Redeclaring Our Independence: “Socialist” Solutions Hurt Americans and Threaten Liberty
Attempting to justify an unconstitutional, anti-American regime in the midst of supposedly just talkin’ numbers and cents, the progressive left’s version of “equity” sharpens into focus.
At a dinner party a number of years ago I was conversing casually with a group of college professors. Although I don’t recall the exact issue that prompted it, one of my interlocutors suddenly belted out “You mean you’re not a Marxist?!” His tone wasn’t quite accusatory. More disbelief tinged with the sentiment that I was now under suspicious and we would surely never be the closest of friends.
Certainly I flirted with Marx as a young man entering college. But then I met Nietzsche, the antidote to Marx. More importantly though for my academic non-friend surprised by my rejection of the Holy Marx is the fact that most Americans are not Marxists.
The selection of Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee in the primaries was directly the result of conservative-leaning black Democrats in South Carolina. But in an attempt to secure his legacy and to become, as he himself said, the most progressive president in U.S. history, Biden moved to the left. The far left. This is the Bernie Sanders party now. Yes, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the demagogue known as AOC, receives more press; but her Twitter and Instagram fame rests on popularizing (which is to say obfuscating for a necessarily naïve youth) an agenda Sanders has long pushed.
Understanding the presuppositions of the Sanders-led left is necessary now, with Biden pushing a plan very Bernie in almost every respect. In fact, it might be possible that a President Sanders would have been less audacious simply because of healthy American skepticism at his self-affirmed “socialist” label. Conservatives, though, are not the best at P.R. While everyone on cable news latches onto the “socialist” smear, with justification, they miss the punchline: the current Democratic party’s drive for massive government is a wholesale threat to American liberty. Debts and spending and limits are secondary issues at best.
Given such policies can be seductive, it’s worth detailing who the Democrats are and where their policies lead.
Bernie Sanders is the Democratic Party
Now, the Democratic Party may not be Marxist. And when conservatives throw the term “Marxist” around, as a scare tactic, they would perhaps be better served in describing just what the Democratic party is — less diverse, more Wall Street, more corporate, nearly wholly urban, the so-called knowledge-economy professionals. The party received, for example, many times more funding from Wall Street than Republicans in the 2020 election. The suburban middle-class white woman or the single, early 30s “woke” graphic designer that thinks Democrats are revolutionaries, the “Resistance” as they fashion themselves, are blind (willfully or otherwise) to the entrenched, corporate, bureaucrat nature of their party. This in itself wouldn’t be a problem for them if their party could achieve their climate, immigration, diversity and inclusion, and equity goals. But they cannot. They cannot because leftist policies harm those they claim to help, to say nothing of the compromises required when one employs a laundry list of former corporate types. Republicans have done a terrible job of making this clear.
Democrats love to accuse Republicans of having economic talking points they argue simply to uphold an “unfair” status quo. Leaving aside the much thornier question of just exactly what constitutes “fair,” we can at least be aware of policies with some net positive and those without. The 2017 tax cuts during the Trump Administration helped usher in the highest wages for minorities in 50 years. I say “helped” because presidents get too much credit for good economies and too much blame for bad ones. But they are a factor and the Trump administration combining deregulation with tax cuts for all income brackets strengthened the economy. Period. Hatred of Trump blinds many to the fact that his policies were actually rather straightforward and boring. Reaganesque, once you get beyond the tweets.
“Equity,” the new lingo justifying progressives’ rearranging of everything from education to the economy and meant to be synonymous with “equality,” is itself not even achieved by Democrat spending plans. Black (and Latino) unemployment reaching a 50-year low under the Trump Administration was a historic victory. Such achievements whole or in part point to the core of America’s economic vision – upward mobility via liberty. It is not government redistribution because such redistribution only temporarily aids those aiming to move up.
Why? Because all redistributionist policies suffer the same flaw: They remove capital that private enterprise gives birth to and moves it around. In terms of proto-capitalist philosopher, John Locke, this means the labor of others. Such policies do nothing to support the creation of wealth and the continued reliance of the many on the innovation of the few. In the free market, government would go out of business. Investment requires speculation and risk-taking. Taxing wealth disincentivizes this risk-taking since not only could you lose on your initial investment, but while waiting to realize any gains, you’ll also be paying tax on it. Innovations (say, for example, vaccines) are often many unprofitable years in the making.
General rule: the more details Americans have of a government policy (and its costs), the less they support it. Does anyone know what’s in a 2500-page bill?
