The Democrats, so-called “fairness” a key campaign issue in this year’s election, engineered a symbolic Senate vote on the so-called “Buffet Rule”—a special, higher income tax rate on the “rich.” As expected, it was .
Read the rest of my post, Will Republicans Wield Muskets in a Nuclear War?
Note: "Social Darwinism" as I use the term in this post refers to a society in which various groups prey on one another, each trying to take some economic benefit from others by legislative force much as jungle animals fight over finite resources in the wild, with the “strongest” and “fittest” winning out. It is a term the free market’s enemies falsely level against capitalism, but which in fact aptly describes the mixed economy.
In a piece I referenced in the TOS post, Robert Reich defines social Darwinism as "the conservative creed during the late 19th century – legitimizing a politics in which the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of money on legislators’ desks...."
A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and government controls, in which productive citizens like the unjustly labeled "robber barons" must pay protection money to politicians who possess--and wield--the illegitimate power to block or hamper them from producing.
Statist lackeys like Reich believe that politicians should be free to merrily go their controlling, expropriating, regulating way in the name of the "common good," insulated from the "influence" of the private citizens whose economic lives they hold in their hands. If Reich and their ilk wanted to stop "sacks of money" from being "deposited...on legislators' desks" --which is a hugely bigger problem today than it was in the 19th Century--they would fight for laissez-faire capitalism, the only system that separates economics and state.
Take away the government's power to control the economic activities of its citizens, and you remove any need or incentive for private citizens to lobby and pay off politicians with campaign cash. But the Reich's of the world want to have it both ways--protect the regulatory welfare state and keep back the citizens--a prescription for a totalitarian state.
A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and government controls, in which productive citizens like the unjustly labeled "robber barons" must pay protection money to politicians who possess--and wield--the illegitimate power to block or hamper them from producing.
Statist lackeys like Reich believe that politicians should be free to merrily go their controlling, expropriating, regulating way in the name of the "common good," insulated from the "influence" of the private citizens whose economic lives they hold in their hands. If Reich and their ilk wanted to stop "sacks of money" from being "deposited...on legislators' desks" --which is a hugely bigger problem today than it was in the 19th Century--they would fight for laissez-faire capitalism, the only system that separates economics and state.
Take away the government's power to control the economic activities of its citizens, and you remove any need or incentive for private citizens to lobby and pay off politicians with campaign cash. But the Reich's of the world want to have it both ways--protect the regulatory welfare state and keep back the citizens--a prescription for a totalitarian state.
For more related to my TOS post, see my 11/29/08 post, My Challenge to the GOP: A Philosophical Contract With America.
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