Fairness? Just the opposite

Obama admits that raising taxes decreases revenue. He does not hide that his goal in increasing taxes on individuals and small business owners who qualify for his tax hike is emphatically not to increase tax revenue. Because a "single mom" gets taxed at a higher rate than "her boss's investments," Obama is willing to sacrifice necessary revenue in the service of what he defines as "fairness." But how is it "fair" to tax the boss's money at the same rate as the "single mom's" (or more likely, a higher rate) when the money is first earned, and then not only tax it again, but raise the second tax on it - merely because it is invested? Don't we want to encourage investment in American companies?

How is it "fair" to deprive the country of essential tax revenue needed to decrease the deficit and run all our bloated government programs (programs that only McCain is willing to reform)? Don't we want the deficit to shrink instead of grow?

And how is it "fair" to the "single mom" who relies on her job to care for her family's needs to jeopardize her employment by increasing the tax burden on her boss (who very well may be a "single mom," too)?

According to Obama, wanting to keep the money you earn (and invest it and even decide for yourself which non-profit gets your donations) is what he calls, "selfish," and the most recent figure for who will get taxed under his plan has changed to people making more than $120,000.

Obama even believes that a good way to "spread the wealth around" is to take your money and give checks to people who don't pay taxes - more than 40% of the people getting Obama's "tax relief" money pay no federal taxes at all. That's not "fair," that's "welfare" and it traps people in poverty.

This isn't "restoring fairness to the tax code." This is creating the appearance of fairness in the tax code. But it isn't honest and it isn't fair. It's class warfare - divisive and polarizing. What happened to the Obama of, "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America" fame?

I guess he's the same Obama that followed, "people don't expect government to solve all their problems" with "But..."

Dr. Pamela Zuker received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the University of Chicago where she performed research at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). She also holds degrees in Anthropology and Clinical Psychology, and practiced marriage, child, and family therapy before focusing on positive psychology. Her current research is on the role of meaning in adult life. She lives in the Roaring Fork Valley with her husband and two children.

Introducing GrowUp.org

In statements, placards, and his latest book summarizing his policies and favorite speeches, Sen. Obama says he wants to "renew America's promise." But does he know what it is? Do we know? Editor: Jeff Bull of Denver is the founder of a new political website (and perhaps, as a result, a new movement comparable to, but more clearheaded than, the MoveOn movement) called GrowUp.org. I encourage you to check it out and sign up. This piece appeared the other day as one of GrowUp's periodic email bulletins. Read on, you'll like what's here...

The American promise is most fundamentally the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as described in our Declaration of Independence. Our government is to be primarily concerned with the rule of law, property rights, and equality of opportunity - as opposed to trying to ensure equality of outcomes by creating different rules for different people.

America was the first society to minimize class distinctions and actually encourage the opportunity of the poor to become rich. Work hard and anyone could achieve the American dream (i.e. fulfill the American promise). The founders argued forcefully against the idea of nobility and titles and class - there were to be no rulers over the people.

Yet today we hear more and more from the left about the crucial importance of class distinctions. About the need for government to take greater control of everything in order to save us from ourselves, our circumstances, or even from nature. We see an incredible expansion of victims (real or perceived) looking for retribution. A far cry from JFK's inaugural exhortation to "ask not what your country can do for you."

In his Democratic nomination acceptance speech, Senator Obama defined the American promise as "the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." That communitarian theme unified his domestic and foreign policy positions. "That's the promise we need to keep," Obama continued. "That's the change we need right now."

The founders and early Americans that fought for the freedom inherent in America's promise would certainly shudder at a government interested in the temperature of your home, the type of transportation you use, or the food you eat. At a government that wants world opinion to dictate right and wrong to America. Senator Obama says that is appropriate.

We are certainly well beyond the purpose of government as originally intended, and it is hard for me not to fear the potential tyranny of such intrusions and beliefs. Don't you?

So why did this split occur and is there any way to unite the sides?

As conservative economist Thomas Sowell notes, both political sides "would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left." That's why so many young people (in age or maturity) are on the left. But the crux of the issue and source of the split, as Sowell concludes (and I think evidence abounds), is that "the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow."

Because of this different vision of the world and its future (ideal versus real), it has become increasingly clear that the sides do not merely disagree about the means to the same end, but also the end in itself. As conservative columnist Dennis Prager comments, "the right and the left do not want the same America," and "calls for a unity among Americans that transcends left and right are either naïve or disingenuous. America will be united only when one of them prevails over the other. The left knows this. Most on the right do not."

