Of Caricatures and Reality

Photo Credit:  Elizabeth Lies

It was a long commute home today.  I think that most people are all out of vacation days, and perhaps saving up what they have for the Easter holidays.  Almost everyone went to work, and a lot of them chose to go home at the same time and on the same roads as I.  In the slow motion on the expressway there was ample time to think and muse.

Among my musings, and considering the ongoing presidential campaign, I imagined a conversation with one of the leading Democrat candidates.  I will refer to the candidate as Burning Cynders, to preserve anonymity.  I will leave it to you to imagine whether this reminds you of anyone.

WAA:  I understand that you want to buy votes with my money.

Cynders:  I don’t buy votes.  That’s what my opponents do.

WAA:  You just promise them free stuff, like free college tuition and free healthcare, to be paid for out of my pocket.

Cynders:  Everyone has a right to an education.

WAA:  And apparently you claim the right to pick my pocket to pay for it.  Sounds like you have learned how to buy votes with other people’s money.

Cynders:  It’s called leadership.  Someone has to stand up for people who are not as fortunate as you are.

WAA:  You don’t make me feel fortunate at all.

Cynders:  You are fortunate to be able to help your fellow man.

WAA:  You mean, I am fortunate to have you help yourself to what I have earned so that you can give it to your cronies.

Cynders:  Giving to cronies is what my opponents do.  I want to give the money to young people so that they can get an education.

WAA:  You, personally, are going to give the money to each of the wannabe students?  You will be very busy.  It’s a big country.  You may find a lot of hands stretched out.

Cynders:  I certainly hope so.  And I will have plenty of people who will help me, who will administer the programs, people who believe in what I am trying to do.

WAA:  That’s wonderful.  So you will give the money to them, and they will make sure that some of it gets to the students to pay for their free education.  Sounds like the happy marriage of cronyism and vote buying.

Cynders:  No, these are real patriots, people who really understand what America is all about.

WAA:  America is about free handouts?  And taxing successful people to pay you and your cronies?  Are the professors and school administrators working for free to help provide this free college tuition?

Cynders:  Of course not.  We need the best to teach our children.  They deserve the best, and we need to invest in the best.

WAA:  But I thought that you said that education is a right.  How can these professors make merchandise of the students and their rights by insisting on being paid to honor those rights?

Cynders:  The professors have a right to be paid, and paid commensurate with their ability and skill and knowledge.

WAA:  And commensurate with their connection to you and your plan.  I apparently have no right, except to let you pick my pocket to pay them so generously.  Sounds like more of your cronies.  I could never vote for you on such a plan.

Cynders:  You don’t have to vote for me.  You just need to work and make a lot of money so that I can use it to . . .

WAA:  To buy the votes of the people to whom you want to give all the free stuff.

 

Some may think that this conversation is a caricature, but it is hard to make a caricature of someone who is himself a caricature.  This is closer to reality than what emanates from such presidential candidates (there is a parallel candidate caricature for president among the Republicans).

As I said, this conversation formed in my head as I was in traffic on my way home, home from Washington, D.C.  All around me were BMWs, Mercedes, Infinitis, Lexus, Acuras, and more than the occasional Jaguar and Porsche.  These are the people, living in what have recently become some of the wealthiest counties in America.  These are the people who would be paid by Burning Cynders to administer his free programs.

Of Money and Morality

Prussian King Frederick the Great reportedly mocked the delicacy of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa over the 18^th century dismemberment of Poland, with the words, “She weeps, but she takes her share.”  Such were the ways of European kings and empresses.  I am reminded of those words, however, when I hear people criticize money, all the while more than eager to get their share, earned or not.

I can imagine this conversation between such a money mourner and an advocate of money:

Barry:  Hey, Franklin, can you lend me a couple of bucks?

Franklin:  I think it was Disreali who cautioned, never lend money to a friend unless he is a friend you want to be rid of.

Barry:  Come on, Franklin, it’s only a couple of bucks, and I’ll pay you back tomorrow.