The left ignores where the jobs actually come from, repeatedly claiming they can create them and blaming private industry as if it does nothing. But Apple invented the Mac. And then the iPod. And then the iPhone. Ride Amtrak or go to the Post Office to see how well-run government-owned corporations are. (No disrespect to the hardworking employees, only to the government that doesn’t manage its resources well.) As California repeatedly shows, government subsidies for industries do not result in those industries achieving their aim. In one of innumerable examples, the state has spent tens of billions in tax dollars on a train that may never actually run.
Top-down retributionist policies always promise equality for all. In reality, they entrench and further divide an already-existent inequality and exacerbate it. Not only do they fail to achieve their ends; such policies require the growth and centralization of government to implement it. This is the issue. The wealthy, including those in government, are protected from the vicissitudes of bad policy affecting certain segments of the market. And the vicissitudes of relying on public transportation. So too with their friends, the actual beneficiaries of supposed job-creating handouts. The government bears no risk since money they spend for political advantage is entirely sourced from taxpayers.
Taxation: Second Only to Death
Taxes. Only second place to death in the “Surest Things in Life” category. Yes, tax cuts do help businesses. And let’s assume for a moment that by “businesses” we only mean the big bad wolves of Wall Street (even though in reality, depending on measurement, nearly all American businesses are small businesses). But this “help” is a feature of corporate tax rates around the globe. Contrary to economic mythology, countries such as Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and many others annoying labeled by academics and journalists as “social democracies” have far lower corporate tax rates (low 20%) than the U.S.’s (only recently reduced to the mid 20%). According to the nonprofit Tax Foundation, prior to 2017, the U.S. was in fact fourth highest in the world. Want to get corporations to “pay their fair share”? Stop incentivizing overseas investment and production by maintaining a tax and regulatory scheme that promotes avoidance.
Nor is the left’s talking point of “tax the rich” as a means to government-funded programs truly their sole aim. While the wealthy pay the lion's share of U.S. taxes already, taxing the numerical larger middle class provides a broader base and, of course, more revenue. The question for Americans is this: Do you truly believe the U.S. government will use your income better than you use it yourself, in everything from education, healthcare, childcare, savings, or retirement? A full 40% of Illinois’ education budget pays for (handsome) teacher pensions.
And the new angle of the left to make society increasingly “fair” is taxing not only income, but wealth. Suffice it to say, treating wealth as income will have dire consequences. Let’s remember that Americans’ retirement portfolios and mutual funds and investments are all part of “the stock market.” Whether your envious self likes them or not, acting like there will not be reverberations to a “tax the rich” plan that affects all Americans is patently absurd. The language of Biden-Sanders-AOC always painting economics as good guy versus bad guy is economically illiterate.
Inflation: Taxation Now
The other tax increase, beside the one that necessarily comes via excessive government spending and subsequent bills coming due, is inflation, currently at its highest levels in decades. Inflation is a tax. Pumping money into the economy via government handouts means everyone has more. Thus the cost of goods rises. Inflation raises wages too, but not proportionally. Not clear how the left (and their voters) fails to understand this.
If Sanders were disingenuous like many on the left who see no benefit in a robust middle class, then fine. It’s a Democrat path well-trodden, President Obama’s high-low coalition. But if Sanders truly believes redistribution of wealth is beneficial, how does he explain the clear harm such policies have on the working and middle classes? It can only be premised on down-the-road plans – once we get “green energy” off the ground, etc. then jobs will be better and more plentiful. Nirvana.
But this is hopeful at best, fantasy at worst. Government cannot subsidize every industry that leftists seek to include in their utopian dreams. They cannot promise that all new industries will make money and cannot employ citizens at costs that don’t require further (and endless) government subsidies. Innovation costs money and requires often significant risks, risks slow bureaucratic processes are ill-suited to deal with. How long did the FDA take to approve the COVID vaccines? How long did those vaccines take to develop via private industry and what incentives would exist for innovation within a scheme of big government?
Why is the Democratic party following policy failures from California, home to the largest divide in America in terms of wealth inequality, the highest prices on essential needs, a state that is losing residents as fast as any other in the Union?
Inflation furthers the already chasm-like wealth divide and the very cause of this inflation are revenue-killing regulations, policies, procedures, and every other bureaucratic invention meant to torture dollars out of the hands, first of large and medium-sized corporations, but very quickly out of the hands of the middle class as well. Even if taxes are not raised on the middle class (which they always are) inflation acts as such, regardless of income tax brackets. Inflation is also highly regressive, hurting the class Sanders claims to help, while income taxation brackets in the U.S. are already among the most progressive in the West.
And finally, although we constantly hear from Sanders and AOC that the majority of Americans support their multi-trillion dollar budget reconciliation proposal, do voters actually support this agenda? There are a few considerations here. First, polls require one to look at how questions are posed. General rule: the more details Americans have of a government policy (and its costs), the less they support it. Does anyone know what’s in a 2500-page bill?
