The Left is All About Confusion

Despite their claims of superior intelligence and intellectual sophistication, liberals apparently suffer from an extreme math deficiency, given their misperception of crowd size. For example, the Left will tell us that the recent One Nation rally far outnumbered this summer’s Beck rally, despite much evidence to the contrary. In addition to crowd size, liberals seem to have a problem figuring out what proportion of the American population supports a given cause or agenda. Poll after poll demonstrate that, despite what liberals and their pet media tell us, most Americans do not agree with their views and positions on everything from the environment to illegal immigration to terrorism to government involvement in people’s lives. Given all of this liberal distortion of reality, one should not be surprised by yet one more nasty habit frequently exhibited by liberals.

A review of America’s rich history will powerfully demonstrate the recipe of this nation’s greatness. While this formula can be described in many forms, the most concise equation may be epitomized in one word…diversity. While liberals love to use this word as their mantra against intolerance, they are the ones who actually exhibit intolerance and constantly seek to inhibit diversity. This is yet another example of the Left’s ironic hypocrisy. Theirs is a pattern of accusing others of precisely that which they exhibit and twisting what has made America great into supposedly what holds America back.

The Right is all about highlighting and honoring America’s diversity. Conservatives accept that people are unique and look to turn this individuality into the ingredients for enhancing this nation’s greatness. Allowing people to use their unique skills and gifts to succeed and help others is central to the Right’s agenda. Encouraging and promoting each person’s special contributions and potential will necessarily result in people achieving diverse levels of success, but that is only natural and just. Philosophers like John Rawls, famed proponent of distributive justice, tell us that people have different needs and distinct potential, goals, and backgrounds. America, and the Right, has been all about promoting equality of opportunity if not necessarily result. If the Left will tell us that such opportunity equality is a myth that must be addressed, the Right may counter with the assertion that any deficiencies in that opportunity equality must be addressed, not by enforcing artificial uniformity, but by improving the process of the opportunity equality itself.

Stated differently, the Right tells us that some people are better cooks and others are better carpenters, resulting in diverse levels of cooking and carpentry where the resulting product reflects diverse and distinct skill levels. This diversity should be encouraged since it will not only reward those who excel, but will also encourage those who do not to either work harder or seek another path for their efforts. Perhaps some average cooks will become good cooks, some inferior cooks will try their hand at carpentry, and so on, but the net result will be that individuality, unique ability, and diverse potential will be both respected and promoted for the good of society.

The Left, on the other hand, denies that some people are better cooks or carpenters, or spends half its time whining about why this is so, probably blaming some injustice or America itself for the disparity. Rather than seeing this diversity as a rich and vibrant expression of individual uniqueness, the Left will condemn it as foul evidence of some massive conspiracy to thwart human beings. What results is a mess where bad cooks are given tons of free cooking classes, poor carpenters are allowed to build defective chairs to appease their ego, and the resulting distasteful meals and dangerous furniture are accepted as the necessary by-product of supporting people’s endeavors regardless of their natural inclination, determination, or qualification for those endeavors.

The Right relishes the difference in our people, and unashamedly seeks to use that difference to make America greater. The Left, on the other hand, is so disgusted and ashamed by those differences that it makes every effort to deny, conceal, or pretend that these differences do not exist by slapping quotas, reverse discrimination, and the race card on everything in sight. America’s greatness is that even Barack Obama can be elected because he convinced enough voters to support him, and that many of those very same voters can vote him out of office four years later, not because they suddenly realized that he was African-American, but because they have come to realize that he is not what they thought he was. The Right will embrace that right of the American people; but the Left will swiftly label it racism, intolerance, and hatred and condemn it.

America has always been that beacon on the hill, guiding and enlightening those who seek what can be done where freedom and human diversity is respected. The Right is not afraid of that light. The Left, on the other hand, has been all about covering that light with its phobias, agendas, hypocrisy, and twisted notions of reality and what the American people want. The upcoming elections and the larger one two years hence will be all about removing that shroud from America’s greatness. In its greatest moments, this country has been about pointing fingers upward in celebration and ambition rather than toward the American people in accusation or denial. It is ironic that those who pretend to be about tolerance and diversity are precisely the ones who seek to confuse and fuse America into some distorted, uniform, artificial One Nation which, by the way, seeks to be everything rather than Under God.

