Here we go again. The “When you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody” moment was not enough to license me to call Him a socialist.

Maybe this latest one will do the trick. It’s become a little bit of an “Everyone else is blogging it, I might as well follow ’em” thing. But it’s pretty important to get it talked-about (hat tip to Hot Air), for the three reasons below.

One. You have a right to make as much money as you are able, so long as it’s legal. It’s property. You’ve a right to it. Our current President shouldn’t be President if He doesn’t agree. Really, in my world this is an impeachable offense, and no I’m not kidding.

Two. Closely related to One: This country works according to a Constitution. That which the Constitution does not specifically authorize, is unauthorized. That is supposed to be the design; we have not always been faithful to it. But how in the world do you legitimize the Chief Executive even giving a rat’s ass how much money some individual has made? It’s an issue that simply isn’t on His plate. He shouldn’t even be thinking about it.

Three. “Wealth Gap People” are potato-sackers. Think about how you walk; you move your feet apart from each other. That is how a free-market economy works. Think about how you walk in a potato sack race, with your feet unable to move apart from each other. That is how non-free countries work…or don’t work. We can move apart from each other, we make progress. This is not to say the suffering of the poor is the engine that drives our economy, that is not the case at all. What drives our economy is that individuals can succeed and they do not have to endlessly wait for everybody else to catch up before they can make the most of it — they can kick in the afterburners at any ol’ moment, provided the fuel & spark are ready to go.

His Eminence is fond of “national dialogues” and “teachable moments,” especially when He is trying to get people to forget about swomething. Well, I think this is a wonderful call for a national dialogue, and a Jim-dandy teachable-moment. Let’s have one of each, I say. His Holiness thinks at a certain point, you’ve made enough money. Who agrees with Him about that? Should our country have an earnings cap? Maybe a lifetime cap? Should we address the billionaires at the tippy top and tell them: The President’s right, and you can’t earn anything anymore. All those in favor say aye?

Let’s take that vote. I’d like to know what the final tallies are. And I think we’d all benefit from thinking long and hard about it.

Causing pain to a genuinely bad man, in order to possibly save the lives of the innocent, has been stigmatized beyond belief within just a few short years.

Why is there no stigma against wealth-envy? Why no stigma against even raising “inequality” as an issue? It sounds like what it is: Pure jealousy.

1. Architects are not concerned about whether someone else possesses more wealth than they do. Their concern over whether someone else possesses more skill, begins and ends on the question of whether or not that other person can help them in some way, and whether there may be low-hanging fruit for them in the self-improvement department.

Medicators don’t want anybody else to have something they don’t have, be it skill or money. Jealousy is a common failing for the Medicator. They easily fall prey to “Tall Poppy” syndrome.
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20. An Architect doesn’t particularly care how many other Architects there are.

A Medicator wants everyone else to be a Medicator. Convert or die.

From Architects and Medicators…the latter of whom, sadly, only go through the motions of truly living life. Everything has to be guaranteed. Everything has to be equalized.

The battle continues.

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would “mark a new season in America.” He added, “We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

So it’s okay to call Him a communist now, right?

It’s worthy of note that nobody is out there even implying that it’s always the same people who are rich, and always the same people who are lacking health insurance. People have been, in fact, doing a dosey-do for the last thirty years. Yes, the hated Paris Hilton still has her loot. But other folks are out there, pulling in lots of rotten lucre, starting businesses, losing them, losing their health insurance, starting again, making more millions, losing them, making them again…

It’s the living of real life. Life is a dynamic thing. If it isn’t, then nobody prospers. This is the age of Reagan that Obama would like to end?

Answer me this: How fast can you run in a potato sack race? You know…with neither one of your two feet permitted to move too far away from the other.

What’s really amazing to me, is what should be immediately obvious to anyone with working synapses. But somehow isn’t, I guess. When you worry too much about what the other fellow has, you are broadcasting to all within earshot and line-of-sight, that things are not really going that badly for you. Am I right or am I right? Think about third-world mudpuddles out there, where people really have nothing. Where they live at the bottom tier of Maslow’s pyramid…where they have a tough time just growing things to eat, in the soil. Are they concerned, there, with some other guy having an easier time of it? They spend lots of minutes per day fretting over that issue? Doesn’t look like it to me.

I’d sure like to know why this jealousy achieves such currency. The natural reaction ought to be “Oh, well if you’re worried about someone else, I guess things aren’t going too badly for you…lots of room, still, for you to fall.” That would be a natural reaction and it would also be a wise one.

Quote of the Day, over at The Smallest Minority:

Is there some society we know that doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy; it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy.

The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the auto industry that way.

In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, they have had capitalism and largely free trade.

