (2005), nearly 80% of the tax returns reporting capital gains were from filers earning less than $100,000 a year. So much for “Tax cuts for the rich.”
Another point that is crucial to any discussion of economic standing is economic mobility. What the Left doesn’t like to admit (and is never acknowledged in MSM stories about “impoverished Americans”) is that Americans rarely stay in the same economic stratus. We are quite fluid and we often move between classes. In other words, the rich don’t necessarily stay rich, and the poor certainly don’t stay poor. Remember: Just because you are rich, or poor, you won't necessarily stay that way.
The fact is the demographics of economic mobility paint a far more intriguing picture than what we see on the nightly news. For example, more than half of the people in the top 1% in 1996 were no longer there in 2005. Statistics show their average incomes actually dropped by 26%. How can that be? There are a variety of reasons, but often these people were “just visiting” this particular high-income bracket, and it was usually the result of a one-time event such as the sale of home, or some other unexpected spike in income. The point is, many of these people do not make up an enduring class of “elites,” any more than lower income Americans are likely to remain “lower income.” (Of the latter, their incomes nearly doubled over the same time period, increasing by an average of 91%.)
So, let’s answer the accusation: Are the rich getting richer? Yes. Absolutely. The rich Democrats and the rich Republicans are, indeed, getting richer. So, too, are the poor Democrats, and the poor Republicans (as are the poor Libertarians, the poor Greenies, the poor Socialists, and the poor of every other political stripe). In fact, across every stratum imaginable, we -- all of us -- are getting richer. A recent study released by the Economic Mobility Project shows that the median family income has increased from $55,600 in 1968 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars) to $71,900 today. That’s a nearly 30 percent increase, but it’s even more staggering when you consider that there were 3.1 persons per family in 1968 and only 2.1 persons per family today (owing to an increase in childless couples and single parents). The net result is that the average family’s income today is spread among fewer people and is, therefore, far more potent.
But that’s the average family. What about the Rich, and the Poor? The Economic Mobility study found that income for all quintiles have risen. In truth, the study shows that the higher the economic standing, the higher the increase in income, but doesn’t that make sense? If someone invests $10,000 and their rate of return is 10%, they will make $1,000 from that investment. If another person invests $1,000, and gets the same return on their money, they will make “only” $100 from their investment. The reality is, both have benefited by the exact same percentage, relative to their ability to invest, yet some decry the “unfair advantage” realized by the person who could afford to invest more.
The percentage increase for each quintile is as follows: 52 percent for the top fifth, 39 percent for the second fifth, 29 percent for the middle fifth, 22 percent for the second lowest, and 18 percent for the bottom fifth. An interesting side-note to the study found that “children born into the bottom fifth are more likely to surpass their parents’ income than are children from any other group.” There's that "mobility" thing, again.
Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.” He understood the most basic of economic realities: Most of us don’t start off rich, nor do we have to stay poor. “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life,” he said, “free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.” This precept, this simple proclamation about America’s promise to its citizens, is called Lincoln’s “True American System.” Most of us have probably heard this sentiment by a slightly different term: The American Dream.
When we examine the facts about taxes, and income, it becomes increasingly obvious that we as a nation continue to be better off economically than previous generations, and that for most of us our overall standard of living continues to improve throughout our lives. Why, then, does the Left feel so compelled to bury or distort this extraordinarily good news and perpetuate a sort of class envy, pitting the (currently) wealthy against the (currently) poor?
The Left persists in the intellectually vacuous and divisive notions of “two Americas” and of “fighting for economic equality” because the rhetoric of class warfare is too valuable and far too effective, politically, to ever abandon it. It is also in line with their larger narrative. After all, what would they do without their carefully crafted pretext of “standing up for the little guy”?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future” by Arthur B. Laffer, 6/1/04
www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1765.cfm
“Taxes and Income” Review and Outlook, The Wall Street Journal, 12/10/07
The Congressional Budget Office http://www.cbo.gov/
“Congressional and Leftist Lies” by Walter E. Williams, 11/14/07
“That ‘Top One Percent’” by Thomas Sowell, 11/27/07
“Turning Good News Into Bad” by Linda Chavez, 11/30/07
The Economic Mobility Study http://www.economicmobility.org/
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics psidonline.isr.umich.edu
“The Tax Threat to Prosperity” by Arthur B. Laffer, The Wall Street Journal, 1/25/07
www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp
“The Inequality Myth” by Brad Schiller, The Wall Street Journal, 3/10/08
Monday, December 28, 2009
The Party of The Rich
If you were asked to wager on which political party received more contributions in excess of $100 and which party received more contributions of $100 or less, where would you put your money? The safe bet is that the “Fat-Cat Republicans” would be reeling in the high-dollar donations, while the “Champions of the Working Man” get the leftovers, all of the little donations, the fives, tens and twenties –- presumably from the soiled and calloused hands of the Working Man. Right? That is, after all, the carefully groomed perception, and while the race doesn’t always go to the swiftest runner, that is where the “smart money” goes.
Let’s look at it another way: There are 435 congressional districts. If you were to examine the top 35%, in terms of wealth and income, which political party would you guess represents more of the nation’s richest districts? Again (and according to popular perception), the answer seems obvious. The Republicans would certainly represent the majority of those districts containing the wealthiest constituents, the “upper crust” of society. Right?
Wrong on both counts: The Democratic Party receives far more “Fat Cat” contributions than Republicans do, and they also represent about 60% of the wealthiest districts in America. Fully half of the richest households reside in states where both senators are Democrats. Party of the Rich? You tell me…
Bottom Line: The MSM goes to a lot of trouble to fashion Republicans as “Fat Cat” businessmen (not women!) in contrast to the Democrat-as-savior-of-the-working-man. And they work awfully hard to maintain the illusion that only Republicans are corporate CEO’s -- overcharging us poor citizens for basic necessities, fouling our air, polluting our water, and taking advantage of those who selflessly toil in their employ -- and that “Big Business” doesn’t donate millions and millions of dollars to the Democratic Party.
While we’re at it, does anyone want to guess which political party typically receives more donations from Wall Street? Who receives more from the American Bar Association? The ACLU? The SEIU? The UAW? Teacher’s Unions? What about Journalist’s unions and entertainment guilds? Do you suppose some of these alliances might have “contributed” to the general (and completely backwards) perception that Republicans are evil money-grubbers while Democrats care more about their fellow man?
Like so many other “hard truths” we’re supposed to believe, if we simply follow the money, it begs the question: How dumb do they think we are?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
I was aware that the "Party of the Rich" dynamic shifted quite some time ago, but the most recent piece in which it was discussed is “The New Party of the Rich,” by Donald Lambro, published on November 29th, 2007.
Let’s look at it another way: There are 435 congressional districts. If you were to examine the top 35%, in terms of wealth and income, which political party would you guess represents more of the nation’s richest districts? Again (and according to popular perception), the answer seems obvious. The Republicans would certainly represent the majority of those districts containing the wealthiest constituents, the “upper crust” of society. Right?
Wrong on both counts: The Democratic Party receives far more “Fat Cat” contributions than Republicans do, and they also represent about 60% of the wealthiest districts in America. Fully half of the richest households reside in states where both senators are Democrats. Party of the Rich? You tell me…
Bottom Line: The MSM goes to a lot of trouble to fashion Republicans as “Fat Cat” businessmen (not women!) in contrast to the Democrat-as-savior-of-the-working-man. And they work awfully hard to maintain the illusion that only Republicans are corporate CEO’s -- overcharging us poor citizens for basic necessities, fouling our air, polluting our water, and taking advantage of those who selflessly toil in their employ -- and that “Big Business” doesn’t donate millions and millions of dollars to the Democratic Party.
While we’re at it, does anyone want to guess which political party typically receives more donations from Wall Street? Who receives more from the American Bar Association? The ACLU? The SEIU? The UAW? Teacher’s Unions? What about Journalist’s unions and entertainment guilds? Do you suppose some of these alliances might have “contributed” to the general (and completely backwards) perception that Republicans are evil money-grubbers while Democrats care more about their fellow man?
Like so many other “hard truths” we’re supposed to believe, if we simply follow the money, it begs the question: How dumb do they think we are?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
I was aware that the "Party of the Rich" dynamic shifted quite some time ago, but the most recent piece in which it was discussed is “The New Party of the Rich,” by Donald Lambro, published on November 29th, 2007.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Civil Rights
The Democratic Party is seen as the “civil rights party” by its supporters, but the facts present an entirely different picture.
