Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Two ways to conduct a Tea Party revolution against socialism

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GatewayPundit is reporting that the economic news is getting even worse.

Along with raising taxes on businesses, raising taxes on the “rich,” and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire…
President Obama will also announce the implementation of an expensive cap and trade energy policy this week to battle pretend global warming.

He cites Human Events’ report that we will lose between between $444 billion and $1.308 trillion of GDP output, and unemployment would increase 2.7% (= 4 million jobs lost), mostly in the manufacturing sector.

Well, we’re doomed. Or are we? I’ve found a couple of clever ideas for dealing Obama’s plans to plunge the United States into socialism.

The first idea is from Biola University professor Doug Geivett, who is a first-class evangelical Christian scholar. I met Doug at a philosophy conference on Providence and Open Theism at Wheaton College, IL in 2000. I remember asking him whether investments were a form of gambling. He explained that investing was not gambling, because investments fund the creation of new products and services that grow the economy.

Doug starts by noting Rick Santelli’s rant against Obama’s socialist policies which involve wealth redistribution from those who produce to those who consume. (Note: there is now a new rant up, with supply-sider Larry Kudlow).

In his post, Geivett enumerates the points made by Santelli:

First, fiscally responsible Americans don’t want to pay the bill for borrowers who can’t keep up with their mortgages.

Second, fiscally responsible Americans shouldn’t have to pay the bill for borrowers who can’t make their payments.

Third, this plan doesn’t rob the rich to give to the poor. It takes from every tax-paying American and turns it over as free cash to people who can afford to rent but can’t afford to buy.

Fourth, there are ways to get the federal government to pay attention, ways the government is totally unprepared for.

Santelli suggests that responsible, productive Americans may want to consider a revolution – a kind of Chicago Tea Party. Right now, the banks are being more careful about who they give credit to. This is not a problem for responsible people with good credit history. The government is giving out bailouts to banks in order to ease credit for irresponsible consumers – the same ones that got us into this mess in the first place.

Geivett describes what he thinks this Chicago Tea Party might look like:

For example, what do you think would happen if 30% of all Americans with an income of $50,000 or more organized to do the following two things:

  1. Convert all of their assets held in the stock market and at banks and credit unions into cold, hard cash (or gold bars holed up in their bank’s safe deposit boxes)?
  2. Refused to pay income tax for 18 months (or indefinitely)?

This would remove the money that banks use for consumer loans. If no one can get credit, then no one can default, and there is no need for bailouts to these delinquents. By refusing to pay income taxes for a period of time, the government would have no funds available for bailing out their favorite special interest groups. People might finally have to stop spending and start working and saving again.

Geivett goes on to describe how this plan should incorporate reduced consumer spending, which I agree with. Somehow, America has gone terribly wrong. We use to be a nation of workers and savers. But the progress of left-wing socialism, with all the redistributing of wealth from producers to free-riders, has caused us to drift into an irresponsible, immature, hedonistic culture.

Geivett’s plan made me think of a post I read before on “Going Galt”. What if all the people who produced wealth just stopped producing?

Do you ever wonder after dealing with all that is going on with the economy and the upcoming election if it’s getting to be time to “go John Galt”? For those of you who have never read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the basic theme is that John Galt and his allies take actions that include withdrawing their talents, “stopping the motor of the world,” and leading the “strikers” (those who refuse to be exploited) against the “looters” (the exploiters, backed by the government).

…

Obama talks about taking from those who are productive and redistributing to those who are not — or who are not as successful. If success and productivity is to be punished, why bother? Perhaps it is time for those of us who make the money and pay the taxes to take it easy, live on less, and let the looters of the world find their own way.

The National Taxpayers Union explains who pays the taxes that Democrats are redistributing to their freeloading constituents. The top 50% pays 97% of all income taxes collected! The lazy half the country is freeloading off of the productive half.

The second idea that I found for responding to Obama’s socialist bailouts is to move to Canada. Captain Capitalism had this post in which he compares the two economies and concludes that Canada has a better future than the United States. Canada has a smaller deficit, a smaller debt, and is not facing a meltdown from entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, like we are.

Investor’s Business Daily reports that:

By 2041, Social Security will be essentially broke, having exhausted its trust fund, those dollars amassed through decades of surplus payroll tax revenues that Congress will have already squandered on general budget expenditures. Medicare’s future is just as bleak. It is already spending more than it is receiving in payroll taxes.

The prime minister of Canada right now is economist Stephen Harper, a strong fiscal conservative in the mold of F.A. Hayek.

UPDATE 1: Michelle Malkin has even more ideas on what to do here.


Commentary

Do free speech and transparency actually make people happier?

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I was browsing over at the Anchoress, and I found this fascinating article on free speech, political correctness and self-censorship.This is a huge issue for Christians, especially given what is happening in countries like Canada with these politically correct, multi-cultural censorship tribunals. In the post, the Anchoress urges us to be less worried about offending people.

In our politically correct age, where everyone is afraid of giving offense, being misconstrued-and -then-sued, or simply fearful of falling out-of-step with the trendoids, we almost never hear or read anything that is uncontrolled.

But “free speech” cannot be controlled or it is not “free” at all. And we in America have for too long engaged in self-censorship in favor of “niceness.”

Sometimes, you have to lose control and let the words fly, and if you cannot do that, you are not free.

People in my office know that my favorite way to end a conversation is by apologizing. I probably apologize about 15 times a day. Why do I have to do that? The people I work now with are the most tolerant people I have ever worked with. But I never know if a member of some left-wing special interest victim group is listening, and they may sue me if they don’t like what I say.