If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. The record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

The speaker is Milton Friedman.

The House of Eratosthenes Glossary defines “greed” as…nothing.

Greedy (adj.):
An undefined word. If it does have a meaning at all, the closest one we’ve been able to extrapolate from the pattern of the word’s actual usage, is: Someone who manifests a desire to keep his property when someone else comes along wanting to take it away. A wealthy person who wants to stay that way.

‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

Many of us who know [Atlas Shrugged author Ayn] Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated “Atlas” as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Atlas Shrugged says a whole lot more than that…and there’s a whole lot more it says, that is also coming true. One of the other points it makes that for people living in such a wretched society, there is a pronounced phenomenon in which all but the most capable minds are dragged into such an addled state that they cannot see the evidence before their own eyes.

The first thing to go is the ability to look at someone else better off financially, without seeing skulduggery. Lickety-split, they round that fifth step on the way to complete insanity: How many dollars do you want in your bank account? Subtract the number of dollars that are really there, and you’re left with the number of reasons to believe someone’s out to getcha. It must be true! You’re such a good person, you deserve to have so much more! Someone’s ripping you off, no need to wait for real evidence. And anyone with a fatter wallet must be in on this evil, insidious plot.

The excellent is confused with the mediocre. It is the mediocre, after all, that is testament to numbers of people united in a common condition, in common interests, or in common patterns of behavior. Excellent is something that has something to do with individuality, and who needs individuals? No, there is only one useful brand left of excellence: That would be the ability to communicate ideas and make them sound appealing when they really don’t help anyone. Only that can unite large numbers of mediocre people, and send them rushing off in a common direction. Commonality, that’s the ticket. People sense a great need to “come together” to do…they don’t know what. The content of an idea is unimportant. The sales-appeal of an idea, and how many people are already doing it, are the only things that matter.

The phrase “In Times Like These” is repeated over and over and over again. Invariably, it’s placed in front of a proposal that, in another setting, would make no sense at all. And still doesn’t. It’s only discussed in vague, highly generalized terms…right after that magical phrase, “In Times Like These.” We have to “stick together,” “in times like these.”

I have personal knowledge of certain large company. Within this company’s private intranet, there is a blog in which one of the executives has put together a set of New Year’s resolutions for how that company should face this challenging, challenging year. Then he opened up the floor for possible additions to his list. Two of the comments that followed really stuck out, to me.

One guy announced his intention to spend the year flying under the radar, staying low on the trouble-meter so that he’d keep his job. That was his goal. There we go…do something exceptional, you might get squished, so it’s better not to try. The confusion between mediocrity and excellence — whoomp, there it is. Heh. Call this a depression, recession, stagflation, whatever you want…does it hurt or help our chances for pulling out of it, if people are afraid of doing exceptional things?

The other fellow went on a rambling tirade about “greed.” I say rambling because he never did define what exactly greed is; where the line is drawn. He nevertheless made a compelling, damning case against “corporate greed,” talking of such notorious trademarks as Enron, Lehman Brothers, et al. When the dust had settled, it was undeniable these corporate rascals were all to blame for this miserable condition that confronted all of us, their fellow country men, who would never even meet them. The only thing missing from the indictment was the definition of the crime. How do you define greed? For all I know he might have been talking about the candid but less-than-satisfying entry found in the House of Eratosthenes Glossary —

Greedy (adj.):

An undefined word. If it does have a meaning at all, the closest one we’ve been able to extrapolate from the pattern of the word’s actual usage, is: Someone who manifests a desire to keep his property when someone else comes along wanting to take it away. A wealthy person who wants to stay that way (but you’d better click on the word “wealthy” to find out what it really means).

And when you click the word “wealthy,” you get —

Wealthy (adj.):

An undefined word. It doesn’t refer to a high net worth, because it’s frequently used to refer to people who lack this; it doesn’t refer to a high personal or household income, because it’s often used to refer to people who lack that.

Extrapolating a meaning from the common usage of the word — if I call you “wealthy,” it usually means you have some material property that I want to take away from you. Liberal politicians often use this word to describe private citizens who own small businesses, and are supported by incomes substantially less than what supports the liberal politicians, owning portfolios of private wealth that are insignificant compared to the vast fortunes controlled by those liberal politicians. And so the word “wealthy” is deprived of all meaningful definitions possible, save one: A designated target of legalized theft. A snake-oil salesman uses the word “mark”; a liberal politician uses the term “wealthy person.”

That’s Atlas Shrugged come to life, right there. We’re facing down a financially difficult year, for everybody. What instincts bubble to the surface of the human-emotion stewpot? A determination to be mediocre rather than excellent, to keep the bulls-eye off one’s own back. And, a sensibility that there is something inherently nefarious about material success.