Franklin:  In that light, here are two dollars.

Barry:  How about 5?

Franklin:  How did 2 suddenly become 5?

Barry:  Come on, Franklin, what’s the difference?  It’s only money, and you’ve got it.  You always have some money in your pocket.  I’m good for it, and we’re friends.

Franklin:  Because we are friends, I’ll give you a choice.  I’ll give you $2 or lend you $5.  Which do you prefer?

Barry:  I wish we didn’t need money.  It would be a lot better world without it.

Franklin:  Would it really?  Because of money we are having this conversation, discussing a free transfer of value between the two of us.  You are asking me freely to lend you value that you promise to return to me.  I do not ask what you want it for; that is your business.  We are having a conversation based upon our honor and promises to one another.  Without money, this whole conversation, this honorable exchange, would not take place.  You would either go and just take what you want the money for, or it would be beyond your reach.  Money is giving us both a choice to work together for your good.

Barry:  Well there is no way I can take what I want.  I need the money for lunch.  I can’t just walk in and take it.

Franklin:  Then, without money—mine or yours—you would be hungry.

Barry:  I’m hungry now.

Franklin:  And you would stay hungry.

Barry:  That’s why money is so immoral.  It’s keeping me hungry unless I can get it and use it to persuade someone to let me have something to eat.

Franklin:  Where were you going to get something to eat?

Barry:  Over at the hamburger joint.

Franklin:  Do you know anyone over there?

Barry:  No, not really.

Franklin:  So you want a perfect stranger to give you some of his food, prepared the way that you want it.  Why should he do that?  He doesn’t know you, you don’t know him.

Barry:  It’s not his food.  He just works there.

Franklin:  He works there for nothing, of course.

Barry:  No, they pay him.

Franklin:  With what?

Barry:  Money.  So what’s your point?

Franklin:  The morality of money.  Look how it makes it possible for several people all to work together and cooperate, friends and perfect strangers, all to make it possible to end your hunger.  I, as a friend, provide you the money, that you take over to the hamburger joint, where a perfect stranger gives you in exchange for your money a meal made according to your liking, and he does that because the owner of the hamburger joint pays him money to do it.  Think of whether any of that would happen without money.  That little bit of money allows us all to work peacefully together in free association.  What kind of a society would we have without money?

Barry:  Look, are you going to give me the money or not?

Franklin:  I'll give you 2 or lend you 5, what's your preference?

Barry:  Lend me the five.

Franklin:  Good choice.

Of Democracies and Demagogues

The demagogue has ever been the bane of democracies.  By definition, democracies rest upon the choices of the people.  When wisdom guides, democracies prosper.  As history shows, wisdom does not always prevail, and it never does when demagogues do.  Since the demagogue seeks his own power by taking power from others, once the people give him their voice they will be hard-pressed to get their power back; the democracy deteriorates into dictatorship, invoked in the name but never the reality of the rights of the people.

Why would a free people yield their power to the tyranny of the demagogue?  It is not reasonable to place your own hands and feet in fetters.  In every successful democracy there is a balance between reason and emotion.  Rather than advise wisdom, demagogues appeal to the basest popular emotions to overcome reason.  American Founder, James Madison, drawing lessons from the best known democracy of history, the democracy of Athens, warned Americans of the danger:

      In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason.  Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.

(James Madison, Federalist no. 55, as quoted in John Samples, “James Madison’s Vision of Liberty,” Cato Policy Report, Vol.XXIII No.2, March/April 2001, p.12)

Madison recognized that in groups fiery emotion can make for a more persuasive pitch than cooler reason can.  He recommended the Constitution as a defense against demagogues, a structure of fundamental limitations on government and against those who would seek to govern by preying upon the passions of the people.  The formula has worked and the Constitution has held—against many trials, including a Civil War—for more than 200 years. 