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Politicians Exploit Economic Ignorance

One of President Obama's campaign promises was not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans. So here's my question: If there's a corporate tax increase either in the form of "cap and trade" or income tax, does it turn out to be a middle-class tax increase? Most people would say no but let's look at it.

There's a whole subject area in economics known as tax incidence -- namely, who bears the burden of a tax? The first thing that should be recognized is that the burden of a tax is not necessarily borne by the party upon whom it is levied. That is, for example, if a sales tax is levied on gasoline retailers, they don't bear the full burden of the tax. Part of it is shifted to customers in the form of higher gasoline prices.

Suppose your local politician tells you, as a homeowner, "I'm not going to raise taxes on you! I'm going to raise taxes on your land." You'd probably tell him that he's an idiot because land does not pay taxes; only people pay taxes. That means a tax on your land is a tax on you. You say, "Williams, that's pretty elementary, isn't it?" Not quite.

What about the politician who tells us that he's not going to raise taxes on the middle class; instead, he's going to raise corporate income taxes as means to get rich corporations to pay their rightful share of government? If a tax is levied on a corporation, and if it is to survive, it will have one of three responses, or some combination thereof. One response is to raise the price of its product, so who bears the burden? Another response is to lower dividends; again, who bears the burden? Yet another response is to lay off workers. In each case, it is people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, who bear the burden of the tax.

Because corporations have these responses to the imposition of a tax, they are merely government tax collectors. They collect money from people and send it to Washington. Therefore, you should tell that politician, who promises to tax corporations instead of you, that he's an idiot because corporations, like land, do not pay taxes. Only people pay taxes.

Here's another tax question, even though it doesn't sound like it. Which workers receive higher pay: those on a road construction project moving dirt with shovels and wheelbarrows or those moving dirt atop a giant earthmover? If you said the worker atop the earthmover, go to the head of the class. But why? It's not because he's unionized or that construction contractors have a fondness for earthmover operators. It's because the worker atop the earthmover is working with more capital, thereby making him more productive. Higher productivity means higher wages.

It's not rocket science to conclude that whatever lowers the cost of capital formation, such as lowering the cost of investing in earthmovers, enables contractors to purchase more of them. Workers will have more capital to work with and as a result enjoy higher wages. Policies that raise the cost of capital formation such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and corporate taxes, thereby reduce capital formation, and serve neither the interests of workers, investors nor consumers. It does serve the interests of politicians who get more resources to be able to buy votes.

You might wonder how congressmen can get away with taxes and other measures that reduce our prosperity potential. Part of the answer is ignorance and the anti-business climate promoted in academia and the news media. The more important reason is that prosperity foregone is invisible. In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been without today's level of congressional interference in our lives and therefore don't fight it as much as we should.

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Conservatives, Forever on Trial

It's a topsy-turvy, upside-down political world out there for people who thought Barack Obama would be cruising at a 70 percent approval rating while crushing the Republicans like bugs. In fact, the opposite has happened. The Senate majority leader is in grave danger of involuntary retirement. Everyone in Washington concedes Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to bang the gavel in January.

So why in the world does the tone of news coverage suggest all kinds of political problems ... for conservatives, as if they were the collapsing majority in this campaign?

The media elites sound like they're resigned to the idea that a lot of Democrats are going to be unemployed in November. Their coverage seems designed now to stanch the bleeding, to devote their coverage to close races where they can bash conservative challengers in the hope of turning the tide there.

On the first Monday in October, ABC "Good Morning America" reporter Jonathan Karl was alarming the masses about Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, insisting he was at war with history and the mainstream of politics. "In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Alaska's Joe Miller talked about rolling back the power of the federal government further than Republicans have talked about for more than 70 years."

"Should the federal government be requiring a minimum wage?" Karl asked. Miller said no, that should be left to the states. But really: Is there any chance that the Senate in 2011 will repeal a federal minimum wage? ABC doesn't really care. They're trying to scare voters about conservative positions. Karl continued: "Miller and other tea party candidates also favor eliminating the Department of Education. Some want to pull the U.S. out of the U.N." Horrors. Are these likely to happen (as much as this writer would like)? It doesn't matter. Halloween's coming early.

