Friday, November 30, 2012

Come after me! I'm a man!

I don’t have a problem with raising taxes. I don’t! If the government thinks that is the best way to reduce the deficit or fatten the collective wallet, fine. But that’s not the debate we are having. Time and time again our president and the Left have said flatly they want to raise taxes on the “wealthy” because that’s the fair thing to do.  I needn't give you the dictionary definition of “fair” for you to see the fallacy in such an argument.

I once worked with a lady who was proudly “basically a communist.” As a teacher at a daycare, she proclaimed how she liked kindergarten because it basically promoted communist philosophy. And just like that, without any provocation or protesting from me, she had laid out the perfect argument against radical left, big government, rule. Because the thing is, as an adult, I don’t want to be treated like a kindergartner.

Things like the “Buffet Rule” and “pay their fair share” play on the most juvenile level of human interaction. “I don’t have that and so neither should they.” And yet this what the politico-economic discourse (in this country and elsewhere) has been reduced to. An argument based on emotion and fuzzy feelings rather than facts (a trademark of the Left to be visited later on this very blog). Instead of heeding centuries of examples and basic, economic logic, the Left argues for “revenue increases” because the rich simply have too much. “You don’t have that and neither should they.”

So the question you must ask yourself is this: when do I get to stop being treated like a kindergartner? At what point do I expect to be treated like a grown up?  This is the essence of conservatism.

-Isaac

No comments:

Post a Comment