The typical demagogue is a forceful speaker who seeks power by stirring up the people, whom he sees as masses to be manipulated and managed rather than as a body politic of reasonable individuals.  It does not particularly matter which emotions are invoked against reason; the most successful demagogues draw upon a variety.  Perhaps the emotion most powerful to the ends of the demagogue is fear, but he will also use hatred, avarice, envy, sorrow, vanity, vengeance, vainglory, among others.  He will even try to invoke love, though love is hard to make compatible with the demagogue’s message of contention, but it can be used to garner sympathy and to get people to let down their guard against an appeal to baser emotions.

Are Americans and the American constitutional democracy perpetually proof against the demagoguery that has destroyed democracies before?  The Founders did not think so.  A popular watch phrase among them was, “eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty”.  They were referring more to internal dangers than dangers from foreign enemies.

How do we keep watch on the threshold of the 21^st Century?  Here are ten tests to help unmask the demagogue:

• He gives powerful, emotional speeches, as public speaking is one of his most powerful tools.  “Facts” will usually play a minor role in the speech, and when used will often either be half-truths or outright lies, sometimes very big lies with passionate appeal.
• As discussed, emotion rather than reason predominates in his arguments, with fear the most prevalent emotion.
• He conjures up apocalyptic dangers and manipulates crises (and creates them when none are readily available).  The sky seems to be always about to fall.
• Riding on the wave of crisis, he will offer sweeping “action plans” that would cede to him major powers and authorities and push aside sources of opposition.  “Forward” is the frequent cry shouted to drown out objections, “the debate is over.”  (In a real democracy, can the debate ever be “over”?)
• He dishonors the Constitution and violates it without regret; the Constitution and demagoguery are incompatible.  Neither can survive while the other prospers, to paraphrase J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter formula for her fictional demagogue.
• He accuses others of employing his own despicable tactics.  In order to create fog and camouflage, and blunt criticism of his own actions, the demagogue will often claim opponents are lying, fomenting contention, engaging in petty partisanship, and so on, all the while employing those tactics himself.  Note that the accusations will usually employ an appeal to sentiment.
• He points to enemies of the people, enemies that his plans will vanquish.  These enemies are usually chosen to evoke emotion, such as “big business” to foster fear, “the rich” to stir envy, race or ethnic divisions to feed hate.
• He calls for unity while proposing plans that divide the nation, opponents of his plans being cast as those who would seek to divide a nation that would be unified by agreeing with him.  Issues are chosen that find and feed emotional fissures in public opinion.  Most effective, the demagogue will propose to take something of value from a group in a minority and “share” it with the group whose favor he seeks, such as targeted taxes or confiscations to provide some popular benefit.
• Following on that point, he develops classes of supporters dependent upon what he promises to give them from the government, benefits that will need his continued care to be sustained.  That is what lies at the core of the difficulty in fixing problems with welfare, Medicare, and Social Security, and why the demagogues have a field day when anyone offers reasonable proposals to deal with these very real issues.
• He hates a free and independent press that raises objections of fact and evidence to challenge the emotional appeal, but he loves an obliging press that magnifies his message and drowns out dissident appeals to reason.

It is not hard to recognize demagogues among us today appealing for ascendancy.  Democracy in our day demands that we retain our freedom and that we do not yield.  More than our freedom is in the balance, but our freedom is in the balance.

Of Occupy Zarahemla and Sharing Your Wealth with You

Only a couple dozen years before the visit of Jesus Christ, the resurrected Savior, to ancient America one of the leading civilizations of the time was in danger of a very different visitation, of impending destruction.  The society was already on the verge of cracking from years of organized crime in the cities and terrorist attacks from refuges in the nearby mountains.  Enforcement and counterattacks had either been unsuccessful or brought only temporary respite.  Too many of the people were either sympathetic to the criminals or not well organized enough to eradicate their threats.

