The Big Conservative Lies: Government Sucks and So Do Taxes
(Editor's Note: This is the last of a three-part series.)
At its base, the conservative movement in the United States -- particularly in the past 30 or so years -- has been based on one single premise: government is no good, can do nothing right, and therefore paying taxes to it is foolish and counter-productive. This kind of substitute for real thinking has, as conservatives have noticed and exploited, several advantages in terms of its ability to gain support from the public. First, it is easy to sloganeer. The statement, "Government is incompetent" is quick and easy to say or to print on a bumper sticker. Never mind that like all glittering generalities, it is patently false and absurd. Conservatives don't concern themselves with such issues. Meanwhile, progressives are not willing to over-simplify to the point of prevarication, so they try to make nuanced counterpoints. Trouble is, those arguments specifically do not lend themselves to sloganeering, require some semblance of thought on the part of the hearers, and are therefore always losers in a media age dominated by 30-second spots and Twitter. Second, some of the key slogans conjured up by conservatives capsulize opinions which many Americans will simply take at face value because they have probably had one or more experiences of dealing with or reading about things like clear government incompetence. The logical truth that the fact that a government commits incompetent acts does not justify branding it in its entirety as incompetent never enters their minds. They hear, "Government-run health care," for example, and immediately jump to the conservative knee-jerk, "Trust the Government to run health care? Not on your life!" They never stop to consider that the two most affordable and popular health insurance plans in the country are Medicare and Veterans Administration care. Both are not only government-run, they are single-payer. But do you see how long it takes to say that counter-argument? it won't fit on a bumper sticker (see above). Finally, it is in the best interests of the moneyed class to convince the rest of us that these things are true, so they can spend gobs more money on their propaganda than the progressives can even raise in defense. (The Obama campaign success must be seen, at least so far, as an aberration which does nothing to disprove the validity of the basic argument here.) The moneyed class owns the major means of communication. It controls the messaging. Just as history is written by the winners, politics is governed by the wealthy. People with money who don't need any government programs or help or support are not going to subsidize politicians or messages that suggest government is actually good at a lot of things and that its presence is essential to any society that would even claim to be egalitarian. Conservatives are in a clear political minority in this country and their power seems to be shrinking rather than growing. The mass of Americans seem, at some points at least, to be awakening to the reality that conservatives do not have their best interests at heart, that they want to preserve the status quo for themselves and their "kind". And they have carefully crafted and preserved such completely undemocratic institutions as the Senate filibuster and super-majority requirements for taxation all over this country and in Washington to ensure that even when they can't win a majority of Americans' support they can still control everything with an air of legitimacy. That air is foul with the odor of the rotting dreams of Americans who would fight and die for equality if they had a chance to do so. At the end of the day, conservatives do not believe in egalitarianism. They do not believe in any proposed obligation on their part to support those less fortunate than themselves, at least not unless they get to write the rules for how that support is doled out and supervised and cancelled. This is natural; they have the power and they don't want to give it up. That idea works when there are opposing sides who can share power, compromise with one another, and alternate control. But when only the moneyed class and their conservative supporters have power, the system breaks. Socialism demonstrates that when only progressives have power, the system also breaks. 1975 Nobel Prize-winning ultra-conservative economist Milton Friedman has suggested that what he called the Welfare State -- an artificial construct of conservative politicians and writers that never really came to be in the United States -- was, at bottom, a system of violence and coercion "because in order to get other peoples' money with which you intend to do good, you have to get your hands on their money." That implies that nobody with money would voluntarily pay taxes or make contributions to worthy causes without being forced to do so. If that is true, then you have your explanation for why we need progressive taxation; it's the only way to avoid the ultimate movement of a society from democracy to oligarchy. If it is false, then where is the country where egalitarianism and equality hold sway based solely or primarily on the voluntary contributions of the haves to the causes and needs of the have-nots?
