Moderate Democrats and Blue Dog Democrats have disappeared as the Democratic Party has moved radically to the left, and today these radical leftists have knocked out of the party those Democrats who wanted a more efficient and caring government and not some variety of fascism lite or socialism lite. The middle of the political spectrum is now the moderate Republicans, who favor what Democrats like Kennedy or even Clinton favored, which is moderate taxes like we have combined with smart sensible government.
But the Democratic Party is not the party of moderation and sensibility any more- it is a radical leftist outfit led by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and these people believe in higher and higher taxes. This folly of pushing for higher taxes was laid bare by the great Winston Churchill- via Powerlineblog, here is a quote from him that is as accurate today as it was then:
A second danger to President Roosevelt’s valiant and heroic experiments seems to arise from the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts. It is a very attractive sport, and once it gets started quite a lot of people everywhere are found ready to join in the chase. Moreover, the quarry is at once swift and crafty, and therefore elusive. The pursuit is long and exciting, and everyone’s blood is infected with its ardour. The question arises whether the general well-being of the masses of the community will be advanced by an excessive indulgence in this amusement. The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency money from all quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.It is amazing at how accurate this statement describes the efforts of President Obama and the modern day Democrats- from their effort to go after oil companies or the Koch Brothers, to the fact that our economy has suffered during this time and its foundations have crumbled, to the brutish nature of it all- it is amazing at how well Churchill captured and described the essence of the threat we face today.
This money-gathering, credit-producing animal can not only walk—he can run. And when frightened he can fly. If his wings are clipped, he can dive or crawl. When in the end he is hunted down, what is left but a very ordinary individual apologizing volubly for his mistakes, and particularly for not having been able to get away?
But meanwhile great constructions have crumbled to the ground. Confidence is shaken and enterprise chilled, and the unemployed queue up at the soup kitchen or march out upon the public works with ever-growing expense to the taxpayer and nothing more appetizing to take home to their families than the leg or the wing of what was once a millionaire. One quite sees that people who have got interested in this fight will not accept such arguments against their sport. What they will have to accept is the consequences of ignoring such arguments. It is indispensible to the wealth of nations and to the wage and life standards of labour, that capital and credit should be honoured and cherished partners in the economic system.
If this is rejected there is always, of course, the Russian alternative. But no one can suppose that the self-reliant population of the United States, which cut down the forests and ploughed up the soil and laced the continent with railways, and carried the wealth-getting and wealth-diffusing to a higher point than has ever been reached by mankind, would be content for a week with the dull brutish servitude of Russia.