So if we no longer share the same, original understanding of America's promise, it is critically important that we look honestly and realistically at how it would be changed by an empowered left. How this election will impact our future.

The underlying theme and crucial difference is that the left thinks you need government to do more for you (and therefore, by definition, you to do less for yourself). See sidebar "The New New Deal?" for a great example. Note that in Senator Obama's "brother keeping" America, it is government taking from one brother to give to another. And you fear "Big Brother" now?

But I really appreciate Sachs' and Obama's honesty - and you should be honest with yourself. Is that what you want? How often do they have to tell you what they are going to do before you believe them? How much change like this does our country really need, or can it survive?

By voting for Senator Obama, please understand that you are conceding your inability to succeed without government patronage (which of course can only be provided by taking rights and money from someone else). That you cannot handle life in the freest country on earth, and you think that government, however benign, is going to make things better for you by taking more control from you.

But has increased government involvement and spending decreased poverty, or improved education, or reduced the cost of healthcare? Will more government involvement and spending really change the earth's climate or reduce natural disasters? Does our spending less on national defense end war or terrorism?

Please also understand that the party against the (productive, sometimes greedy) rich will get fewer of them. And the party for the (helpless, usually bitter) victim will get more of them. Not exactly the way out of economic (or even social) difficulties. Or honoring the real American promise. As if envy is less of a sin than greed.

As an ordinary American (along with another 299 million or so of you), I am petrified by where this is going. More governmental control in all areas of our lives. More class warfare. Dissent isn't just unpatriotic, it's racist. Forget the rampant privacy violations of the Patriot Act (actually, still waiting for one), just don't disagree with President Obama or the left will give you the Palin family or Joe the Plumber treatment.

Why has Senator Obama raised unprecedented funds for his campaign? The reason so much money is invested in politics in general and this election in particular is that politicians, bureaucrats, and judges have unprecedented control of our lives and are looking for more. The only way to decrease the money in politics is to decrease the size and scope of government.

That's not the change the left and Senator Obama believe in. Their goal is nothing short of a new American promise where a strong government and a weak people try to create heaven on earth. As Obama stated, "I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth." We need to all remember where the path of good intentions leads - and it's not to heaven.

It is the freedom to succeed (and fail) that has made our country the last best hope of earth. Not universal health insurance or carbon offset credits. Will we stand and fight for what's left of that freedom, or sit and accept our helpless place waiting for our government superiors to save us? All hail the One? Is our country that bad? Are you that helpless?

May God still bless America.

America at the tipping point

Today, Daniel Henninger has a brilliant piece in the Wall Street Journal that lays bare the true significance of an Obama victory. Rather than being representative of a repudiation of "the last eight years", a victory for Obama will usher in a new and philosophically revolutionary change in the basic tenets of both the American economy and society. An Obama administration -- aided with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate -- will not be a "one-off" example of an over-reaction to the financial crisis that demands an immediate (but temporary) change in direction to right the ship.Rather, as Henninger so eloquently puts it, with this election the U.S. is at a "philosophical tipping point". This is spot on, and echoes the theme of many of my posts for the past several months. America is about to take a sharp 90 degree left turn, away from our history of free-market capitalism based on a risk/reward calculus, and toward a model of state-controlled system based on a no-risk/high security formula. It's a fundamental shift, as Henninger states:

The goal of Sen. Obama and the modern, "progressive" Democratic Party is to move the U.S. in the direction of Western Europe, the so-called German model and its "social market economy." Under this notion, business is highly regulated, as it would be in the next Congress under Democratic House committee chairmen Markey, Frank and Waxman. Business is allowed to create "wealth" so long as its utility is not primarily to create new jobs or economic growth but to support a deep welfare system.