It wasn’t liberals who were agitating for the abolition of slavery; it was Northern Quakers and other conservative religious leaders. It wasn’t liberals who formed a major political party to end slavery; it was, again, conservatives in the form of the Republican Party. It wasn’t liberals who were leading the charge to stop lynching, segregation, “black codes,” and Jim Crow laws; and it took nearly 100 years and a fierce Republican-led effort over strident congressional Democrats to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Conversely, it hasn’t been conservatives who have pushed through countless social and “entitlement” programs that continue to keep our black brothers and sisters in bondage, and it hasn’t been conservatives who have been rewarded (with overwhelming support at the polls) by promoting this “soft bigotry of low expectations.” How do we reconcile that support with the record of the Democratic Party on slavery and civil rights?
There were six Democratic presidents during the time between the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The first, Grover Cleveland, doesn’t have much to show for eight years in the White House as far as advancing the quality of life for the negro (as they were called then). Of course, there is nothing in his character to presume that he would: He bought his way out of the Civil War, is widely thought to have fathered an illegitimate daughter while in the White House, and married a woman 27 years his junior (scandalous in his time, not so much in ours).
It was a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who signed a law making inter-racial marriage illegal in the District of Columbia, and it was his administration that implemented a policy of segregation in the offices of the Postmaster General, the Treasury, and the Department of Navy. Soon after, photographs were required of all applicants for federal jobs. In defending these actions to black leaders, President Wilson said "The purpose of these measures was to reduce the friction. It is as far as possible from being a movement against the Negroes. I sincerely believe it to be in their interest.”
Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was apparently also working in the interests of the black man when he upheld segregation, even going so far as to insist that New Deal make-work programs such as the Work Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps were segregated. (Let’s not forget that he also “segregated” Japanese-Americans during World War II by moving them to internment camps. This, too, must have been in the “best interests” of the subjugated.)
FDR also refused to support anti-lynching legislation for fear of upsetting Southern Democrats and losing their support in Congress. But what should we expect from a President who appointed a member of the Ku Klux Klan (Hugo Black) to the Supreme Court?
The impact of the KKK on American society cannot be understated. According to “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White,” by David Barton, the KKK was founded by Democrats and their original targets were Republicans, both black and white. (The first black man elected to Congress was Joseph Hayne Rainey, Republican, in 1870. In fact, from 1870 to 1935 all blacks elected to Congress were Republican; ironically, today there are none.)
“Although it is relatively unreported today, historical documents are unequivocal that the Klan was established by Democrats and that the Klan played a prominent role in the Democratic Party.” says Barton, citing a 13-volume set of congressional investigations from 1872 which “conclusively and irrefutably documents that fact.”
The KKK harassed the GOP for decades. The first Grand Wizard of the KKK was honored at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, and congressional Democrats were consistently able to block anti-lynching bills.
“Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective,” Barton says in his book, pointing out that an estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites were lynched between 1882 and 1964.
The power of government handouts, specifically the New Deal handouts, eventually held sway over something as trivial as civil rights: By 1940 the black vote had swung to the Democrats, where it resides, overwhelmingly, to this day.
To be fair, FDR did eventually sign (in 1941) an executive order establishing the Fair Employment Practice Commission, which prohibited discrimination by governmental agencies. On the other hand, he did absolutely nothing to enforce or advance it.
The Fair Employment Practice Commission was also supposed to desegregate the military, but FDR did nothing to further this cause, either; in reality, it was Harry Truman, the man who ascended the White House upon FDR’s death, who desegregated the Armed Services. He is also the man who ordered the only atomic weapons ever used in war to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, he is still reviled in some leftist quarters for the devastation the bombs caused, even though he probably saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives on both sides by making such a difficult decision.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, another storied Democrat -- he of Profiles in Courage fame and beloved King of “Camelot” -- voted against President Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Act of 1957 as a U.S. Senator. As a presidential candidate he did make campaign promises to support civil rights but once elected he was far less committed. In fact, not a single piece of civil rights legislation was ever signed by JFK.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, who became President upon the death of JFK, was an earthy sort who, privately, referred to blacks as “niggers.” Robert Parker, his longtime black employee and limousine driver, said that LBJ directed bigoted pejoratives at him daily. According to presidential historian Robert Dallek, while liberals were praising LBJ for his appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, he explained his decision to a staff member by saying, “Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he’s a nigger.”
Like JFK, LBJ didn’t support the Civil Rights Act of 1957; in fact, as a U.S. Senator, he diluted President Eisenhower’s legislation to the point where it became little more than an empty gesture. He said, at the time, that he was “strongly and irrevocably opposed to the forced integration of the races.” It was this “opposition” to integration -- apparently. against integration of any kind -- that led him, as Senate Majority Leader, to lead the charge against admitting Hawaii to the Union. The Territory of Hawaii had a non-white majority, and LBJ voted against Hawaiian statehood 22 times.
And, lest we forget, he was the sitting POTUS during the summer of 1965, when the Watts race riots rocked California, and in Newark and Detroit in 1967, and when scores of riots broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.
Of course, it isn’t fair to place all of the blame on these Democratic Presidents; after all, it was a highly influential cartel of Democrats (mostly Southern) in the Senate and the House of Representatives who repeatedly blocked, buried or attenuated almost every piece of civil rights legislation for nearly 100 years.
On the other hand, the Republican Party was responsible for winning passage of the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery), the 14th Amendment (not a single Democrat voted for the Amendment, which granted citizenship, life, liberty, property and the due process of law to former slaves), and the 15th Amendment (giving blacks the right to vote), the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Acts, and the 1866, 1875, 1957, 1960 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts. (The Civil Rights Act of 1875, which is remarkably similar to that of the 1964 Act, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883, which declared it unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power to regulate the conduct and transactions of individuals.)
According to the Congressional Research Service, from 1933 to 1964 a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80% of votes cast, while a majority of Republicans favored such bills 96% of the time.
To say that the Parties held -- and undoubtedly still hold -- diametrically opposed worldviews is an understatement. The question is: How is it that Republicans are all but universally acknowledged as The Bad Guys, while Democrats are held in such high regard for their selfless humanitarianism?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
Congressional Research Service
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1964_civil_rights_act
http://www.infoplease.com/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
“America, the Last Best Hope” Vol I & II, by William J. Bennett
“The Unknown History of Civil Rights” by Wynton Hall, 2/4/08
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/
“Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past,” by Bruce Bartlett
“Digging Up Democratic Skeletons” by La Shawn Barber, 2/7/08
“Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White,” by David Barton
“The First Black Congresman in the House” by Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr., 12/12/05
www.intellectualconservative.com/article4797.html
“Democrats Have Kept Racism Alive,” by Nina May, 4/2/08
Documentary “Emancipation Revelation Revolution”
It wasn’t liberals who were agitating for the abolition of slavery; it was Northern Quakers and other conservative religious leaders. It wasn’t liberals who formed a major political party to end slavery; it was, again, conservatives in the form of the Republican Party. It wasn’t liberals who were leading the charge to stop lynching, segregation, “black codes,” and Jim Crow laws; and it took nearly 100 years and a fierce Republican-led effort over strident congressional Democrats to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Conversely, it hasn’t been conservatives who have pushed through countless social and “entitlement” programs that continue to keep our black brothers and sisters in bondage, and it hasn’t been conservatives who have been rewarded (with overwhelming support at the polls) by promoting this “soft bigotry of low expectations.” How do we reconcile that support with the record of the Democratic Party on slavery and civil rights?
There were six Democratic presidents during the time between the end of the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The first, Grover Cleveland, doesn’t have much to show for eight years in the White House as far as advancing the quality of life for the negro (as they were called then). Of course, there is nothing in his character to presume that he would: He bought his way out of the Civil War, is widely thought to have fathered an illegitimate daughter while in the White House, and married a woman 27 years his junior (scandalous in his time, not so much in ours).
It was a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who signed a law making inter-racial marriage illegal in the District of Columbia, and it was his administration that implemented a policy of segregation in the offices of the Postmaster General, the Treasury, and the Department of Navy. Soon after, photographs were required of all applicants for federal jobs. In defending these actions to black leaders, President Wilson said "The purpose of these measures was to reduce the friction. It is as far as possible from being a movement against the Negroes. I sincerely believe it to be in their interest.”
Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt was apparently also working in the interests of the black man when he upheld segregation, even going so far as to insist that New Deal make-work programs such as the Work Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps were segregated. (Let’s not forget that he also “segregated” Japanese-Americans during World War II by moving them to internment camps. This, too, must have been in the “best interests” of the subjugated.)
FDR also refused to support anti-lynching legislation for fear of upsetting Southern Democrats and losing their support in Congress. But what should we expect from a President who appointed a member of the Ku Klux Klan (Hugo Black) to the Supreme Court?
The impact of the KKK on American society cannot be understated. According to “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White,” by David Barton, the KKK was founded by Democrats and their original targets were Republicans, both black and white. (The first black man elected to Congress was Joseph Hayne Rainey, Republican, in 1870. In fact, from 1870 to 1935 all blacks elected to Congress were Republican; ironically, today there are none.)
“Although it is relatively unreported today, historical documents are unequivocal that the Klan was established by Democrats and that the Klan played a prominent role in the Democratic Party.” says Barton, citing a 13-volume set of congressional investigations from 1872 which “conclusively and irrefutably documents that fact.”
The KKK harassed the GOP for decades. The first Grand Wizard of the KKK was honored at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, and congressional Democrats were consistently able to block anti-lynching bills.
“Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective,” Barton says in his book, pointing out that an estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites were lynched between 1882 and 1964.
The power of government handouts, specifically the New Deal handouts, eventually held sway over something as trivial as civil rights: By 1940 the black vote had swung to the Democrats, where it resides, overwhelmingly, to this day.
To be fair, FDR did eventually sign (in 1941) an executive order establishing the Fair Employment Practice Commission, which prohibited discrimination by governmental agencies. On the other hand, he did absolutely nothing to enforce or advance it.
The Fair Employment Practice Commission was also supposed to desegregate the military, but FDR did nothing to further this cause, either; in reality, it was Harry Truman, the man who ascended the White House upon FDR’s death, who desegregated the Armed Services. He is also the man who ordered the only atomic weapons ever used in war to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, he is still reviled in some leftist quarters for the devastation the bombs caused, even though he probably saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives on both sides by making such a difficult decision.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, another storied Democrat -- he of Profiles in Courage fame and beloved King of “Camelot” -- voted against President Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Act of 1957 as a U.S. Senator. As a presidential candidate he did make campaign promises to support civil rights but once elected he was far less committed. In fact, not a single piece of civil rights legislation was ever signed by JFK.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, who became President upon the death of JFK, was an earthy sort who, privately, referred to blacks as “niggers.” Robert Parker, his longtime black employee and limousine driver, said that LBJ directed bigoted pejoratives at him daily. According to presidential historian Robert Dallek, while liberals were praising LBJ for his appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, he explained his decision to a staff member by saying, “Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he’s a nigger.”
Like JFK, LBJ didn’t support the Civil Rights Act of 1957; in fact, as a U.S. Senator, he diluted President Eisenhower’s legislation to the point where it became little more than an empty gesture. He said, at the time, that he was “strongly and irrevocably opposed to the forced integration of the races.” It was this “opposition” to integration -- apparently. against integration of any kind -- that led him, as Senate Majority Leader, to lead the charge against admitting Hawaii to the Union. The Territory of Hawaii had a non-white majority, and LBJ voted against Hawaiian statehood 22 times.
And, lest we forget, he was the sitting POTUS during the summer of 1965, when the Watts race riots rocked California, and in Newark and Detroit in 1967, and when scores of riots broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.
Of course, it isn’t fair to place all of the blame on these Democratic Presidents; after all, it was a highly influential cartel of Democrats (mostly Southern) in the Senate and the House of Representatives who repeatedly blocked, buried or attenuated almost every piece of civil rights legislation for nearly 100 years.
On the other hand, the Republican Party was responsible for winning passage of the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery), the 14th Amendment (not a single Democrat voted for the Amendment, which granted citizenship, life, liberty, property and the due process of law to former slaves), and the 15th Amendment (giving blacks the right to vote), the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, the Reconstruction Acts, and the 1866, 1875, 1957, 1960 and 1964 Civil Rights Acts. (The Civil Rights Act of 1875, which is remarkably similar to that of the 1964 Act, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883, which declared it unconstitutional because Congress did not have the power to regulate the conduct and transactions of individuals.)
According to the Congressional Research Service, from 1933 to 1964 a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80% of votes cast, while a majority of Republicans favored such bills 96% of the time.
To say that the Parties held -- and undoubtedly still hold -- diametrically opposed worldviews is an understatement. The question is: How is it that Republicans are all but universally acknowledged as The Bad Guys, while Democrats are held in such high regard for their selfless humanitarianism?
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
Congressional Research Service
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1964_civil_rights_act
http://www.infoplease.com/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
“America, the Last Best Hope” Vol I & II, by William J. Bennett
“The Unknown History of Civil Rights” by Wynton Hall, 2/4/08
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/
“Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past,” by Bruce Bartlett
“Digging Up Democratic Skeletons” by La Shawn Barber, 2/7/08
“Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White,” by David Barton
“The First Black Congresman in the House” by Winkfield F. Twyman, Jr., 12/12/05
www.intellectualconservative.com/article4797.html
“Democrats Have Kept Racism Alive,” by Nina May, 4/2/08
Documentary “Emancipation Revelation Revolution”
Saturday, December 26, 2009
"What Bias?"
There is absolutely no question that a liberal bias exists in the media. It is estimated that 85% of all journalists are liberal, and their left-wing worldview is perpetually on display in the seemingly non-stop propaganda emanating from ABC, PBS, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, MTV, NPR, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and a host of leading newspapers in American cities from sea to shining sea. Their job is made easier because there is a never-ending stream of “content” to be gleaned from reliably left-wing bastions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Teacher’s Unions, the AFL-CIO, the American Bar Association, AARP, and Hollywood.
As if that weren’t enough, we’ve been conditioned to accept polls that have been scripted for a pre-determined outcome as some kind of panacea; a pop culture gospel meant to enlighten the masses via the notion that there is wisdom in crowd-think. My view is that you have to have a literate crowd to begin with, which, evidence suggests, we do not: More of us can name the last four American Idol winners than can name the first four Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, by the way).
By parroting, not questioning, their fellow ideologues, the so-called “Mainstream Media” (MSM) continues to build its case (often with “straw” bricks) for a socialist society. And this doesn’t take into account the outright lies that have been passed off as the truth. Or that have been tried to be passed off as the truth.
Can there be any doubt as to the monumental influence this vast propaganda machine has already had on American society, or the impact it will have on the future of America? Let’s take a look at that impact by examining the facts (versus the popular opinions) of some of the things we take for granted with regard to “the historical record,” starting with…
The Great Depression
The myth is that the Great Depression was one long, national nightmare –- and it was; however, a preponderance of evidence suggests that “great” mistakes were made by the Roosevelt Administration that actually prolonged it.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself has been mythologized almost beyond recognition, and why not? There is much that makes him an attractive hero to the Democratic Party and, more importantly, to the MSM: Born into wealth, he lived off a trust fund; he attended Harvard and Columbia, and was well-spoken; he was a distant cousin of Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States; he served as Senator for New York and was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy; he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920. In 1921, he was stricken with polio, but fought against it courageously, turning a potential liability into a yet another political asset. He went on to become Governor of New York before winning the Presidency in 1932, and won an unprecedented four times, leading the nation during times of economic crisis and a worldwide war.
When Roosevelt took office there were millions of unemployed Americans and most banks had closed. He immediately set out to make sweeping reforms in an effort to bring recovery to business and agriculture, and to provide relief to the unemployed. A major part of FDR’s “New Deal” economic stimulus package was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA created jobs designed to put men to work on infrastructure-related activities that, as the New York Times said at the time, could “not be undertaken by private industry.” A second multi-billion dollar project, called the Public Works Administration (PWA) came into being to create even more jobs, constructing schools, swimming pools, and town halls all over America. Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of The Great Depression, gives an inside glimpse into the public-works job culture when describing a model government farm in Casa Grande, Arizona:
“The men were poor, but sophisticated. They knew that the government wanted them to share jobs. But they saw that the only way for the farm to get profits was to increase output and stop milking by hand. Five dairy crew men approached the manager to propose purchasing milking machines to increase output. They even documented their plea with a shorthand memo:
“Milking machine would save two men’s labor at five dollars per day…Beginning in September would save three men’s wages or $7.50 on account of new heifers coming in.”