Recent successes emboldened the main man of the terrorist network to issue an ultimatum to the chief judge of the struggling government, whose capital city was called Zarahemla:  give up or we will destroy you.  As forward as was the substance of the demand, it was surpassed by the pitch.  Until recent years I had not come across anything like it in my own experience for twisted assertions and sheer hypocrisy.  One of the great values of The Book of Mormon is how again and again the experiences of its people and societies foretell parallel developments in our time.  This was one more example.

Consider this pitch from the robber leader, Giddianhi.  It starts out merely audacious, saying surrender before we kill the lot of you, in language you might hear from any pirate:  

Therefore I write unto you, desiring that ye would yield up unto this my people, your cities, your lands, and your possessions, rather than that they should visit you with the sword and that destruction should come upon you.  (3 Nephi 3:6)

Apparently constant raiding was becoming too tiring.  They wanted it all, pronto.  What follows, though, is a rather astounding justification, but one that sounds all of a sudden very familiar to 21^st century Americans:

Or in other words, yield yourselves up unto us, and unite with us and become acquainted with our secret works, and become our brethren that ye may be like unto us—not our slaves, but our brethren and partners of all our substance.  (3 Nephi 3:7)

In short, the demand was, give us everything you have, join with us, embrace our philosophy of want-and-take, and we will share with you all of our stuff (which was once your stuff, but no need to fuss about that).  Then we will all be one big happy society, no more conflict, “partners of all our substance”, a socialist utopia.  The takers were inviting the makers to join the society of takers.  Certainly you see the flaw in the proposition.  When all are takers—including the makers—whom will the takers take from?

It feels like Giddianhi would be quite at home in the recent “Occupy” movement.  He demanded to occupy Zarahemla, and all would then be fine.  Modern occupiers’ demands for pricy downtown real estate to squat on, money to pay for food, shelter, bedding, clothing, health care, legal bills, publicity, and other wants and needs, are to be met by the prosperous whose prosperity makes all this possible.  And the occupiers will continue to occupy wherever they are until the government ends all inequities by raising taxes on the people who are already paying 70% of all taxes.  The prosperous must be still holding back from the rest.   

The occupiers claim to represent everyone (well, 99% of everyone) already, if people would just recognize that and admit that they are one with the occupiers. Y’all come. And together we will tax everyone to death and take their stuff, and share it with one another, and then all will be great, no more problems. 

Fortunately for the people of Zarahemla, they refused to buy it.  They built a wall around their land and kept all of the takers out, until the takers were faced with famine.  What if America’s makers ultimately insisted that they would not support the takers anymore?  What if the takers were forced to get jobs and work for what they ate?  They would howl, at least as long as they thought someone was listening.  Now that is utopia we can believe in.

Of Good Times on Wall Street and Standing Out from the Crowd

The lot of people engaging in the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) party in New York City are a lot of things to a lot of people, particularly if you rely upon the glowing news reports about them.  Most Americans, let’s say 99% of them, have not been near any of the party goers, so we have had to rely upon the news media to tell us who and what they are.  A colleague of mine witnessed their march in Washington on a recent Saturday.  There were about 30 of them matched—or even overmatched—by the number of reporters accompanying the march, so in terms of numbers the parties seem to be well covered.

Still, for all that coverage I have to confess that I have not been able to get any specific or focused idea on who they are and what they want.  That is why I am indebted to Democrat pollster Douglas Schoen, who had the bright idea of sending his polling team to the party to ask the attendees themselves who they are, what they believe, and what they want.  As far as I know he was the first to come up with such an obvious idea and remains the only one to have tried it.  The occupiers were fortunately candid and forthcoming in the interviews.  I expect that they may be more on their guard in the future to repeat the party line, whatever that might be.

I understand that the OWS party goers represent 99% of the population (I am not sure if they mean 99% of America, or of the World, or of just New York City—the lack of Yankees baseball caps in the media photos casts doubt on this last possibility), 99% because they said so and the news coverage has repeated it, over and over again.  I suspect that puts me in the 1%, at least that is the percentage of fat in the milk I drink (I prefer whole milk, but my wife refuses to buy it).  In case you are wondering whether you are in the 99% that the OWS groupies represent, here is a list of characteristics of the New York City party goers, care of Douglas Schoen’s polling team, who interviewed 198 of them in their New York City party venue.  See whether you fit the list, keeping in mind that, in the words of O.J. Simpson’s attorney, if the glove does not fit you must acquit.

