Munchausen’s by Proxy

-By Dan Scott

As a normal person viewing the entire taxation and government benefit program structure one could not blame them as concluding it is a Rube Goldberg approach to governance. Government policy or more accurately liberal policy is about taking money only to give it back in a convoluted scheme to somehow bring about equality. A myriad of taxes are taken at every level of business and personal activity. This is justified under the guise of government meeting the needs of the people. To decide whose needs the government should be serving, groups of people are stereotyped and assigned victim status being called the poor. The poor it is said needs the government to help them because poverty is not a choice but an accident of birth. The logic goes like this, if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you obviously will want for nothing since your caretakers will meet all your needs and give you every advantage to succeed in life whether that be a guaranteed income for life, a job in the family business, a higher education to work a well paying job, good health care, etc. On the other hand if that same baby were born into a poor household, he/she would have none of those advantages and therefore is it unfair. Since America is a wealthy society, it falls upon society to make it fair by giving everyone a chance to be equally successful.

On the surface such an argument about equality may make some sense until you delve into it’s assumptions. The first assumption is about poverty and wealth being an accident. Neither is an accident, making bad financial decisions doesn’t make you wealthy nor does making good financial decisions make you poor. Success is a choice, not an accident. This is called sophistry, making false assertions using false arguments. It follows that parents are responsible for the care of their offspring and therefore how that parent carries out that responsibility affects the outcome. It is the parent’s responsibility to make good decisions that will benefit the child and themselves. The ability of a parent to give equal opportunity as another parent is an impossibility. The ability of one individual to be equal in every way (both mentally and physically) to another one let alone an entire nation of individuals is also impossible. Inequality is a fact of life and therefore to demand what is impossible is sophistry. The equality argument advanced by liberals is based on the fallacious impossible premise of total equality. The equality as advanced by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence is one of opportunity under the Law with limitations on “government’s ability” of giving one group or individual more to one than others.

Since neither the Constitution gave any hint that any of the current social welfare programs were even envisioned when crafted by the founding fathers nor was there any hint in the first decades of the Republic of such programs we can definitely say that Socialism in any form was not a function of government. Of course modern times breeds modern needs but if it were a matter of poverty then can anyone reasonably argue that masses of people were materially poorer now than at the beginning of the Republic? Finally let’s address the other demonstrably false assertion, America is a wealthy society. As a society we are now in debt some $10 trillion. In what universe is being in debt with no chance of repayment wealthy? This is where the whole argument falls apart, if America were a wealthy country it would not be in the position it were today. The fact that the government could not tax enough to pay as it went to keep a balanced budget without destroying the economy demonstrates even a modest attempt at Socialism fails. For if Socialism were successful and government is the prime mover of the economy then why don’t politicians simply pass a law putting a million dollars in an account for every child at birth to make everyone equally wealthy? We all know why they can’t and so Socialism fails even the most basic attempt at their sophist equality. Just to put a fine point on it, if deficit spending is so good for the economy then why did we go into a recession in the first place? We were running $400 billion plus annual deficits for the past two years.

But let’s put all this aside and consider some other realities. In order to fund all the government programs from food stamps to housing assistance that is purportedly for the benefit of the poor it must tax, borrow or print money. Currently, liberal Democrats are in denial regarding the Bush tax cuts of 2003, since that cut in the marginal rates, the economy increased and tax revenue increased by $1 trillion over previous years. The current recession is one of the Democrat’s making, engaging in ruinous lending standards that put economically marginal people in dire straights and also creating a housing bubble with easy mortgages. This on top of the domestic drilling ban creating an artificial shortage of energy supplies thus driving up their prices, forcing employers to cut costs by putting people out of work. Raising energy prices forces up the cost living putting a squeeze on the poor.

So the Democrats are in a pickle, choose between their precious AGW cultism or driving the poor into total destitution by raising the cost of living with the drilling ban and eviscerating jobs by raising taxes yet more and energy costs to boot. The Democrat’s solution, sprinkle down economics by handing out money to those at the bottom in a vain attempt to offset their own incompetence. In the meantime, the budget deficits spiral out of control increasing the pressure to print more money. Now why would politicians put themselves in an obviously bad position in the first place? It’s not like this wasn’t foreseeable, they were warned many times and did nothing to prevent the economic meltdown. Yet the public didn’t see it that way?

The real issue for politicians has never been about the public good, it is about getting credit for the appearance of being the benevolent benefactor. Credit comes in the form of public acknowledgment and being re-elected. What we have is dysfunctional governance by a group of manipulators whose prime mission is to engineer failure in order to ride to the rescue. What I’m describing is the political version of Munchausen’s by Proxy. You think this is a leap of logic? Consider the medical description of Munchausen syndrome.
fake symptoms of illness in her child by adding blood to the child’s urine or stool, withholding food, falsifying fevers, surreptitiously giving emetics or cathartics to simulate vomiting or diarrhea, or using other maneuvers (such as infecting IV lines to make the child appear or become ill)…Munchausen syndrome occurs because of psychological problems in the adult, and is generally an attention-seeking behavior.
Politicians are continually seeking attention for re-election purposes, attention is gotten by solving problems, if there is no problem then why do we need them? Thus their primary goal is to get re-elected not govern responsibly. Conservatives have name for such people in the Republican Party, we call them RINOs – Republican In Name Only. Characterized by overly helpful behavior such as bipartisanship. To achieve bipartisanship you must compromise with the Democrat agenda (Socialism and self interest) and thus in the process incrementally advance that agenda at the expense of your constituency.

Now let’s combine this with the public’s seeming A.D.D. – Attention Deficit Disorder, characterized by the inability to stay focused on the problem, exhibiting short term memory loss and lacking the discipline to follow through on projects. A classic example of the public’s A.D.D. was the initial bail out of the banks, the public decried Congress’s attempt the first time, Congress reacted with fear by voting it down and then promptly voted for another bail out worse than the first. What was the public’s response? They voted in the very people who voted for the bail outs. In another example of A.D.D., we have the mortgage meltdown, Barack Obama voted to block reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2005, he arguably is one of the parties responsible for the mortgage meltdown and yet he won the general election for President. Creating failure is success. Go figure? No experience, perfect man for the job, how can he do worse?

The very Democrat Party that engineered the recession is now the same Party promising to cure the country’s ills by engaging in more deficit spending, increasing taxes and raising the price of energy. Is the public just gullible enough to fall for it yet again? What is it going to take for the public to see failure is not success? I fear the only thing that will get the public to remember long enough and act decisively is another grand economic failure on the order of Jimmy Carter. It was Carter’s utter incompetence that finally convinced the public that Ronald Reagan couldn’t do worse as President even if they didn’t understand at the time the whole concept of lowering taxes to boost the economy which would create more tax revenue. If you lived through the 1970s you know exactly what I’m talking about, if you didn’t, well… you’re about to.
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Dan Scott calls himself a “Member of the Global Capitalist Cabal preaching Capitalism and personal responsibility as the economic solution to world poverty.” He is also a member of the 14th Amendment Society — victimhood is a liberal code word for denying the civil rights of others. He is also a proud member of the Global Warming Denier Cabal, insisting that facts not agendas determine the truth.

Dan can be seen on the web at http://www.geocities.com/fightbigotry2002/ as well as http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/saidwebpage.htm, And can be reached for comments at dscott8186@yahoo.com.

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