“You’re fired,” the manager replied when he saw their careful plan. The government man was horrified at the idea of killing the jobs he was supposed to create. “You’re jeopardizing a loan of the U.S. government, and it’s my job to protect that loan. You’re through, every one of you, get out.”
Such was the calculus of an economy based on governmental “make work” schemes that there were few who knew, much less stood up against, what really amounted to a widespread anti-business populism. This is, of course, what ultimately extended the economic depression as the government supplanted private companies and their private investment. New Dealers were essentially competing against private industry, and there really was no “competition,” as the government relentlessly diverted available capital by selling bonds and collecting taxes to pay for their public-works programs. The net result was that private investment during the New Deal was often not merely low, but negative. Remember, without capital investment there are no new businesses, no new jobs, and ultimately no middle class.
Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, wrote of the cultural and political influence of the New Deal policies that helps us to understand their far-reaching effects:
“A feature of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) which caught the public eye and became nicknamed ‘boondoggling,’ was the setting up of projects to employ artists, musicians, writers and other 'white collar' workers. Post offices and other public buildings were decorated with murals; regional and state guides were written; libraries in municipal and state buildings were catalogued by out-of-work librarians, and indigent graduate students were employed to inventory archives and copy old shipping lists, to the subsequent profit of American historians. The federal theater at its peak employed over 15,000 actors and other workers, at an average wage of $20 a week. Under the direction of John Houseman, Orsen Welles, and others, new plays were written and produced, and the classics revived.”
Author William Bennett notes that “Here, in a nutshell, we see the origins of many of today’s political alignments. Hollywood, academia, the press, libraries, public universities – all are inhabited by tens of thousands of people who could trace the existence of their jobs or their institutions to a federal program begun under FDR.” In effect, writes Bennett, “FDR assured the allegiance” of these folks to the Democratic Party, noting that “One thing can always be assured: If you take from Peter to pay Paul, you can generally rely on the vote of Paul.” This sentiment is summed up by a WPA worker who said, during FDR’s campaign leading up to the 1936 election: “I don’t think it is fair to eat Roosevelt bread and meat and vote for Governor Landon.” And make no mistake: Today's Democratic Party is fully aware of -- and counting on -- this kind of allegiance as they push forward their partisan plan for so-called "universal" healthcare.
What did the American “working man” ultimately get from the New Deal? An up close (and extended) view of what it is like to be utterly dependent upon government largesse –- a view that, not surprisingly, is embraced by many on the Left to this day.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
A quote attributed to columnist Mona Charen (“whew…I almost got carried away, there…”) jump-started my thoughts regarding the preponderance of liberal media outlets and their unchecked bias. Here, as above, I refer you to ABC, PBS, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, MTV, NPR, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and, chances are, your local newspaper, which undoubtedly uses content from the Associated Press and/or the previously mentioned outlets for the majority of their own content.
As for The Great Depression, these sources were helpful:
“The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” by Amity Shlaes
“The New Deal Jobs Myth” by Amity Shlaes, The Wall Street Journal, 12/31/07
www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/fr32.html
“America, the Last Best Hope Vol. II” by William J. Bennett
www.history.navy.mil/bios/morison_s.html
As if that weren’t enough, we’ve been conditioned to accept polls that have been scripted for a pre-determined outcome as some kind of panacea; a pop culture gospel meant to enlighten the masses via the notion that there is wisdom in crowd-think. My view is that you have to have a literate crowd to begin with, which, evidence suggests, we do not: More of us can name the last four American Idol winners than can name the first four Presidents (Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, by the way).
By parroting, not questioning, their fellow ideologues, the so-called “Mainstream Media” (MSM) continues to build its case (often with “straw” bricks) for a socialist society. And this doesn’t take into account the outright lies that have been passed off as the truth. Or that have been tried to be passed off as the truth.
Can there be any doubt as to the monumental influence this vast propaganda machine has already had on American society, or the impact it will have on the future of America? Let’s take a look at that impact by examining the facts (versus the popular opinions) of some of the things we take for granted with regard to “the historical record,” starting with…
The Great Depression
The myth is that the Great Depression was one long, national nightmare –- and it was; however, a preponderance of evidence suggests that “great” mistakes were made by the Roosevelt Administration that actually prolonged it.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself has been mythologized almost beyond recognition, and why not? There is much that makes him an attractive hero to the Democratic Party and, more importantly, to the MSM: Born into wealth, he lived off a trust fund; he attended Harvard and Columbia, and was well-spoken; he was a distant cousin of Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States; he served as Senator for New York and was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy; he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920. In 1921, he was stricken with polio, but fought against it courageously, turning a potential liability into a yet another political asset. He went on to become Governor of New York before winning the Presidency in 1932, and won an unprecedented four times, leading the nation during times of economic crisis and a worldwide war.
When Roosevelt took office there were millions of unemployed Americans and most banks had closed. He immediately set out to make sweeping reforms in an effort to bring recovery to business and agriculture, and to provide relief to the unemployed. A major part of FDR’s “New Deal” economic stimulus package was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA created jobs designed to put men to work on infrastructure-related activities that, as the New York Times said at the time, could “not be undertaken by private industry.” A second multi-billion dollar project, called the Public Works Administration (PWA) came into being to create even more jobs, constructing schools, swimming pools, and town halls all over America. Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of The Great Depression, gives an inside glimpse into the public-works job culture when describing a model government farm in Casa Grande, Arizona:
“The men were poor, but sophisticated. They knew that the government wanted them to share jobs. But they saw that the only way for the farm to get profits was to increase output and stop milking by hand. Five dairy crew men approached the manager to propose purchasing milking machines to increase output. They even documented their plea with a shorthand memo:
“Milking machine would save two men’s labor at five dollars per day…Beginning in September would save three men’s wages or $7.50 on account of new heifers coming in.”
“You’re fired,” the manager replied when he saw their careful plan. The government man was horrified at the idea of killing the jobs he was supposed to create. “You’re jeopardizing a loan of the U.S. government, and it’s my job to protect that loan. You’re through, every one of you, get out.”
Such was the calculus of an economy based on governmental “make work” schemes that there were few who knew, much less stood up against, what really amounted to a widespread anti-business populism. This is, of course, what ultimately extended the economic depression as the government supplanted private companies and their private investment. New Dealers were essentially competing against private industry, and there really was no “competition,” as the government relentlessly diverted available capital by selling bonds and collecting taxes to pay for their public-works programs. The net result was that private investment during the New Deal was often not merely low, but negative. Remember, without capital investment there are no new businesses, no new jobs, and ultimately no middle class.
Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, wrote of the cultural and political influence of the New Deal policies that helps us to understand their far-reaching effects:
“A feature of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) which caught the public eye and became nicknamed ‘boondoggling,’ was the setting up of projects to employ artists, musicians, writers and other 'white collar' workers. Post offices and other public buildings were decorated with murals; regional and state guides were written; libraries in municipal and state buildings were catalogued by out-of-work librarians, and indigent graduate students were employed to inventory archives and copy old shipping lists, to the subsequent profit of American historians. The federal theater at its peak employed over 15,000 actors and other workers, at an average wage of $20 a week. Under the direction of John Houseman, Orsen Welles, and others, new plays were written and produced, and the classics revived.”
Author William Bennett notes that “Here, in a nutshell, we see the origins of many of today’s political alignments. Hollywood, academia, the press, libraries, public universities – all are inhabited by tens of thousands of people who could trace the existence of their jobs or their institutions to a federal program begun under FDR.” In effect, writes Bennett, “FDR assured the allegiance” of these folks to the Democratic Party, noting that “One thing can always be assured: If you take from Peter to pay Paul, you can generally rely on the vote of Paul.” This sentiment is summed up by a WPA worker who said, during FDR’s campaign leading up to the 1936 election: “I don’t think it is fair to eat Roosevelt bread and meat and vote for Governor Landon.” And make no mistake: Today's Democratic Party is fully aware of -- and counting on -- this kind of allegiance as they push forward their partisan plan for so-called "universal" healthcare.
What did the American “working man” ultimately get from the New Deal? An up close (and extended) view of what it is like to be utterly dependent upon government largesse –- a view that, not surprisingly, is embraced by many on the Left to this day.