This move toward "welfare capitalism" is exactly where Obama will take us over the next four years. And it is a tipping point because it is largely irreversible; the Great Society has now been with us for over 40 years, and its core elements -- Medicare and Medicaid -- are programs that make up a huge percentage of our entitlement spending. It is easy to giveth -- but it is much harder politically to "taketh away".  This is the issue we will face with Obama -- who plans an historic expansion of public-funded healthcare, energy development and welfare programs. As I've written previously, this will result not just in new taxes, but in the growth of a huge and growing dependent class that lives off government but does nothing to help fund it.The impact of this will be to move America back in the pack, to the economic alsorans of France, and Germany. As Henninger again writes:

Now comes Barack Obama, standing at the head of a progressive Democratic Party, his right hand rising to say, "Mothers, don't let your babies grow up to be for-profit cowboys. It's time to spread the wealth around."What this implies, undeniably, is that the United States would move away from running with the high GDP, high-growth nations rising today as economic and political powers and move over to retire with the low-growth economies we displaced -- old Europe.As noted in a 2006 World Bank report, spending in Europe on social-protection programs averages 19% of GDP (85% of it on social insurance programs), compared to 9% of GDP in the U.S. The Obama proposals send the U.S. inexorably and permanently toward European levels of social protection. This isn't an "agenda." It's a final temptation.

A temptation to remake America in the model of the "progressives left" -- which sees capitalism as a model that fundamentally offends them. It offends the notion that America should be about equality of outcome, not opportunity. At the heart of this is a super-charged version of those who believe that "self-esteem" matters more than keeping score, and the idea that some will win while others lose is not acceptable. Never mind that in our economy, those who win do so not because of some hereditary right that is baked in as a birthright, but rather because of their drive to succeed. The left wants to discount the winners so as not to offend those who are less able (or willing) to succeed. This is at the core of the progressive movement: don't brag, walk softly, don't make anyone else feel badly and -- most importantly -- spread your wealth around so as not to make anyone feel inferior.

What this ignores, of course, is that human nature desires independence and self-sufficiency, not dependence on others. Those who actively support this kind of system are the progressive intellectuals who live in a world of theory, rich liberals who feel guilty about their success, and students whose brains have been scrambled by the left-wing politics of the universities. But the vast middle -- who will vote for Obama on November 4 because they have been hoodwinked into thinking that he is more Bill Clinton than Jacques Chirac -- don't want a handout. They want opportunity. And opportunity is not granted by a statist model of economics, but rather by life-giving tax cuts and a light regulatory burden that will ignite the economy and create new jobs. That's the right tonic for America and those who have too little -- not a government handout in the form of a cash payment that serves only to affirm their lower lot in life.

But this is not Obama's view of the world. And if he wins on Tuesday, we will see America make a choice that will fundamentally alter the philosophical underpinnings of our great capitalist democracy.

It will be a choice we will long remember-- and long regret.

His moral relativism discredits Obama

Democrats like Obama the Intellectual like to denigrate "folksy" and "unintellectual" Republicans as "clinging to guns or religion," but what they really abhor about their "lowbrow" Republican counterparts is the willingness to stand in moral judgment. I am not in any way arguing that every time a Republican uses a moral argument it is a correct application. However if we are not willing to even engage in moral discourse, we will travel a very dangerous path. Only a moral realist holds that there are right and true moral universals that exist across all cultures, nations, languages and time, regardless of human comprehension or behavioral conformity to these moral truths. Only a moral realist can believe, for example, that slavery or murder is objectively wrong and was never right despite cultural norms that once permitted it.

A moral relativist, on the other hand can assert, as does Dr. Richard Shweder, respected professor at the University of Chicago where Obama taught, “…even the presumption that infanticide is immoral is too presumptive and provincial to count as a moral universal.”

Only a moral realist truly affirms human rights. Yet the conviction that we all occupy one moral universe is not "high-minded" enough for elite universities, and unless one manages to escape higher education with one's moral compass unadjusted, what was abhorrent before exposure to postmodern deconstructionist thought will afterward be considered benign or even commendable.

Lest we forget, imprisonment of innocents, human experimentation, slavery, murder, and even genocide were legal in Germany during WWII, and it was the educated who formed the Einsatzgruppen “intervention groups” tasked with carrying out systematic mass murders of Jews, gypsies, and others. If there existed no moral realists during that time, there would have been no one willing to risk their own lives to protect society's outcasts. Meanwhile, many "good" German people chose to do nothing. Moral relativism instantiates what Martin Luther King referred to as "the appalling silence of the good people" and produces indifference - or at best diffidence - in the face of evil.

"We must face this challenge. We can face this challenge. We must totally defeat it, and we're in a long struggle." says McCain.

Says Obama the Intellectual, without a hint of irony, "Now, the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, because a lot of evil's been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil."