So we are supposed to be humdrum, and we are not supposed to succeed.

That’ll get us out of this fix?

Trust me on this. If a man appeared to me this time last year, and told me Atlas Shrugged was going to come true, as vividly as I see it unfolding before me now…I’d pick up the phone straight-away, and have him committed. Or at least recommend to his relatives that this be done, toot-sweet.

And here we are.

As I type this, Amazon reports the book at $16.32, 56 New & Used from $9.50. This price has skyrocketed from the six-or-eight bucks I paid just a few years ago…which I find quite interesting. Evidently, there is something about “times like these” that make people think this is a book worth reading. If you’re not already acting on this yourself, you’re missing out. Click, order, read, and be amazed.

H/T: Ryskind Sketchbook, via Wheat & Weeds, via Gerard.

We’ve been flirting with it, and acting upon it, for much longer than you might think.

The personal income tax, the federal government’s main source of revenue, is collected overwhelmingly from a relative handful of Americans. Indeed, the most recent IRS data shows that the top 1 percent of filers paid nearly 40 percent of all income taxes. That means the top 1 percent paid about the same as the bottom 95 percent, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. The bottom 50 percent paid just 3 percent.

Given that poorer citizens always outnumber the rich, political philosophers have long worried that government based on majority rule could lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. “If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city,” Aristotle warned.

The Founders of the United States shared Aristotle’s worry. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be, as James Madison put it, “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” Madison and others therefore made it a “first object of government” to protect personal property from unjust confiscation.

There follows a fascinating walk-through of American history, and within it, our various misadventures with the various cul de sacs of frenzied, frothy populist rage injected into our tax code. Behind the link above.

So what’re you still doing here?

Hat tip to Red Planet Cartoons, which also gets credit for the graphic.

There’s been a slight turn in Obama’s favor as of last week. The hardcore left-wingers are predictably playing this up as hard as they can in hopes of producing a bandwagon effect to put The Chosen One over the top.

The blip isn’t as interesting to me as its perceived cause:

The change from a month ago may correlate with the perception among likely voters that the McCain campaign has been the more negative. Overall, 44% say McCain’s campaign has been the more negative, compared to 31% who say the same about Obama’s campaign. Among self-described political independents, 48% said they think McCain’s campaign has been more negative.

Are these likely voters watching the same guy I am? Ask Chosen One what he plans to do about people not getting enough Riboflavin in their diets…he’ll make it about ten words before he is forced to use the name “Bush.” And that’s being charitable. Ask him about hurricanes, he’ll make it to global warming before the first “uh,” and under-regulated greedy corporations before the second one. And use that word “Bush” probably two or three more times.

Maybe it’s that word “hope.” People have this mental weakness — they see the H-word floating past your lips, they don’t wait for substantiation. They just presume this is what you’re all about. It is a deeply engrossing word. You say “we have to have hope…and therefore I’ll be tying a hundred girl scouts to wooden stakes on my front lawn and setting ’em ablaze while they scream like banshees, and when they’re good and roasted I’ll ripe the entrails out of the bellies while they squirm some more.” All people will remember is the “hope.” Well…maybe it’s not that bad…but you get the idea. People don’t hold your feet to the fire to say something hopeful. Just throwing the syllable out there, is enough for ’em.

How do you fight this if you’re McCain? It’s a delicate question. Putting Hitler’s picture up on the television screen, captioned with “You know who ELSE was all about hope and change?” would make a compelling point, besides of a meritorious point, and on top of that would be historically accurate. But obviously this would be one step forward and three steps back. What we have here is a double standard — Obama can campaign “negatively” to the point of toxicity; McCain can’t even offer up the notion that he’s superior to the competition, let alone explore the reasons why.

Symbiosis, John. It’ll set you free. Put out three or four thirty-second spots tied to this theme, and you might as well start rehearsing your inauguration speech and vetting people for cabinet posts right there & then.

The liberal says, enact my proposal and we’ll enter into a symbiotic relationship. Next week, the liberal will have another proposal, and offer the same pitch — he won’t admit the last proposal failed to get us into this symbiotic relationship. He won’t offer to roll back this previous failed proposal. To our discredit, nobody will call on him to do so…

The conservative says we’re already in the symbiotic relationship. You are good for me. I am good for you. We can all go on doing exactly what we’re doing. The only thing we should really change is to get those damn liberals to stop voting.