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
A quote attributed to columnist Mona Charen (“whew…I almost got carried away, there…”) jump-started my thoughts regarding the preponderance of liberal media outlets and their unchecked bias. Here, as above, I refer you to ABC, PBS, CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, MTV, NPR, Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and, chances are, your local newspaper, which undoubtedly uses content from the Associated Press and/or the previously mentioned outlets for the majority of their own content.
As for The Great Depression, these sources were helpful:
“The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” by Amity Shlaes
“The New Deal Jobs Myth” by Amity Shlaes, The Wall Street Journal, 12/31/07
www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/fr32.html
“America, the Last Best Hope Vol. II” by William J. Bennett
www.history.navy.mil/bios/morison_s.html
Friday, December 25, 2009
The U.S. Constitution
That we, as Americans, draw our laws from the Constitution of the United States is rather self-evident. Ours is, after all, a constitutional government, and our society draws its laws from constitutional authority. How then do we reconcile the strident combativeness of the Left in opposition to so many of the laws that “We the People” have conceived to legislate this Great Society? Of more concern, why are they so insistent on creating laws and entirely new entitlements for which there is absolutely no constitutional basis -- such as the current Healthcare boondoggle? Are they somehow unaware of just exactly how a constitutional government works?
The truth is, “we the people” are only guaranteed certain rights by our Constitution, and certain freedoms. Let us review:
We have the freedom of religion.
We have the freedom of speech.
We have the right to bear arms.
We have the right to assemble peaceably.
We have the right to petition the government.
We have the right of due process under the law, legal counsel when charged with crime, a speedy and public trial by jury, and protection from double jeopardy.
We have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
This is the extent of our rights and freedoms, and there is genius in their simplicity, in their directness, and in their explicitness. Yet in almost any discussion about American liberty or American values many seem to confuse these rights and freedoms with some of the more eloquent prose of the Declaration of Independence, with the soaring rhetoric about “unalienable rights” and “the pursuit of happiness.” As impressive and universally beloved as they are, we must understand that those words, written largely after the fact of the American Revolution – we had already been warring with England for a year – were written to amplify the grievances we held against an oppressive kingdom 3,000 miles away, and were meant in no way to be the basis for a government.
The same folks who choose (out of ignorance or preference) to transfer the war-time feelings expressed in the Declaration of Independence onto the brilliantly forward-thinking Constitution would do well to be reminded of the more salient remarks of one of the chief architects of our government, James Madison, who said, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
Mr. Madison, a proponent of individual state’s rights and a fierce opponent of a large and over-reaching federal government, went even further to make this most salient of constitutional points, exhorting that “I cannot lay my finger on that Article in the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” So much for using the General Welfare clause to justify every manner of government handout.
The framers of our Constitution, in designing the outlines of our Republic, understood that their document would need to change and evolve as the country grew and evolved. They knew that expansionism and modernity was inevitable and that our nation would need to be able to address new challenges and opportunities. That is why the Founding Fathers included a mechanism for change: Amendments.
Amendments to the Constitution have been relatively rare, and with few exceptions have been used to address monumental issues that confronted our nation. The 13th Amendment, for example, abolished slavery. The 16th Amendment granted Congress the power to tax our income (we actually ratified that one?). The 18th Amendment outlawed “intoxicating liquors,” and the 21st Amendment repealed the prohibition prescribed in the 18th Amendment. All told, there have been 28 Amendments over the last 220 years.
Universal Healthcare is a notion currently in vogue. The liberal asks, “Why can’t we just tax everyone (read: “The Rich”) and have the government provide healthcare or healthcare insurance to every man, woman and child in America? Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if everyone had access to healthcare?”
The problem, here, is two-fold: First, there is a fundamental misunderstanding (or ignorance, if you will) with regard to healthcare. In the United States, it is illegal to deny healthcare to anyone who needs it based upon their ability to pay. If a child shows up at a hospital with a broken arm, it will be set and put in a cast. Who will pay for that service? The insured, in the form of increased insurance premiums.
The second problem is that healthcare is not among the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Nowhere does it state in the Constitution that American citizens, let alone illegal immigrants, shall be provided healthcare by the U.S. government. Of course, thanks to the foresight of our Founding Fathers, all it would take to make universal healthcare the law of the land is approval by two-thirds of both the House and the Senate, followed by the ratification (approval) of three-quarters of the state legislatures.
Amendments are how new, federally-mandated laws are instituted where no previous constitutional authority exists. Of course, individual state legislatures are more than capable of instituting new programs, such as “free” healthcare, and at least one state has done so: Massachusetts. Of course, the citizens of Massachusetts have one of the highest tax burdens in America and their health care still isn’t among the top tier providers, but it is “free.”
The powers of Congress are outlined in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and even the most casual reader will quickly see that Congress does not have, nor did they ever have, the constitutional authority to institute a great many of the Departments that exist today. The Departments of Education, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services are, in fact, entirely unconstitutional. The Commission of Fine Arts is unconstitutional. The Agency for International Development is unconstitutional. The Office of Federal Student Aid is unconstitutional. The National Institute for Mental Health is unconstitutional. The Small Business Administration is unconstitutional. The Multifamily Housing Office is unconstitutional, as are the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). And on and on it goes.
If these federally-funded organizations are unconstitutional, how on earth did they ever come into existence and how is it that we continue to fund them, year after year? A broad interpretation of the Constitution, a Congress unwilling to yield to constitutional limits and eager to secure the votes of their constituents, and judicial activism have created a heady brew wherein anything can, and often does, happen.
Some in Congress actually do grasp the limits of their power, but they are few and far between. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Arizona) has introduced a measure in every Congress since 1995, called The Enumerated Powers Act, which would require that all bills introduced in the U.S. Congress include a statement that shows the specific constitutional authority that would allow the law to be enacted in the first place. Sadly, the Act has only about 40 co-sponsors in the House, and has never had a co-sponsor in the Senate. We’re talking about men and women who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution but who can not bring themselves to actually do it. What is it they say about “absolute power?”
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
The Constitution of the United States of America
“The Oxford Guide to United States History” edited by Paul S. Boyer
“Our Nation’s Archive” edited by Erik Bruun & Jay Crosby
“John Adams” by David McCullough
“Benjamin Franklin” by Edmund S. Morgan
“America, the Last Best Hope, Vol. I” by William J. Bennett
“The Nanny-Stater Challenge: Where’s Your Constitutional Basis?” by Jerry Agar, Jan 2008
“The Great Upheaval” by Jay Winik
“”Who’s ‘Right’?” by Neal Boortz, April 7th, 2008
“Political Loathsomeness” by Walter E. Williams, April 9th, 2008
“American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” by Joseph J. Ellis
“James Madison” by Garry Willis
The truth is, “we the people” are only guaranteed certain rights by our Constitution, and certain freedoms. Let us review:
We have the freedom of religion.
We have the freedom of speech.
We have the right to bear arms.
We have the right to assemble peaceably.
We have the right to petition the government.
We have the right of due process under the law, legal counsel when charged with crime, a speedy and public trial by jury, and protection from double jeopardy.
We have the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
This is the extent of our rights and freedoms, and there is genius in their simplicity, in their directness, and in their explicitness. Yet in almost any discussion about American liberty or American values many seem to confuse these rights and freedoms with some of the more eloquent prose of the Declaration of Independence, with the soaring rhetoric about “unalienable rights” and “the pursuit of happiness.” As impressive and universally beloved as they are, we must understand that those words, written largely after the fact of the American Revolution – we had already been warring with England for a year – were written to amplify the grievances we held against an oppressive kingdom 3,000 miles away, and were meant in no way to be the basis for a government.
The same folks who choose (out of ignorance or preference) to transfer the war-time feelings expressed in the Declaration of Independence onto the brilliantly forward-thinking Constitution would do well to be reminded of the more salient remarks of one of the chief architects of our government, James Madison, who said, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
Mr. Madison, a proponent of individual state’s rights and a fierce opponent of a large and over-reaching federal government, went even further to make this most salient of constitutional points, exhorting that “I cannot lay my finger on that Article in the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” So much for using the General Welfare clause to justify every manner of government handout.
The framers of our Constitution, in designing the outlines of our Republic, understood that their document would need to change and evolve as the country grew and evolved. They knew that expansionism and modernity was inevitable and that our nation would need to be able to address new challenges and opportunities. That is why the Founding Fathers included a mechanism for change: Amendments.
