How Far Wrong We’ve Gone

Listening to last night’s Democratic debate with some knowledge of history, it was pretty easy to see how far-right the Nixon Thesis has taken us in the last 40 years.

Ideas that were once common kant have become heretical, even on what’s supposed to be the "left."

Let’s start with the economy, stupid.

It’s the Administration’s Class War and its Robin Leach tax policy (while accusing Democrats of being Robin Hood), that has gotten us into this mess. Giving business everything it wants  delivers no more discipline than allowing a child all the candy and ice cream it wants.

Yet rather than couch a firm program of business reform and tax fairness as the pro-competitive measures they really are, the Democrats acted like their far more-modest proposals were socialism in our time. It’s like they’ve despaired of winning any business support, except for class traitors like Warren Buffett, and that unalloyed feudalism represents some sort of rational moral universe.

The most craven example was on the subject of bankruptcy. The 2005 bill was simply called "unfair" to homeowners, rather than what it really is — bad business. When a credit card debt is not discharged in bankruptcy, it remains a non-preforming asset on the bank’s books. That means the bank can’t make new loans, and the debtor can’t take new borrowings from anyone. Both sides are frozen. If that debt can be written off the bank is now free to make new loans and the debtor, while relieved, should have that mark on his ledger so other banks will be more careful.

Yet there were no economic arguments offered.

John Edwards is under the mistaken impression that universal health care, a higher minimum wage, and education aid represent class warfare against the rich. Universal health care cuts the bills for those enterprises which offer insurance, a higher minimum wage assures more consumer demand for what businesses produce, and a better-educated work force is what businesses need to compete.

The whole economic argument of the Democratic Party seems to be based on equality, when it should be based on growth. Even the idea of a progressive income tax can’t be seriously taken up any more — we’re just trying to get Warren Buffett’s rate up to the level of his secretary’s! All business interests have been ceded to a party which has led them onto the rocks, through a program which rewarded dishonest practices and hurt honest dealing. Honest businesspeople have no party any more.

But it was on the social issues where I really got mad. (You may get mad in response. Fair warning.)

On the question of guns, they all cowered before the mighty NRA, acting like the Second Amendment was brought down from Mt. Sinai by Moses. Edwards, who is trying to be the most liberal of the lot, was especially egregious. Rejecting the very idea of a national gun registry (a staple of anti-crime movies and TV from the 1930s through the 1960s) he said:

Having grown up where I did in the rural South, everyone around me had
guns, everyone hunted. And I think it is enormously important to
protect people’s Second Amendment rights.

Thank you, Elmer Fudd.

Fact is, if the Bush Supreme Court claims (as I expect) that 200 years of constitutional law is wrong, and that the Second Amendment is about the private ownership of WMDs (rather than the need to organize a militia against Whiskey Rebellions) then we can’t even touch Osama bin Laden’s arsenal until he touches it off. Seung Hui-Cho, c’mon down!

Every civilized country in the world understands the need to control personal weapons. The first thing Wyatt Earp did in Tombstone was take the bad guys’ guns. I don’t happen to think the U.S.A. is a civilized country right now. But these so-called liberals won’t challenge this nonsense, won’t even engage in the debate, while our cops are gunned-down in the street because the bad guys are better armed!

Oh, and if you’re in the NRA and getting mad at me about this, yes, dammit, I do want to pry your gun from your cold dead hand. The only difference between you and an Arab terrorist is you haven’t found your inner Timothy McVeigh yet. This is the common political assumption of Europe and Asia, yet in the United States of America I’m an extremist?

My point is that the "moral high ground" of America has become a swamp. Guns make it easy to kill people. Banning women from controlling their bodies makes them slaves, and all those who support such nonsense are pro-slavery, even if they’re wearing robes (especially if they’re wearing robes). Every human being deserves the same rights, from the time they become human, with a human brain and circulatory system, and no matter what that heart wants or what language they speak. If you’re not hurting others my marriage is not threatened in the least. If you want to work hard and follow the law you have the same rights to America as my great-grandfather did.

Yet these kinds of ideas — most of which were common assumptions when the Nixon Thesis came into effect in 1969 — are now heretical, even on the so-called Left. Liberals buy into the nonsense that they’re anti-business, that their social views are anathema, and that only the Right has right (or God) on its side.

Sometimes I despair of reaching balance on any of these issues in my lifetime. It’s not on the agenda in this election. Our basic political assumptions must be turned around before such things can even be discussed.

That’s how far wrong the Nixon Thesis has taken us.