Class Warfare and the Nature of Emotion in Politics

We are now under the two weeks to go mark for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election. Barack Obama, in oh-so-typical ultra liberal fashion, continues to wage class warfare (and this mysterious specter of "change") as his primary tactic to secure victory. Just short of actually uttering references to the Proletariat, Obama dutifully provokes nationalized pity on the middle class. Mr. Obama is a master of his use of emotion in politics. You see, by painting the so-called "rich" as a collective greedy group of corporate executives who care nothing for the worker bees below them, a candidate can be very successful at drumming up cries of "unfair!" Do I deny the existence of greed of the elite of the elite? No, of course not. The bigger and significantly more pertinent question, though, is where does greed fit into the equation of capitalism? Surely the "worker bees" should be compensated for the collective greed of their employers! Right?

Like the great tax debate among the two candidates, most political discourse can be boiled down to fundamental principles. So, there is essentially one fundamental component, and one fundamental difference in leftist and rightist economic principles. The component is wealth. A nation's wealth exists among the people...the distribution thereof comprises classes. Where capitalism actually creates new wealth (and promotes individualized merit based success), socialism aims to utilize existing wealth to promote the general welfare (yeah, I said it) of the people. This is where wealth re-distribution, and media darling Joe the Plumber, come in. Obama's rhetorical plan involves no tax increases on 95% of Americans, while simultaneously establishing a massive tax increase on the other 5%. Well, you may be interested to know that more than a third of American already don't pay any income taxes. That's correct, the top two-thirds of wage earners are already covering the entire federal income tax revenue (this is under Bush's tax cuts!). Wait...here comes the best part: under the Obama tax plan, those people not paying any federal income taxes, will actually receive an annual check from the IRS. Aha! There's the light bulb...wealth redistribution. This isn't new, it will only be greatly expanded under Obama's plan. It has actually been going on for years. What nobody in Washington is willing to admit is that only by significantly curbing the size, scope, and influence (and therefore spending) of the federal government will this problem go away. As the budget deficit continues to grow legislators will seek a greater and greater tax burden on those actually still paying taxes. Oh yes...and that one third with no income tax liability at all? That number will actually expand to nearly half of all tax filers. This, folks, are those small doses of socialism finally manifesting itself as full blown Marxism that Nikita Kruschev was always talking about.

One paradox of our culture in the United States that I find exceedingly interesting is our nationalized sense that any intrusion of the government into private affairs, the basic tenet of socialism, is a bad thing. The paradox is that we continue to standby while we drift further and further in that direction. The enemies of free market capitalism have been very crafty in their approach. When you control the hand that feeds, you can create an environment of cultural dependency. As much as the analogy is degrading it is true: average Americans are sheep. This why emotive politics have been an invaluable tool for the left. It is not difficult to incite dissension among the ranks of classes...just use your bullhorn to inform the sheep that the people enjoying a higher standard of living than they are achieved it on their backs. These selfish fuedal lords are mindlessly driven by blind and unbridled greed to squash the "little guy" and sit around eating caviar and filets before having a cigar in their private smoking rooms. A poweful image indeed. It's also exceptionally untrue. The vast majority of the over-taxed public are hardworking Americans who set out to achieve the American Dream that they realized early on is not an entitlement or a right. It is a reward. It is a reward that is being eroded by the left in an attempt to "spread the wealth around," in the Promised One's own words.

And such is the nature of emotion in politics. Not unlike the Salem Witch Hunts of the 17th Century, all you have to do is spark the ignorant mob into a little finger pointing and everything else falls into place. Barack Obama must be sitting back, privately grinning at the prospect of his subjects engaging in class warfare (which he provoked) and then he publicly claims to be the savior of that great struggle.

When history judges our time, I sincerely hope for the sake of posterity that they can admire our generation as the one that finally saw through the wool over our eyes. Personally, I can breathe a slight sigh of relief in the knowledge that history will not look to my generation as the one that failed to restrain our government.

Sources and Further Reading:

The Wall Street Journal - 95% Illusion

The Washington Times - Tax Cut Socialism

The Wall Street Journal - Obama Talks Nonsense on Tax Cuts

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