Amendments to the Constitution have been relatively rare, and with few exceptions have been used to address monumental issues that confronted our nation. The 13th Amendment, for example, abolished slavery. The 16th Amendment granted Congress the power to tax our income (we actually ratified that one?). The 18th Amendment outlawed “intoxicating liquors,” and the 21st Amendment repealed the prohibition prescribed in the 18th Amendment. All told, there have been 28 Amendments over the last 220 years.
Universal Healthcare is a notion currently in vogue. The liberal asks, “Why can’t we just tax everyone (read: “The Rich”) and have the government provide healthcare or healthcare insurance to every man, woman and child in America? Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if everyone had access to healthcare?”
The problem, here, is two-fold: First, there is a fundamental misunderstanding (or ignorance, if you will) with regard to healthcare. In the United States, it is illegal to deny healthcare to anyone who needs it based upon their ability to pay. If a child shows up at a hospital with a broken arm, it will be set and put in a cast. Who will pay for that service? The insured, in the form of increased insurance premiums.
The second problem is that healthcare is not among the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Nowhere does it state in the Constitution that American citizens, let alone illegal immigrants, shall be provided healthcare by the U.S. government. Of course, thanks to the foresight of our Founding Fathers, all it would take to make universal healthcare the law of the land is approval by two-thirds of both the House and the Senate, followed by the ratification (approval) of three-quarters of the state legislatures.
Amendments are how new, federally-mandated laws are instituted where no previous constitutional authority exists. Of course, individual state legislatures are more than capable of instituting new programs, such as “free” healthcare, and at least one state has done so: Massachusetts. Of course, the citizens of Massachusetts have one of the highest tax burdens in America and their health care still isn’t among the top tier providers, but it is “free.”
The powers of Congress are outlined in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and even the most casual reader will quickly see that Congress does not have, nor did they ever have, the constitutional authority to institute a great many of the Departments that exist today. The Departments of Education, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services are, in fact, entirely unconstitutional. The Commission of Fine Arts is unconstitutional. The Agency for International Development is unconstitutional. The Office of Federal Student Aid is unconstitutional. The National Institute for Mental Health is unconstitutional. The Small Business Administration is unconstitutional. The Multifamily Housing Office is unconstitutional, as are the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). And on and on it goes.
If these federally-funded organizations are unconstitutional, how on earth did they ever come into existence and how is it that we continue to fund them, year after year? A broad interpretation of the Constitution, a Congress unwilling to yield to constitutional limits and eager to secure the votes of their constituents, and judicial activism have created a heady brew wherein anything can, and often does, happen.
Some in Congress actually do grasp the limits of their power, but they are few and far between. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Arizona) has introduced a measure in every Congress since 1995, called The Enumerated Powers Act, which would require that all bills introduced in the U.S. Congress include a statement that shows the specific constitutional authority that would allow the law to be enacted in the first place. Sadly, the Act has only about 40 co-sponsors in the House, and has never had a co-sponsor in the Senate. We’re talking about men and women who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution but who can not bring themselves to actually do it. What is it they say about “absolute power?”
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
The Constitution of the United States of America
“The Oxford Guide to United States History” edited by Paul S. Boyer
“Our Nation’s Archive” edited by Erik Bruun & Jay Crosby
“John Adams” by David McCullough
“Benjamin Franklin” by Edmund S. Morgan
“America, the Last Best Hope, Vol. I” by William J. Bennett
“The Nanny-Stater Challenge: Where’s Your Constitutional Basis?” by Jerry Agar, Jan 2008
“The Great Upheaval” by Jay Winik
“”Who’s ‘Right’?” by Neal Boortz, April 7th, 2008
“Political Loathsomeness” by Walter E. Williams, April 9th, 2008
“American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” by Joseph J. Ellis
“James Madison” by Garry Willis
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Fighting for Utopia
As I said: Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Unfortunately, for many Liberals it's not enough to merely be wrong: Have you ever noticed how angry and hateful the Left tends to be? It’s hard to ignore their vitriol. Who do we see at all of the demonstrations against this thing or that thing? Whether it’s globalization or global warming, whose faces do we always see, wild-eyed and contorted with rage? Who do we see throwing fits and tantrums when people who don't share their views disagree? Who opposes every war yet resorts to violence when their chanting and infantile emotionalism fails to win the argument?
I think a big part of Leftist rage stems from the fact that Liberals tend to confuse their Utopian wishes (how they feel things should be) with the realities of our Constitution-based society. However, because they have such an overwhelming presence in the media -- always positive! -- and their worldview is repeatedly expressed in a calculated and coordinated fashion, they are consistently portrayed as enlightened (or “nuanced”) thinkers. The fact that a great many of their “thoughts” are contrary to mainstream thought, or downright unconstitutional, is incidental and rarely mentioned in the propaganda that passes for media “content.”
No small amount of irony resides in the fact that the Left are the self-professed defenders of our civil liberties. Free speech? Only when it is their voice to be heard. Tolerance? Only when it is their ideology being espoused. Woe unto them that strays from the leftist worldview.
I thought that perhaps this perception, on my part, was clouded; that it was merely an opinion, with no basis in fact. I allowed that it was entirely possible that my judgment was compromised by certain long-held beliefs of mine -- beliefs based on observation and experience, but beliefs nonetheless -- until I saw the results of several American National Election Studies (ANES).
The ANES, generated by the University of Michigan, surveys American adults using what political analysts call “feeling thermometers.” The participants are asked to rate various groups of people on a scale of 0-100. In general, a neutral response elicits a score of about 70; forty is considered a “cold” temperature, while 20 indicates a very strong dislike.
Now, because the “consensus” view -- particularly strong in academia and the media -- suggests that to be a political conservative is to have a hostile intolerance towards those with opposing viewpoints and lifestyles, while political liberals are inherently more tolerant and embrace diversity, I was curious: Do the data support this assumption?
The truth is, both conservatives and liberals are intolerant of one another, politically. Still, the numbers do give us some insight into which group is more intolerant. For example, those who identified themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative” gave liberals an average thermometer score of 39; liberals, in turn, gave conservatives a score of 38. Those who identify themselves as “extremely conservative” gave the left a score of 27; the “extremely liberal” group gave the right a score of 23.
When we look at the scores given for the President and the Vice-President, we see more of a divergence. In the 1998 ANES survey, both Bill Clinton and Al Gore received an average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves “extremely conservative.” Meanwhile, in the 2004 ANES survey, those who called themselves “extremely liberal” gave George Bush an average temperature of 15 and Dick Cheney a 16. Of particular interest in the POTUS-VP numbers is that, while just 28% of the far-right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, and only 10% gave Gore a zero -- remember, this is after the President had been exposed as a perjuring adulterer who lied to the American people on national television –- fully 60% of the far-left gave Bush and Cheney the absolute lowest score: zero.
To add further perspective, consider that when Saddam Hussein was alive he received an average score of eight from all respondents, across all groups.
Still not sure that lefties tend to be more intolerant when it comes to those who disagree with their worldview? Google “I hate Republicans” and “I hate Democrats.” In January 2008, there were nearly 22,000 hits for “I hate Republicans,” and 11,000 for “I hate Democrats.” In October 2004, just prior the presidential election, the score was nearly 10 to one.
So much for nuance.
There certainly does seem to be a great deal of anger and hostility on the Left. There must be a lot of resentment, as well: In their quest to remake America in their own image, Liberals protest against virtually everything, often violently; they perpetrate voter fraud by sending stand-ins to vote for people who have died, moved, or were fraudulently registered in the first place; they argue that felons and illegal aliens should be allowed to vote (see also: “The Big Tent”); they steal Republican election signs from front yards; they throw bricks through Republican campaign headquarters; and they send out operatives to slash the tires or otherwise disable the vehicles of volunteers working to get registered Republican voters to the polls on election day.
In sum, the Left will lie, cheat, steal, harangue, harass, and destroy…whether they get their way, or not. The constant fighting and turmoil must be terribly frustrating, on at least some level -– which may explain a finding in the March 2008 Harper’s Index that notes that 38 percent of Democrats rate their mental health as “excellent” (versus 58 percent of Republicans).
