George Rebane
This week I was at a public meeting with a large concentration of very liberal people. The topic of the meeting had heavy political and ideological overtones, so many of the conversations around the room involved people opining about the mindsets typical of the ‘other side’. I overheard one particularly loud snippet that reminded me of an entire genre of how the liberal mind views government funding of visible projects and programs, and how that relates to what we earn and own.
The comment paraphrased was “… and if they complain so much about Obama’s stimulus funding, how come they don’t mind driving on the street newly paved with those stimulus funds?” Similarly, most of us have heard, “… they oppose and complain a lot about the cost of social programs, but we don’t see them sending back their Social Security checks or denying their Medicare payments.” When one of these progressive bon mots is rolled out, all parties to the conversation usually share a laugh and knowingly nod at this ultimate characterization of conservative hypocrisy. With the liberal worldview again confirmed, life can go on.
What gives rise to this staple of fractured logic is the progressive’s beliefs about wealth generation, taxation, and property ownership all wrapped in a profound ignorance of human nature. At the start, your earnings belong first and foremost to the government at whose pleasure you are allowed to live in your house and work your job (remember, government ‘creates’ jobs). Since no liberal can conceive of a maximum tax rate for monies extracted from you by force (formally known as tribute), then logic dictates that government simply leaves you with what it determines should suffice for your remaining expenses. And that amount is arrived at by taking into account all the goods and services the government deigns to provide you.
So in the liberal mindset, you never paid for Medicare or paving the street. The deductions from your wages and your quarterly checks to the IRS are simply accounting devices. It is the government retrieving what was theirs to begin with, and you benefit from the government’s largesse as it provides you with these goods and services. Therefore, if you don’t like the government spending its monies on this or that, you should simply not partake in what is offered to you. If you bitch and moan and still belly up to the government trough with everyone else, you are then an ignorant, ungrateful, and hypocritical oaf who knows not from whence all manna flows. To a liberal, it is as clear as that – next case please.
In the event that some liberal eyes may have strayed to these words, let me offer a view from another logic, or for some, even a different universe. The conservative/libertarian mind, especially if tinged with free market capitalism, views the government as a necessary evil required to minimally structure society so as to formalize and enforce a broadly understood and accepted social contract based on a seminal set of rights (see Bastiat Triangle). Government’s limited powers must derive from its citizens who are the creators and producers of wealth that first and foremost belongs to them. These citizens agree to surrender to the government a minimal portion of their power and wealth so that it can be pooled with that of others to provide for the minimal necessities of common good.
Government must always be viewed as an incipient evil, to be constantly watched and monitored lest it becomes a tyrant and burden on people’s lives. History is mostly the story of governments out of their citizens’ control; and today American governance is writing another sad chapter of that story. Part and parcel of that chapter is that our government now demands a constant and growing stream of tribute from us. It is we and our children, those who are not state employees, who must provide the wherewithal to pay for Social Security, the first responder, the paved street, and all their wages, benefits, taxes, and pensions of the growing legions of state employees. And we do that whether we approve of the spending or not.
But once that money is spent, its product or service belongs as much to the conservative as to the liberal. (In fact, if polling history and voting records of transfer payment recipients are examined, it becomes clear that someone other than a liberal has paid more than his pro-rata or ‘fair’ share of the chuck holes filled and fire stations built.) Seen in the best light, it is the free citizen who gave from the sweat of his brow to an overwhelmingly inefficient, indifferent, and powerful bureaucracy for the little that is eventually returned to him. Therefore that citizen, who with what freedoms remain and who funds the ruling class, gets to grouse and use all that he has paid for.
It is this gulf between the liberal and conservative worlds that is seldom crossed.
(This and other essays on the workings of progressive and collectivist minds are found in ‘The Liberal Mind’ category on the right side of this page.)
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