Second, around half the country routinely is of the opinion that they pay too much in taxes. And according to Gallup, by 1970 nearly 70% of Americans believed their taxes were too high. What was happening in 1970? The fallout from vast government spending originating in the Great Society, notably its “War on Poverty.” Government spending, according to the Brookings Institute, doubled from 1960 to 1975. Laws, regulations, and novel programs, with all the new federal workers to administer them, increased the federal government’s presence in nearly every area of American life.
Sound familiar? Are we interested in replaying this history?
It's Not Just About Money
There’s no doubt, it seems to me, that Sanders believes his policies are best, that the wealthy should be taxed more, and that he, as the people’s representative, has a moral obligation to do so. Let’s leave aside the fact he has multiple homes and wealth of his own — he at least seems to live less luxuriously than his BLM counterparts. Yet his honesty does nothing to establish the soundness of his economic programs. Nor is it easy to believe that he’s wholly unaware of the tax increases required on middle class Americans for the sake of his retributionist plans. And even if you trust Uncle Bernie with far-ranging control over budget and all things money in America, what precedent does this set for future, less honest types?
And besides the dubious economic calculations being presented as prudent policy, other issues cannot be separated from his supposed economic “progress.” It’s all one “system.” What does Sanders have to say, for example, about immigration, the elephant in the room given the effect of mass immigration on the working class Sanders claims to be looking out for?
Permissive, illegal immigration fosters human trafficking, thus supplying various industries with cheap workers. Where is the progressive left on this form of human exploitation? They talk endless about the Founding era and slavery, when a type of serfdom is happening right here at home, now, among their own constituents. How many nannies, landscapers, cooks, housekeepers, hotel workers, etc., are citizens? How many are here having gone through the legal process to immigrate? What does Sanders propose to protect both illegal immigrants against exploitation by American elites and to protect American citizens against wage stagnation arising from abundant cheap labor? He’s anti-border wall; he’s pro-amnesty. Not surprisingly, his policies are confused and contradictory. None protect Americans and our economy.
And this is to say nothing of even more dire scenarios, those involving sex and drug trafficking, crimes that disproportionately affect lower income Americans, legal immigrants striving to succeed, and the communities they (not Washington elites) live in.
What Is the Federal Government Good At?
More broadly, what role should the federal government play? And what success can they have? One provision of the so-called $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill (so-called since the true cost is estimated to be much higher) deals with pre-K education. This is the sort of program that sounds great on paper and shows up in the “positive” polling – government is going to “invest” in ensuring pre-K education, fundamental to the formation of good citizens and happy human beings.
But as the Heritage Foundation reports, this program is just a dusted-off version of Head Start, another government educational initiative that had no demonstrable success in nurturing children in their early development. Leaving aside for now the fact that the entire left-wing apparatus has openly endorsed the highly dubious 1619 Project and its teaching of a revisionist, racial essentialist ideology (Critical Race Theory), the failure of both Head Start and more broadly, the War on Poverty highlights an assumption about left-leaning policy – that government can achieve any objective simply by throwing money at it.
But when such government programs also ignore evidence at odds with their policy prescriptions, we might wonder about their good intentions. Why, for example, do they support programs that undercut strong family formation by incentivizing welfare, despite the fact that family life is one of the strongest predictors of financial stability and success? Why do they support mass immigration and amnesty that necessarily harms lower wage American workers, including young people trying to get themselves established in the workforce after high school and college? Why do their policies always favor labor unions, whose demands necessarily hinder hiring?
Why, in a word, is the Democratic party following policy failures from California, with the largest divide in America in terms of wealth inequality, the highest prices on essential needs most especially in the cases of housing, fuel, and food, a state that is losing residents as fast as any other in the Union (along with tax-heavy New York and Illinois)?
The promotion of these types of government programs is a movement from liberty to entitlement, entitlement abandoning metrics of need and replacing them with government assistance based on “deserving” more because you currently have less. And, again, is this policy and its costs truly popular? Biden’s overall approval rating plunging to 38% (32% with the independents that swing elections) suggests otherwise.
Attempting to justify a new regime, an unconstitutional, anti-American regime in the midst of supposedly just talkin’ numbers and cents, the progressive left’s version of “equity” sharpens into focus.
Some voters, in other words, are beginning to suspect they know the answers to our questions – the Californization of America is aimed at one party dominance benefiting one segment of the population: the elite. For the rest, high prices and a plunging standard of living characterized by homelessness, drug overdoses, rampant crime, and general moral decay alongside irrational restrictions on American liberty. Restrictions only for the law-abiding. And lots of ‘em.