As Edmund Burke wrote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing." Yet Obama the Intellectual represents a perspective that is not merely morally diffident, but posits moral equivalences between actions that should be easily recognized as morally unequal. He additionally manages to associate with people who would be (correctly) unambiguously identified as racist (Wright and Farrakhan), felonious (Rezko) and terrorist (Ayers and wife, Dohrn) if they were evangelical, white, and “unintellectual.”

Cries of “we gotta be careful of guilt by association” and “these are attempts to connect Obama with events that happened when he was eight years old” obfuscate the real issue: how can we trust the judgment of someone who found none of his “controversial associates” beyond the pale? Even in condemning Ayers, Obama follows with “But…” and describes unrepentant Ayers as simply “a professor of education at the University of Illinois.”

Have we become so numb to the word "terrorist" that it has no effect when used to accurately describe FBI Most Wanted former fugitives, Ayers and Dohrn who helped blow up over 20 buildings (including one in which Ayers' former girlfriend accidentally blew herself up with a nail bomb)? Dohrn reportedly commended Charles Manson's followers while exhorting her compatriots to be “less wimpy” and was allegedly involved in the 1981 Brinks armed robbery in which two men were injured and three were murdered, leaving nine children fatherless.

Dohrn spent seven months in jail for refusing to cooperate with authorities. When two of their dear friends were sent to prison for murder and armed robbery, Ayers and Dohrn became guardians of the convicts' baby son whom they raised to be an intellectual - like themselves. When interviewed by Slate regarding his Rhodes scholarship in 2002, Yale graduate Chesa Boudin claimed he was dedicated to the same principles as "all" his parents.

It was in their living room that Obama the Intellectual’s breathtaking political ascent had its genesis in 1995, and seven years later, Ayers sat on a panel with Obama entitled, “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis.”

Intellectualism guarantees neither good judgment nor sound moral principles. One need only look at Colorado’s own Ward Churchill. But Churchill merely raved about terrorism. Ayers and Dohrn actually delivered. Churchill has at least one thing in common with the dynamite duo, though: Both Ayers and Dohrn are also university professors.

Come to think of it, “folksy and unintellectual” doesn’t sound so bad.

Dr. Pamela Zuker received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Psychology from the University of Chicago where she performed research at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). She also holds degrees in Anthropology and Clinical Psychology, and practiced marriage, child, and family therapy before focusing on positive psychology. Her current research is on the role of meaning in adult life. She lives in the Roaring Fork Valley with her husband and two children.

Grim outlook for 2009 & beyond

Here's a list of possible consequences over the long term, if next Tuesday brings a three-house sweep by America's socialist progressives. 1- Nationalized health care, with the concomitant collapse in quality and availability

2- Nationalized airlines with the shrinking of the number of flights and quality of service

3-Hate speech laws that will make it a felony to criticize government officials, union leaders, or Islam

4- Fairness Doctrine laws that shut down conservative radio talk shows, critical websites, maybe even newspapers

5- As a sop to the trial lawyers, one leg of the Democratic Party stool, all remedies under these laws will be in the courts. Thus, speak out and find yourself bankrupted either by legal expenses or judgments or both.

6- This will turn America into a virtual one-party state. Opposition candidates and parties will gradually fade away after being financially starved and otherwise hararssed

7- Home schooling illegal, religious schools illegal

8- Tax-exempt status for churches and other religious institutions revoked

9- Gun control enacted nationally, millions of guns confiscated, laws against possession severe

10- The disarmed population thus put at the mercy of OCDC, Obama Civilian Defense Corps, his young supporters legitimized with uniforms and weapons to intimidate potential opponents.

11- Abortion and gay marriage legalized nationwide

12- Heavy progressive taxation imposed, massive new regulatory agencies established, with the result that tech innovation withers, stock market becomes an irrelevant anachronism, and flight of capital to Asia increases

13- Massive cuts in military spending for weapons systems and perational funds, plus disembowelment of the Intelligence Services and Homeland Security

14- Once the Supreme Court is packed with compliant jurists, the re-education measures and facilities for “anti-social elements” (Gulags by another name) will ramp up

15- America's GDP, the standard of living, and basic freedoms will all plummet

History, if honest, would say the root cause was when the schools were abandoned to the Marxists, who successfully turned the nation their way from the inside over a period of 60 years.

But should the above occur, history itself will be rewritten, and the truth will be set in another context.