And what is the effect of this PC victim mentality? Fewer friendships between people who disagree. Shouldn’t these “victims” get used to the idea that some people disagree with them? People disagree with me all the time. My Christian beliefs were mocked by the media and secular teachers all the way from kindergarden to grad school. I didn’t complain! I wasn’t offended by people who disagreed with me.

The Anchoress also cites a study from Science Daily that argues that self-censorship makes people very unhappy. The study notes:

They figured that well-intentioned people are careful – sometimes hyper-careful – not to say the wrong thing about race in a mixed-race group. Furthermore, they thought that such effortful self-control might actually cause both unease and guarded behavior, which could in turn be misconstrued as racial prejudice.

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…independent black observers found that the powerless volunteers were much more direct and authentic in conversation. And perhaps most striking, blacks saw the less inhibited whites as less prejudiced against blacks. In other words, relinquishing power over oneself appears to thwart over-thinking and “liberate” people for more authentic relationships.

As a person of color myself, I would just state that the joy of having authentic relationships with different people is real. I love intimacy. I love being myself. I love opening myself up to people. I love disagreements. If I cannot say what I really think about issues that matter, how am I supposed to be able to form authentic friendships with people with whom I disagree? Enforced segregation by worldview is very bad.

The Anchoress goes on in her post to list how free speech has been curtailed in a number of instances, even in the media, where there is supposed to be freedom of the press.

If we lose our freedom to speak out – to opine loudly, to mock, to question, even to demand – then we have lost everything.

And the truth is, we have already – thanks to political correctness and self-censorship – fallen into the mindset that our speech should be controlled, measured and unfree.

Her post made me recall a podcast that Dennis Prager did a while back on the issue of transparency. For those who don’t know, Prager has a regular “Happiness Hour” every week on his show. Prager makes the point that being transparent with your neighbors, and not censoring yourself, leads to happiness. There is also a partial transcript here. Here’s an excerpt:

You have to let out your secrets. Keeping yourself bottled is a recipe for misery, anger and pathology. I must have hit paydirt here, because all the lines lit up before I even gave the number.

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Keeping stuff inside of you, and usually, we do it because we’re embarrassed by it. But you know, everybody has things that they are embarrassed by. The more that you keep hidden, the less chance of happiness you have. Why would one want to go through life hiding? It’s like wearing a veil over your psyche, and over your soul, or even a burka, completely covered. I’ve never followed it, because…I’ve never been hurt by opening up. I mean, it hasn’t always received the response that I wanted. It’s inevitable that it won’t.

The Anchoress ends by mentioning the movie “The Lives of Others“. I just watched it myself yesterday evening, because I saw that it was number ONE on National Review’s list of top conservative movies. And now I am going to make it clear to you. WATCH THIS MOVIE. This is the most amazing movie I have seen in a long time. I give it my highest recommendation!

UPDATE: Welcome visitors from the Anchoress! Thanks so much for the link! New readers may want to take a look around since I cover a lot of different topics here, from free speech to economics to science to public policy!

Commentary

Tom Sowell explains how to counter leftist indoctrination in the schools

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Thomas Sowell is my favorite economist. His latest column explains to parents what they can do to counter the left-wing indoctrination that their children receive in the government-run schools.

Now you might be tempted to think that Sowell is going to tell you parents that you just need to make your children read books that undermine what the secular left teaches them in school. But Sowell doesn’t think that will always work:

Yet trying to undo the propaganda that passes for education at too many schools and colleges, one issue at a time, may not always be the best strategy. There are too many issues on which the politically correct party line is considered to be the only way to look at things.

Instead, Sowell recommends a different strategy: he recommends that you engage in a dialog with your child, (preferably in public, I would add, in front of other people), in which you ask your child one simple question about their view:

Another approach might be to respond to the dogmatic certainty of some young person, perhaps your own offspring, by asking: “Have you ever read a single book on the other side of that issue?”

Chances are, after years of being “educated,” even at some of the highest-priced schools and colleges, they have not.

When the inevitable answer to your question is “No,” you can simply point out how illogical it is to be so certain about anything when you have heard only one side of the story– no matter how often you have heard that one side repeated.

Would it make sense for a jury to reach a verdict after having heard only the prosecution’s case, or only the defense attorney’s case, but not both?

Read the whole article. I run into this problem with non-Christians, Democrats and even anti-intellectual Christians every day. The only solution to their dogmatism is to ask about what they have read on the other side. They answer is inevitably “nothing”. We Christians should be able to argue for opposing views better than any opponent. And that is why many of my posts focus on interchanges between opposing views. You can never really be convinced of something until you see one side of an argument fail miserably in a rough-and-tumble debate.

USA Today reports that men are fleeing the churches today in droves. Maybe if Christians started emphasizing debate, instead of just praise songs, emotions and prayer, then we might be able to get more men to be interested in Christianity. Men and women are different – if you want men to come back to the church, maybe you should be emphasizing things we men actually like: confrontation, aggression and competition. I could share many stories of how female-dominated churches and campus groups actively fight efforts to approach Christianity in this way.

And this goes double for raising Christian kids. If we take the feminine approach exclusively, and shelter our children from opposing views instead of teaching about them, you can guarantee that your child will fall away from the faith as soon as he leaves home. As USA Today reported, 70% of Protestant Christian children already do exactly that. There is nothing more fatal to the project of building up a child’s Christian faith than ordering them around on the authority of blind faith. It just doesn’t work.