As for Sanders, to the degree that he actually believes his economic policies help others, that help is of a condescending sort – you can’t be successful so here’s a life-preserver. Nor does Sanders take serious stock of contradictions in his own policy positions, the most obvious being the tension between his supposedly European-style social programs and American liberty. Nor again does Sanders take seriously enough the tendencies of government, both to grow (which he’s fine with) but also to be used for ulterior ends.
This is the socialist’s Achilles’ heel: Pretending that big government can somehow become a force for good. It cannot. Never has, never will, despite attempts by academic elites to pretend there are important practical distinctions between the various descriptors “socialism,” “communism,” and so on in the context of American government. Virtuous government can only be local, managed directly by citizens themselves.
But this isn’t Sanders’ vision. Government control of the economy requires government control over individual liberty, even over social “institutions” such as the family and therefore tends toward authoritarianism. No amount of talk of “fairness” changes this fact. All of history refutes it.
There is a reason why the Anti-Federalists objected to the general welfare and necessary and proper clauses of the U.S. Constitution. Anything and everything can be construed as for “the general welfare” and therefore within the purview of the federal government. But since the Constitution is vague on this point, it is dependent on voters to rein in overreach. States and their governors must call administrations such as the one Sanders is currently leading to heel.
Slavish “Equity” versus Noble Liberty
Sanders ignores the dangers of large-scale government to liberty, especially one given powers of redistribution. He weighs so-called equality too highly, and naively ignores dangers poised to liberty. This danger is clearest in the very redefinition of the terms – “equity” replaces equality because equality before the law does not produce outcomes for the Democrats’ voting bloc, a coalition moved entirely by notions of equality of outcome, necessarily segregating fellow Americans and transforming economic and social life into one of friends and enemies. This “equality” is anti-human nature. As Alexis de Tocqueville notes in his mid-19th century study, Democracy in America:
Democratic institutions awaken and flatter the passion for equality without ever being able to satisfy it entirely.
The result for Tocqueville is a fueling of the most dangerous political passion: envy. This approaches the heart of the issue. Liberty means keeping what you work for, not handing up to 60% of it to obviously self-interested career politicians incentivized only to remain in office via subsidies for their favorite lobbying groups and donors. Or worse: an envious populace that abandons moderation by abandoning moderating institutional checks and balances, led by demagogues such as Sanders, toward an impossible equality. This equality is at its root in fact unfair because inequitable. Any equality that ignores considerations of merit and points to success as proof of vice and exploitation, is seeking not justice but revenge.
It’s comical that Republicans are regularly accused of being in the pockets of business and lobbying interests, but Democrats are somehow viewed by their base as only motivated by the purest of intentions. This moral purity (which I discussed in detail last week) is neither sanctioned given their lack of a clear electoral mandate, nor in keeping with the design of our federal republic. The American regime is not designed for top-down imposition and clearly not when government is closely divided.
This isn’t a mere “politicians are corrupt” argument. We are currently involved in spending levels not seen since WWII when we were fighting…WWII. COVID is not a world war. Even left-leaning outlets such as The Atlantic have recently posted multiple pieces on problems with COVID count numbers. New York Magazine is finally recognizing that unvaccinated children are at far less risk from COVID than a 25-year-old vaccinated adult (who, by the way, is at virtually zero risk of serious illness post-vaccination).
It can no longer be ignored, and can no longer be considered a conservative “talking point,” that COVID is now the absurd, scientifically unjustifiable pretext to remake the American economy. And not only the economy. Attempting to justify a new regime, an unconstitutional, anti-American regime in the midst of supposedly just talkin’ numbers and cents, the progressive left’s version of “equity” sharpens into focus.
Just a little more debt. Just paying one’s fair share. Just trying to help America out. But as the Anti-Federalist writer Brutus observed:
…the authority to lay and collect taxes is the most important of any power that can be granted; it connects with it almost all other powers, or at least will in process of time draw all other after it; it is the great mean of protection, security, and defence, in a good government, and the great engine of oppression and tyranny in a bad one.
Meanwhile, a Canadian newspaper reported that the pandemic was used by military elites in Canada to “test” propaganda on their citizens. Let’s not even talk about COVID, the Australia edition (search YouTube). COVID is New Deal and Great Society spending justified with a World War-level of panic artificially manufactured by a media perpetuating intentional falsehoods, not motivated by any goodwill. All other pretenses are precisely that.
While taxation of individuals (as opposed to the states) was necessary to move from confederacy to a federal republic, we can now clearly see costs of ever-expanding spending and taxation. A federal government violating every sound economic principle, under the auspices of “helping,” will also wrest away the hard-won liberty at the heart of American exceptionalism.