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Liberal Hatemongers” by Arthur C. Brooks, The Wall Street Journal, 1/08
http://www.electionstudies.org/
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1756923/posts
“Voter Fraud Showdown” by John Fun, The Wall Street Journal, 1/9/08
I think a big part of Leftist rage stems from the fact that Liberals tend to confuse their Utopian wishes (how they feel things should be) with the realities of our Constitution-based society. However, because they have such an overwhelming presence in the media -- always positive! -- and their worldview is repeatedly expressed in a calculated and coordinated fashion, they are consistently portrayed as enlightened (or “nuanced”) thinkers. The fact that a great many of their “thoughts” are contrary to mainstream thought, or downright unconstitutional, is incidental and rarely mentioned in the propaganda that passes for media “content.”
No small amount of irony resides in the fact that the Left are the self-professed defenders of our civil liberties. Free speech? Only when it is their voice to be heard. Tolerance? Only when it is their ideology being espoused. Woe unto them that strays from the leftist worldview.
I thought that perhaps this perception, on my part, was clouded; that it was merely an opinion, with no basis in fact. I allowed that it was entirely possible that my judgment was compromised by certain long-held beliefs of mine -- beliefs based on observation and experience, but beliefs nonetheless -- until I saw the results of several American National Election Studies (ANES).
The ANES, generated by the University of Michigan, surveys American adults using what political analysts call “feeling thermometers.” The participants are asked to rate various groups of people on a scale of 0-100. In general, a neutral response elicits a score of about 70; forty is considered a “cold” temperature, while 20 indicates a very strong dislike.
Now, because the “consensus” view -- particularly strong in academia and the media -- suggests that to be a political conservative is to have a hostile intolerance towards those with opposing viewpoints and lifestyles, while political liberals are inherently more tolerant and embrace diversity, I was curious: Do the data support this assumption?
The truth is, both conservatives and liberals are intolerant of one another, politically. Still, the numbers do give us some insight into which group is more intolerant. For example, those who identified themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative” gave liberals an average thermometer score of 39; liberals, in turn, gave conservatives a score of 38. Those who identify themselves as “extremely conservative” gave the left a score of 27; the “extremely liberal” group gave the right a score of 23.
When we look at the scores given for the President and the Vice-President, we see more of a divergence. In the 1998 ANES survey, both Bill Clinton and Al Gore received an average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves “extremely conservative.” Meanwhile, in the 2004 ANES survey, those who called themselves “extremely liberal” gave George Bush an average temperature of 15 and Dick Cheney a 16. Of particular interest in the POTUS-VP numbers is that, while just 28% of the far-right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, and only 10% gave Gore a zero -- remember, this is after the President had been exposed as a perjuring adulterer who lied to the American people on national television –- fully 60% of the far-left gave Bush and Cheney the absolute lowest score: zero.
To add further perspective, consider that when Saddam Hussein was alive he received an average score of eight from all respondents, across all groups.
Still not sure that lefties tend to be more intolerant when it comes to those who disagree with their worldview? Google “I hate Republicans” and “I hate Democrats.” In January 2008, there were nearly 22,000 hits for “I hate Republicans,” and 11,000 for “I hate Democrats.” In October 2004, just prior the presidential election, the score was nearly 10 to one.
So much for nuance.
There certainly does seem to be a great deal of anger and hostility on the Left. There must be a lot of resentment, as well: In their quest to remake America in their own image, Liberals protest against virtually everything, often violently; they perpetrate voter fraud by sending stand-ins to vote for people who have died, moved, or were fraudulently registered in the first place; they argue that felons and illegal aliens should be allowed to vote (see also: “The Big Tent”); they steal Republican election signs from front yards; they throw bricks through Republican campaign headquarters; and they send out operatives to slash the tires or otherwise disable the vehicles of volunteers working to get registered Republican voters to the polls on election day.
In sum, the Left will lie, cheat, steal, harangue, harass, and destroy…whether they get their way, or not. The constant fighting and turmoil must be terribly frustrating, on at least some level -– which may explain a finding in the March 2008 Harper’s Index that notes that 38 percent of Democrats rate their mental health as “excellent” (versus 58 percent of Republicans).
REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING
“Liberal Hatemongers” by Arthur C. Brooks, The Wall Street Journal, 1/08
http://www.electionstudies.org/
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1756923/posts
“Voter Fraud Showdown” by John Fun, The Wall Street Journal, 1/9/08
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tories, Luddites and Liberals
Look it up: Tories, Luddites and Liberals have been on the wrong side of every important historical issue. From the American Revolution to the Industrial Revolution to Slavery and Civil Rights: Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Tories -- American Revolutionary Tories, to be precise -- liked to call themselves Loyalists. These were colonists who didn’t mind how badly they were mistreated by a Monarchy some 3,000 miles away; most of them were either employed by or in some way connected to the British Crown. And besides, we could never win, anyway, (sound familiar?) So, they wrote songs, distributed pamphlets, and quoted foreign philosophes to condemn the "upstart rebellion," but soon escalated to acts of torture, murder, arson, sabotage, and plunder. There were even Tory militias, which sided with the British. As you can imagine, their actions were viewed as treasonous betrayals by their countrymen, and a great many of the “Loyalists” ended up fleeing for their lives to Canada.
Today there remains a great many “modern American Tories” who wish the United States were more like Europe in everything from fashion to mannerisms to politics, the latter of which has occasionally resulted in plaintive threats to flee to Canada should their fellow liberal or Democratic candidates not be elected to lead the government. Alas, these have almost always proved to have been merely another empty gesture from the Left.
Luddites, as we all know, are associated with those who fear industrial or technological advancement (in spite of any improvements they bring). The original Luddites were weavers in the English town of Nottingham who felt that their livelihoods were threatened by the stocking frame and the power loom, devices which increased textile efficiency, if not quality. The Luddites rose up and organized, breaking into factories and destroying the infernal contraptions -- usually under cover of night. Their rebellion spread, and soon mobs were roaming the countryside, wreaking havoc on the factories and the factory owners who used this new technology instead of the weavers and croppers (cloth finishers). Some have identified this period and these events as a precursor to modern day labor unions, labeling it “collective bargaining by riot.” The British government eventually contained the unrest and many Luddites were convicted, imprisoned, exiled to Australia, or hanged. A similar uprising occurred in 1830 when English farm workers began destroying threshing machines.
In the end, of course, technological and scientific advancements have made our lives infinitely better, however, these advancements have been unable to quell the impotent rage of those who oppose progress, most of whom can be identified, ironically enough, as members of the so-called “Progressive” movement.
Which brings us to Liberals.
The American Heritage Dictionary tells us that “liberalism” is a political theory founded on the “natural goodness” of humanity, and any number of sources will define liberalism as a political philosophy that considers individual liberty as the most important goal. That’s all well and good, but in many respects these notions are “old-school” and are difficult to reconcile with the realities of modern liberal thought. Today’s Liberal adheres less to the ideal of small government and individual responsibility and more toward a socialistic version of liberalism. The “new” liberalism -- having taken root over the last 75 years, or so -- subscribes to a “Big Government” worldview of more State and Federal enterprises (read: “entitlement” programs and subsidies) supported by a heavier and more “progressive” tax system to support them.
This “Social Liberalism” is the prevailing school of thought inherent in today’s Liberal and is the cornerstone of their effort to remake American society. These are the people and the movement to which I refer when I talk about Liberals.
Interestingly enough, the word “liberal” comes to us from the Latin word liber, meaning “free, not slave.” Slavery has been around for longer than there has been written history, and certainly predates the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), which refers to slavery as an already established institution (though not a peculiar institution). Slavery is known to have existed in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Islamic Caliphate. The Spartans had slaves, as did the Vikings and the Mongols. The Germans, the Turks, the Africans and the Spanish all had slaves. In fact, enslavement of our fellow man was pervasive throughout the known world -- St. Patrick himself was sold as a slave, as were Hagar, Aesop, and Frederick Douglass.
Owing to its relative youth, the United States had a much shorter experience with slavery, though no less heinous than most countries. Jamestown, founded in 1607 and commonly referred to as the first permanent settlement in the U.S., received 20 Africans as indentured servants in 1619. By 1642, Massachusetts became the first colony to legalize slavery. In 1705, Virginia made it government policy that any imported servant be categorized as “slave,” and that all persons of color be considered real estate as opposed to human beings. Although slavery insinuated itself into American culture, eventually there appeared a “clash of conscience,” whereby some began to question the morality of it. Indeed, the Founding Fathers were torn on the subject; the southern states would not consider, under any circumstances, the abolition of the practice, and warned that they would not join the northern colonies in the War of Independence were it a consideration in their colonial alliance (a scene replayed some 90 years later in the Civil War). Ultimately, and sadly, the decision was left to a later time, but in 1787 the Continental Congress did enact the Northwest Ordinance -- also known as The Freedom Ordinance -- which prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River.
