The wealthy’s “reward,” &c.
Jay Nordlinger NRO - nationalreview.com
I will make an old point, but not a bad one — check out this lead from an AP report: “House Republicans on Wednesday pushed to make permanent a one-year reprieve on estate taxes, a change that Democrats said would reward the wealthiest families and increase the federal deficit by tens of billions of dollars annually.”
Ponder that phrase, “reward the wealthiest families.” It tells you how Democrats think about the matter: If government lets families keep what they’ve earned, it is “rewarding” them. Note, too, the suggestion that taxation ought to be punitive — that these people must be punished for what they have done. (Reward and punishment are opposites.) There is a meanness in this kind of thinking.
And what we once would have called an un-Americanness. Why do you pursue your dreams? In part to allow your offspring to have a more comfortable life than you — and to let them build on what you’ve achieved.
Look, if Warren Buffett wants to stiff his children and donate his money to the IRS, that’s his business: He knows that address, in Washington. But I don’t see why he has to impose his ideal of fatherhood on his 300 million fellow citizens. Many of us see nothing sinful about passing on your estate to your family.
I realize you’ve considered all these questions a thousand times — it’s Conservatism (or Common Sense) 101. But every now and then it’s nice to refresh.
You may have missed that Judge Guido Calabresi has been admonished by a judicial panel. Why was he admonished? Last June, he urged the defeat of President Bush. And in the bargain, Calabresi — a former dean of Yale Law School, and a Clinton appointee — compared Bush’s actions in the 2000 election to the machinations of Hitler and Mussolini. You betcha. (A story on the matter is here.) Calabresi was speaking before a left-wing group, cutely named the American Constitution Society. Have a sample of the judge’s thought: “Like Mussolini, [Bush] has exercised extraordinary power. One of the things that is at stake is the assertion by the democracy that when that has happened it is important to put that person out.”
Frankly, I sort of like it when Democrats speak their minds, à la Calabresi. Good for him. Comparisons of Bush to evil dictators are routine in liberal circles, such as the judge inhabits. (In truth, Bush is a bringer-down of evil dictators.) Why keep these beliefs hidden? Why pretend that Calabresi has ever been any other kind of thinker?
In a similar vein, I rather liked it when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave a speech defending the use of foreign law, and international law, in U.S. Supreme Court decisions. (This was a couple of weeks ago.) No sense being coy about it. If the U.S. Constitution can’t get the job done — by gum, call on Belgium’s, or someone’s.
What is most irritating is hiding, pretending — covering up. In a way, an honest left-winger is worth his weight in gold. That is doubly true of left-wingers in power.
The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen is an honest writer, basically. He wears his hates on his sleeve. In his 4/7 column, he wrote, “. . . I knew that the most alarming case against Saddam Hussein — that he was an imminent threat to the United States — was a lie.”
Please note that word “imminent” — and recall what President Bush said in his State of the Union address, before he went to war against Saddam: “Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations will come too late.”
Concluding his column, Cohen said, “The fact will remain that this war was fought for a lie.”
This is a cherished belief that liberals — and many conservatives, and others — will hold on to till the day they die. But the truth is that they can speak confidently about WMD because the U.S. invaded. And it’s odd that they never blame Saddam Hussein for failing to comply with the U.N., or the United Nations for failing to make him comply — or even to care whether he did. Indeed, the U.N. abetted him.
While I’m at it: Have you noticed, in the Bolton hearings, that some senators seem to reveal more allegiance to the United Nations than to the United States? That they like it better? That they are ashamed at the U.N.’s disapproval of their country, and share that disapproval? I realize that such a statement can be construed as pure McCarthyism. But that is one of the joys of working for an opinion magazine, allowing freedom of thought and expression — you can say what you think is true. Point out what is, in fact, plain as day.
The United Nations — which has stood by as thousands have been murdered in the Balkans, Africa, and elsewhere, and on whose human-rights committee Cuba and other totalitarian countries sit — should be ashamed. Instead, it is the U.S. that is made to feel ashamed. |