·         The majority are male.

·         More than half are 30 years old or older.

·        None of them are Republicans, although 14% are either anarchists, socialists, or belong to the “Working Families Party” (that sounds socialist to me, but maybe that just means that they are not Democrats).

·        Somewhat more than half of them, 56%, voted in the 2008 presidential election, and 74% of those for Barack Obama.

·       When asked what bugs them the most, 30% claimed the influence of corporate/moneyed/special interests; 5% claimed “everything” (sounds like the teenagers or maybe the college students); 3% identified America’s democratic/capitalist system; 2% each for bureaucracy, Bush tax cuts, military spending, the Federal Reserve, and Obama abandoning the left; that gets us up to 53% without moving on to the rest of the gripes that they offered.

·       When asked what this was all about, there was a similar variety of answers, with the lead going to the 44% who said mobilizing progressives or influencing the Democrats the way that the Tea Party has influenced Republicans (that may seem ambitious, but I suspect that it is as tough as pushing on an open door given the rest of the OWS demands); curiously, 5% favored a flat tax, a favorite of many conservatives; but 4% called for dissolution of representative democracy and capitalism, and another 4% were for a radical distribution of wealth, which amounts to the same thing; and that brings us to 57% without getting to the rest of the somewhat confused list.

·       When asked who is to blame, George Bush, Barack Obama, and Wall Street tied at 7% each (suggesting that 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should be as much of a focus for them as Wall Street); while the Republican Party only just edged out “The American People”, 16% to 15%; 5% identified the “Citizens United Supreme Court ruling”; which again gets us to 57% without going any further down the rather long list.

·       The closest point to unanimity among the party goers was that 98% agreed that civil disobedience was a good idea to achieve their goals, and even 31% believed that violence would be O.K., too.

·       Surprising to me was that these anti-Wall Street protesters were almost exactly evenly divided over whether giving TARP money to banks was a good idea, 51% opposed but 49% in favor.

·       Last point here, though there were several other questions, 65% agreed that government had a moral responsibility to guarantee healthcare, college education, and a secure retirement for all, no matter what the cost.

You are excused if you have trouble finding a clear theme in all of this.  If your head is spinning to some degree, just watch some TV or pick up a newspaper and you will learn once again what this is really all about.  I doubt that the reporters or commentators will note that there is almost a universal attitude at the OWS party that someone else is to blame for all things blameworthy.  Nor are they likely to point out that the demands of the unwashed 99ers revolve around getting others to do something for them or give them something.

This latter point seems to me to be one of the more distinguishing points separating the OWS Gimmees from the TEA Party activists.  The hundreds in the OWS crowd predominantly want to have government dictating to people how to live—while they have their hands out or want to put their hands in your pocket (a common complaint among the campers is that their stuff is constantly getting stolen by other campers).  The tens of thousands of TEA Party activists want to be left alone, want to keep what they have earned, want government to step back from making rules to control their lives.

Maybe at this point you are feeling very special, which is not a bad achievement for any writer.  If you feel that you do not fit into the Gimmees 99%, congratulations on being one in a hundred.

Of Wet Wood and Government Jobs Programs

At best, it is like putting wet wood on a fire: the wet wood may eventually burn, but it takes as much or more energy from the fire to dry the wood out enough for it to be flammable. In the meantime, it creates a lot of smoke and hissing and fizzing, and you run a real risk of subduing the fire if not stifling it entirely. This is what government job creating programs are like.