Karl proceeded to announce it was somehow newsworthy that ABC had a supposedly damaging audio clip of Sharron Angle saying she can arrange a meeting with top Senate Republicans when she comes to Washington. That is "news" only if the reporter assumes she's an extremist who's political poison to every other Republican she touches.

Over on CBS News, Jeff Greenfield flagrantly offered tips to the Democrats, including this advice: "Convince the voters that this election is a choice, with ads that argue the Republicans are just too extreme." This was followed by an actual campaign ad: "Sharron Angle, and she's just too extreme." National news stories and local negative ads go hand in hand.

You don't have to be a tea party candidate to have mud thrown in your face. On NBC, reporter Chuck Todd focused on how the California governor's race took a "nasty turn" when moderate Republican Meg Whitman blamed Jerry Brown for the allegation that she knowingly hired (or retained) an illegal-alien maid.

Like the other national reporters who jumped on this non-story with both feet, Todd couldn't find any time to note that the accuser's lawyer, Gloria Allred, has donated to liberal Democrats from Barbara Boxer to Hillary Clinton to Dennis Kucinich -- and Jerry Brown. National reporters couldn't mention that Allred pulled this same trick on Arnold Schwarzenegger when he ran for governor of California in 2003, when a stunt double accused the movie star of sexual harassment. Her lawsuit then was dismissed. But winning the lawsuit or even finding the truth wasn't the point; beating Republicans was the point.

The media somehow deem that Democrats (a) should not be identified as Democrats when they try to ruin a Republican, and that (b) no one should remind the public that this partisan ambulance has been chased before.

Then on Tuesday, the Unwelcome Wagon was yanked along again. ABC began "Good Morning America" with George Stephanopoulos asking, "Is the tea party losing traction? Our new poll says the answer may be yes, as the movement's most famous candidate releases this ad." All three network morning shows highlighted conservative Christine O'Donnell proclaiming in an ad, "I'm not a witch."

NBC's "Today" offered an interview with Carl Paladino, the surprise tea party winner in the New York governor's race. But it was only a setting for co-host Matt Lauer to assault Paladino as too brash a practitioner of "gutter politics," insisting he wouldn't be able to govern New York because they need a "bridge builder." (Do you recall Lauer ever asking uber-brash liberal Democrat Eliot Spitzer about being too harsh?)

The bias is so thick out there you can step in it. But it shouldn't be forgotten that all this biased sludge obscures the real picture of a wave election. When networks like NBC are mortified that a man they would typically ignore like Paladino might just deny Andrew Cuomo his daddy's mantle in New York, that means the polls are really, terribly bad out there for Democrats.

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ELSEWHERE

Whitman vs. Brown in CA: "In an election year, this is the time for an ‘October surprise’ — some sensational, and usually irrelevant, revelation to distract the voters from serious issues. This year, there are October surprises from coast to coast. There are a lot of incumbents who don’t want to discuss serious issues — especially their own track records.”

Mexican leader sends bill to disband local police: "Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent lawmakers a proposal to abolish Mexico’s notoriously corrupt and ineffective municipal police forces. Under the initiative, each of Mexico’s 31 states would have just one police department under the command of the governor. Calderon raised the idea months ago and formally submitted it to the Senate on Wednesday.”

Afghans find tons of explosive devices transferred from Iran: "Authorities in southwestern Afghanistan have seized 19 tons of explosive devices that had been transferred across the border from Iran, police said. Nimruz Police Chief Abdul Jabar Purdel said a suspect was detained. Nimruz province, in Afghanistan’s southwestern corner, borders Iran and Pakistan.”

ObamaCare throwing in the towel already: "The federal government has decided to provide waivers to 30 companies and groups that will allow them to cap insurance costs, leaving almost a million workers exposed to catastrophic costs despite a new protection in the healthcare law. The companies and organizations, including McDonald’s Corp., will not be required to raise the minimum annual benefit included in low-cost health plans often used to cover part-time or low-wage employees. The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided a list of exemptions, said it granted waivers late last month so workers with such plans would not lose coverage from employers who might choose instead to drop their health insurance altogether.”

Congress can’t repeal economics: "It’s raining! I don’t like it! Why hasn’t Congress passed the Good Weather Act and the Everybody Happy Act? Sound dumb? Why is it any dumber than a law called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promised to cover more for less money?”

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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