The tax thing is a fantastic example of this. Obama has a plan that would call for a net increase of our taxes…and his defense is that while he would raise taxes on the evil rich, some 95% of households (or 80%, depending on your source) would see a tax cut — with those evil rich making up the difference, plus some. Therefore, depending on your point of view, it is valid to say —

1. Sum Of Parts: Obama’s plan increases the tax burden on us.

2. Vote By Tax: Obama’s plan cuts the tax burden for us.

And here come all these allegedly balanced and centrist fact-checkers, taking the second of those two points-of-view, without so much as a glance in the rear view mirror, without a scintilla of scrutiny or question. They’re saying the McCain campaign is telling lies…even though Obama would raise the overall tax liability. Truly, this is an abomination in the eyes of The Lord.

McCain, in response to this, could adopt the Morgan K. Freeberg platform of true conservatism:

Conservatives insist that taxes…exist for the purpose of raising revenue, not to punish any particular person or class of person.
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Anyone who thinks people should be punished for having too much money or for making too much money, via taxes or by some other means, is invited by all good conservatives to leave the country and go live in another. (When I Start Running This Place, Item 42.) The planet is covered with envy-inspired socialist enclaves that will be most eager to accommodate…provided they let your miserable pinko communist ass in.

Well okay, he could leave that last part out. But you get the idea.

Like the frog sitting in a pot of water gradually working up to a boil, we’ve somehow been indoctrinated to the notion that “nice” people want a tax policy that takes things away from people who are having too good of a time of it, without much regard to where the collected revenues are supposed to go or how badly they are needed. In other words, “nice” people want tax policies that destroy other people. “Mean” people, on the other hand, are the ones who say there could be something wrong with this — maybe we shouldn’t be trying to destroy other people just because they have more money than most. Part of the reason this idea has taken hold, is that it hasn’t been challenged. Try challenging it.

You’ve got to try. The situation is so bad, the prevailing viewpoint so badly diseased, that the democrat party is popularly thought to be tirelessly fighting against interclass conflict. This, when nobody who’s been paying attention can name any two classes that the democrat party thinks should already be living in harmony together! Every time they run the show, all these privileged entitlement classes end up squabbling over who has the bigger and better claim to aggrieved status, so the other entitlement classes can be denied the alms, annointments, appointments and general ass-kissing.

We saw it when Obama and Hillary got down-and-dirty fighting over the democrat party nomination. Absolutely no discussion of policy disagreements at all. None. Zero. Just…whose turn is it? The blacks, or the gals? Whose feelings are gonna be hurt? And a bunch of “superdelegates” looking on, wishing they weren’t put in the postion of choosing which coveted entitlement class would be told to go stick it where the sun don’t shine.

That’s the point — they are not the change we have been seeking, because they can only put one entitlement class on the throne at a time, and the country’s way too big for their worldview. They do not believe in symbiosis and they certainly don’t believe in “diversity.” The democrat party view is that when two classes of people are different…especially if they are cosmetically different…it’s an inevitability that they have to be sent into a cage-match somewhere, and only one can come out alive. So explain why you’re different. Talk about why you picked Sarah Palin. Point out what really interests conservatives socially: Your motto, “America first,” means an end to the hyphen. We’re all just-plain Americans, and we’re all invested in how the economy does together, including the rich people. Point out that there aren’t any rich people hoping the market tanks. Point out there aren’t any men among McCain’s supporters, now expressing reluctance to go out and vote because of his DUMB OL’ GIRL running mate.

Remind us what the word “everyone” really means. Come up with some examples — there are a lot more than a few — of how the democrat party uses that word, when “some of us” is a lot closer to what they have in mind. Start out with the above-mentioned tax policy. Obama’s plan is supposed to work for all of us, and here he is defending it saying don’t worry, it only sticks it to five percent of taxpayers, the other ninety-five are sitting pretty.

Tell us that all democrat party plans are like that. That with the democrat party in charge, every little problem that comes along has a Snidely Whiplash due for a come-uppins’, even in cases where it’s inappropriate and irrelevant. Because it’s true. If anyone doubts you, talk about the Pelosi Congress. Two years in power, they’ve solved very little…but found lots of people to blame for things.

In view of that, it is quite absurd to seriously entertain the possibility Obama can bring us the “hope” or “change” anyone has in mind…let alone start debating it.

And if that doesn’t work, then Obama’s the Commander-in-Chief we deserve. Because that would mean our minds are already made up. Some young-handsome-guy comes along and uses buzzwords, presents himself as a uniter while he’s dividing people, an agent of change while naming a lifetime beltway fixture as his running mate, tax policies that work for “everyone” while making a big show out of sacrificing a tiny subset of the most productive taxpayers — and we just scarf it down. What’s the point of trying to discuss anything with an electorate like that? That’s like your kid telling you he isn’t stealing the cookies…mumbling around a mouthful of cookie. And you believing him.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.