Outside of very narrow exceptions government itself does not create jobs. It shifts jobs. That is because outside of its basic purpose of enacting and maintaining laws and providing for the common defense, government does not provide a new good or service that the private sector cannot do better. The chief reason why the private sector does better is that private activity is governed by market mechanisms. People can say no to your good or service if they do not want or like it and go to the business that does a better job. So people who stay in business are under constant pressure to do better in their business, or they eventually see their business decline or even disappear. Government is not subject to such a demanding disciplinarian. If you do not like the process for getting a driver’s license, where else are you going to go?

At least someone wants the driver’s license, and the program of screening out unqualified drivers—however imperfect it may be—is a service that people want. Very often, government job creation programs put people to work doing things that we would be better off not having done.

One of my favorite examples is the Roosevelt Administration’s Depression era jobs program, paying people to plant kudzu all over the South. They did that for years, until they realized that kudzu is an uncontrollable pest plant that grows and spreads and smothers every other plant and tree around it and is very hard to get rid of. It is sort of a metaphor for government jobs programs.

An additional problem with government jobs programs is that the government has to pay for them. Where does the government get its money? It gets it from the people who already have jobs. Those people will no longer have that money to spend at the store or for remodeling the house or going on a vacation or gaining an education or the million other things that people do with their money to put other people to work. You might call all of that private sector spending the people’s jobs programs. To get $50,000 to put people to work on a government jobs program you have to take at least $50,000 away from the people’s jobs programs. In practice, you usually have to take several times more than $50,000 away from the people’s jobs programs, because the government programs are run so inefficiently.

So when the government announces that its new jobs program is “creating” 100,000 new jobs, it does not report the 200,000 jobs that were displaced to pay for those new jobs. When you see those government jobs announcements, remember the wet wood on the fire and ask how much energy is being lost to make that new log burn?

Of Plumber Joe and Community Organizer Barry

It took a real life example to give life to the key difference between the two candidates for president. When Plumber Joe met Barack Obama campaigning in his neighborhood, Joe asked the would-be president, why do you want to tax my small business? Actually, more precisely, Joe wants to buy the plumbing business he has worked at, and Obama wants to raise taxes on it, and Joe asked Obama, why? At first, Obama equivocated and mumbled something about getting some tax breaks to offset the tax hikes. When Joe refused to buy into that sleight of hand trick, Obama fessed up. Obama admitted that he wanted to spread the wealth around. In other words, he said that Joe would be making too much money, so Obama wanted to take from him and give to someone else.

Why would Obama want to do that? Because, unlike Plumber Joe, who has a real job, Obama’s career experience came as a “community organizer” (when he was known in Chicago as Barry). Taking money from people and giving it to others is what community organizers do. Barry the Community Organizer now wants to organize a big community, of over 300 million people, and he wants to keep spreading the wealth around. Community organizers like to do that, because they like to get the credit for being compassionate and generous, compassionate and generous handing out other people’s money.

Joe has worked hard as a plumber. Joe has saved and prospered. Now Joe wants to own his own business and provide work for other employees. The employees, these plumbers, would provide plumbing services and get paid by their customers. Barack Obama wants to take some of that money—O.K., a lot of that money—and spread it around to people who would get their money from Barack, people who have not been as “lucky” as Plumber Joe.

Lucky? My guess is that it was not luck that made Joe work hard over the years and save his money to be in a position to own a business and provide real jobs to other people. Under a President Obama, Joe and others like him would become unlucky.

John McCain has been trying to point out for weeks that the change offered by Barack Obama is a big time return to the tired old tax and spend politics of the big government politicians. John McCain is not the most eloquent campaigner, and the mass media has been doing its best to bury his message anyway. McCain finally found a real life example, and that is the most eloquent statement of all. At the last national debate, on a stage that the mass media could not ignore, McCain introduced us to Joe the Plumber (who by the way did not ask for all the attention and is a bit embarrassed by it), and McCain asked, why raise his taxes? Why raise anybody’s taxes going into an economic downturn?

If you do not raise the taxes, you cannot keep spending other people’s money and winning praise for your compassion and generosity. And that is the point of this election.