The “slavery question” came more and more into play as territories were considered for admittance to the Union. Southern states, in which one family in four were slave-owners, realized that the power of their representation in Congress would wane as more and more territories joined the Union as “free states.” Once again, they contemplated secession, and when Confederate forces fired on the federal military installation at Ft. Sumter, their decision was clear. The war would last four years and claim over 600,000 American lives. Out of this greatest American tragedy, however, came the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, which effectively ended government-sanctioned slavery in the United States.
Although freed, former slaves and their descendants were treated like second class citizens for decade upon decade to come. Lynchings, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and any number of other attempts to bully and humiliate the black man continued, largely unabated, until well into the 20th century. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, established to prohibit discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, effectively invalidated Jim Crow laws and outlawed segregation. It is interesting to note that although the Democrats controlled both the House (60% Democrat) and the Senate (67%), only about two-thirds of Democrats supported passage of the bill, with many so-called “Southern Democrats” doing everything they could to derail it or bury it. Conversely, more than 80% of Republicans (whose Party was formed in 1854 to promote the abolition of slavery) voted “Yes” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights bill into law on July 2nd, 1964, he allegedly told an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.” Who is the “we” he refers to?
I’ve gone into some detail regarding slavery and civil rights -- with much, much more to come later -- because these struggles are perhaps the most profound example of the hypocrisy of the Liberal class. I will also demonstrate how the Left, as a group, have been able to not only get away with ignorant and ill-conceived behavior but also to thrive politically with little or no ramifications. It is my intention to show the many different levels of their deceit, their complicity in steering public policy in harmful directions, the irony in how they are perceived by the general public, and the forces behind the grooming and management of that façade. In other words, I intend to shine a little light, i.e. Facts, Reason and Logic, on what has been and continues to be a dangerous threat to the fabric of our republic.
Tories -- American Revolutionary Tories, to be precise -- liked to call themselves Loyalists. These were colonists who didn’t mind how badly they were mistreated by a Monarchy some 3,000 miles away; most of them were either employed by or in some way connected to the British Crown. And besides, we could never win, anyway, (sound familiar?) So, they wrote songs, distributed pamphlets, and quoted foreign philosophes to condemn the "upstart rebellion," but soon escalated to acts of torture, murder, arson, sabotage, and plunder. There were even Tory militias, which sided with the British. As you can imagine, their actions were viewed as treasonous betrayals by their countrymen, and a great many of the “Loyalists” ended up fleeing for their lives to Canada.
Today there remains a great many “modern American Tories” who wish the United States were more like Europe in everything from fashion to mannerisms to politics, the latter of which has occasionally resulted in plaintive threats to flee to Canada should their fellow liberal or Democratic candidates not be elected to lead the government. Alas, these have almost always proved to have been merely another empty gesture from the Left.
Luddites, as we all know, are associated with those who fear industrial or technological advancement (in spite of any improvements they bring). The original Luddites were weavers in the English town of Nottingham who felt that their livelihoods were threatened by the stocking frame and the power loom, devices which increased textile efficiency, if not quality. The Luddites rose up and organized, breaking into factories and destroying the infernal contraptions -- usually under cover of night. Their rebellion spread, and soon mobs were roaming the countryside, wreaking havoc on the factories and the factory owners who used this new technology instead of the weavers and croppers (cloth finishers). Some have identified this period and these events as a precursor to modern day labor unions, labeling it “collective bargaining by riot.” The British government eventually contained the unrest and many Luddites were convicted, imprisoned, exiled to Australia, or hanged. A similar uprising occurred in 1830 when English farm workers began destroying threshing machines.
In the end, of course, technological and scientific advancements have made our lives infinitely better, however, these advancements have been unable to quell the impotent rage of those who oppose progress, most of whom can be identified, ironically enough, as members of the so-called “Progressive” movement.
Which brings us to Liberals.
The American Heritage Dictionary tells us that “liberalism” is a political theory founded on the “natural goodness” of humanity, and any number of sources will define liberalism as a political philosophy that considers individual liberty as the most important goal. That’s all well and good, but in many respects these notions are “old-school” and are difficult to reconcile with the realities of modern liberal thought. Today’s Liberal adheres less to the ideal of small government and individual responsibility and more toward a socialistic version of liberalism. The “new” liberalism -- having taken root over the last 75 years, or so -- subscribes to a “Big Government” worldview of more State and Federal enterprises (read: “entitlement” programs and subsidies) supported by a heavier and more “progressive” tax system to support them.
This “Social Liberalism” is the prevailing school of thought inherent in today’s Liberal and is the cornerstone of their effort to remake American society. These are the people and the movement to which I refer when I talk about Liberals.
Interestingly enough, the word “liberal” comes to us from the Latin word liber, meaning “free, not slave.” Slavery has been around for longer than there has been written history, and certainly predates the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC), which refers to slavery as an already established institution (though not a peculiar institution). Slavery is known to have existed in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Islamic Caliphate. The Spartans had slaves, as did the Vikings and the Mongols. The Germans, the Turks, the Africans and the Spanish all had slaves. In fact, enslavement of our fellow man was pervasive throughout the known world -- St. Patrick himself was sold as a slave, as were Hagar, Aesop, and Frederick Douglass.
Owing to its relative youth, the United States had a much shorter experience with slavery, though no less heinous than most countries. Jamestown, founded in 1607 and commonly referred to as the first permanent settlement in the U.S., received 20 Africans as indentured servants in 1619. By 1642, Massachusetts became the first colony to legalize slavery. In 1705, Virginia made it government policy that any imported servant be categorized as “slave,” and that all persons of color be considered real estate as opposed to human beings. Although slavery insinuated itself into American culture, eventually there appeared a “clash of conscience,” whereby some began to question the morality of it. Indeed, the Founding Fathers were torn on the subject; the southern states would not consider, under any circumstances, the abolition of the practice, and warned that they would not join the northern colonies in the War of Independence were it a consideration in their colonial alliance (a scene replayed some 90 years later in the Civil War). Ultimately, and sadly, the decision was left to a later time, but in 1787 the Continental Congress did enact the Northwest Ordinance -- also known as The Freedom Ordinance -- which prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River.
The “slavery question” came more and more into play as territories were considered for admittance to the Union. Southern states, in which one family in four were slave-owners, realized that the power of their representation in Congress would wane as more and more territories joined the Union as “free states.” Once again, they contemplated secession, and when Confederate forces fired on the federal military installation at Ft. Sumter, their decision was clear. The war would last four years and claim over 600,000 American lives. Out of this greatest American tragedy, however, came the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, which effectively ended government-sanctioned slavery in the United States.
Although freed, former slaves and their descendants were treated like second class citizens for decade upon decade to come. Lynchings, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and any number of other attempts to bully and humiliate the black man continued, largely unabated, until well into the 20th century. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, established to prohibit discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, effectively invalidated Jim Crow laws and outlawed segregation. It is interesting to note that although the Democrats controlled both the House (60% Democrat) and the Senate (67%), only about two-thirds of Democrats supported passage of the bill, with many so-called “Southern Democrats” doing everything they could to derail it or bury it. Conversely, more than 80% of Republicans (whose Party was formed in 1854 to promote the abolition of slavery) voted “Yes” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights bill into law on July 2nd, 1964, he allegedly told an aide, “We have lost the South for a generation.” Who is the “we” he refers to?
I’ve gone into some detail regarding slavery and civil rights -- with much, much more to come later -- because these struggles are perhaps the most profound example of the hypocrisy of the Liberal class. I will also demonstrate how the Left, as a group, have been able to not only get away with ignorant and ill-conceived behavior but also to thrive politically with little or no ramifications. It is my intention to show the many different levels of their deceit, their complicity in steering public policy in harmful directions, the irony in how they are perceived by the general public, and the forces behind the grooming and management of that façade. In other words, I intend to shine a little light, i.e. Facts, Reason and Logic, on what has been and continues to be a dangerous threat to the fabric of our republic.
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