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[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]
Recently Larry Elder provided us with a sample of Kamala Harris’s thinking on various issues. A deep dive into one will demonstrate why her handlers are keeping her sequestered from the media and voters.
Here’s one from the year of her stillborn 2020 presidential primary, when she didn’t get a single vote, and from which she had to ignominiously withdraw:
“So, there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, ‘oh everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So, if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and the support they need, so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”
The first problem is Harris’s typical simplistic and redundant writing style. Phrases like “same place,” “back there,” “equal footing,” “equitable treatment” are vague. We assume she’s talking about socio-economic status and education, which leftists and progressives claim are products of the unjust political and economic order and “systemic” oppression. Since these are the keys to success, “resources and support,” i.e. transfers of money, or subsidized goods and services, must be provided to peoples so “we all end up in the same place” ––in other words, equality of result rather than opportunity, the fly in this word salad.
This sentiment is important, since it lies behind numerous dysfunctional leftist policies, and has been obvious in Democrats’ policy proposals since FDR, and took a quantum leap during Barack Obama’s presidency. Today, they have moved even farther left during the Biden-Harris administration, which along with Harris’s vice-president candidate Tim Walz, promise to leave centrism and common sense completely behind, damaging even further our economy and national character in the pursuit of correcting what is called “income inequality.”
This utopian delusion, moreover, fuels the redistributionist welfare state that with coercive laws and regulations, “rob selected Peter to pay collective Paul,” as Rudyard Kipling put it. As well as being toxic for our economy, these schemes are rife with moral hazards such as destroying the work ethic, reducing our freedom, creating dependence on the state, weakening families, and fostering the notion that the state is responsible for providing us not just a living, but a permanent holiday from accountability and responsibility he virtues necessary for both success and ordered liberty.
In the end, as de Tocqueville put it, radical egalitarianism “reduce men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
Diving deeper, we find that the problem of ambitious political leaders appropriating the wealth of some voters and redistributing it to political clients, appeared at the beginning of democracy 2500 years ago in ancient Athens. Critics of what Aristotle called “extreme democracy” saw the dangers of radical egalitarianism, which “arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”
Centuries later, Alexis de Tocqueville said of the United States that there were citizens with a “depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level.” Earlier, James Madison in Federalist 10 had written regarding these invidious distinctions among men: that “different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results: and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties,” what he calls “factions” that are “sown in the nature of man.”
No policy or technology can rid humanity of resentment of others who are better off, or the impulse to get something for nothing.
For going on a century, we have seen this dynamic at work in our economic policies. The Democrats and progressives have focused on economic class and made “income inequality” or “social justice” the greatest crisis we face. Or as Barack Obama put it in 2013 when he decried a “danger and growing income inequality and lack of upward mobility” –– a crisis to be remedied by the federal government that can level off these “different interests and parties” by redistributing wealth and creating policies that promote the “equality of result.” That’s what Harris is alluding to when she writes, “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”
Finally, the whole notion of “income inequality” is based on a statistical artifact. The census data count only cash income, and leave out the value of government transfers like food stamps, health care, the Earned Income Tax credit, and hundreds of other agencies and programs that redistribute money.
Economists Phil Gramm and John F. Early in a 2019 Wall Street Journal column explain how this slight-of-hand works: “The measure [of income] fails to account for the one-third of all household income paid in federal, state and local taxes. Since households in the top income quintile pay almost two-thirds of all taxes, ignoring the earned income lost to taxes substantially overstates inequality.”
But that’s not all: “Additionally, the census data do not include the annual $1.9 trillion redistributed to American households, mostly to the bottom quintile, 89% of whose resources come from 95 federal programs that transfer wealth. And 80% of this wealth comes from the top 10% of taxpayers. Even after taking into account the state and payroll taxes the bottom quintile pays, when these transfers are added to household income it jumps from the official $4,908 to $50,901. As Gramm and Early conclude, “America already redistributes enough income to compress the income difference between the top and bottom quintiles from 60 to 1 in earned income down to 3.8 to 1 in income received.” That’s why the statistical poor enjoy living standards higher than the average European.
In other words, “income inequality” is one of those manufactured crises that progressives “never let go to waste.” Meanwhile the real crisis of deficits, broke entitlements, and debt that result from borrowing money to keep political clients voting red, are neglected by both parties. But the Dems are the greater offenders, not just increasing and multiplying entitlements, but making policies like student-loan forgiveness and open borders whose purpose is pandering to a base constituency, and creating millions of new voters to help maintain their power.
If elected, we can count on Kamala Harris’s administration to double and triple down on this truly dangerous economic folly predicated on juked statistics and economic ignorance. She’s already talking about instituting price controls in order to fix inflation, even though it’s been tried before in the Seventies and failed. Another bad idea is continuing the stealth nationalization of health in her Medicare for All program––at a cost of $43.9 trillion. And don’t forget her plan to ban fracking, and the disastrous net-zero carbon schemes that have spent multiple billions on eliminating cheap, abundant fossil fuels.
Our country literally can’t afford an economic illiterate peddling expensive, stale leftist clichés like the inflationary $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that Kamala’s tie-breaking vote in the Senate turned to law––especially when we are critically underfunding our defense expenditure as our enemies are increasing their aggression against our security and interests.
you cant fix stupid , you can only medicate it , biden being the exception .
And you can put lipstick and a pantsuit on a donkey and parade it around as Kamala Harris but when all is said and done, it’s still just a dumb jackass!
Nice history, nice column. Excellent.
Egalitarianism is based on the moral code of altruism. The moral code that claims that every man should sacrifice himself for other men. No man should be free to be selfish and pursue his personal happiness for the sake of achieving his selfish and personal happiness.
“If there were such a thing as a passion for equality (not equality de jure, but de facto), it would be obvious to its exponents that there are only two ways to achieve it: either by raising all men to the mountaintop—or by razing the mountains.
The first method is impossible because it is the faculty of volition that determines a man’s stature and actions; but the nearest approach to it was demonstrated by the United States and capitalism, which protected the freedom, the rewards and the incentives for every individual’s achievement, each to the extent of his ability and ambition, thus raising the intellectual, moral and economic state of the whole society.
The second method is impossible because, if mankind were leveled down to the common denominator of its least competent members, it would not be able to survive (and its best would not choose to survive on such terms).
Yet it is the second method that the altruist egalitarians are pursuing. The greater the evidence of their policy’s consequences, i.e., the greater the spread of misery, of injustice, of vicious inequality throughout the world, the more frantic their pursuit—which is one demonstration of the fact that there is no such thing as a benevolent passion for equality and that the claim to it is only a rationalization to cover a passionate hatred of the good for being the good.” – Ayn Rand, “The Age of Envy”
Still beating the dead fish of altruism, as always. And you have the ever increasing downvote tally to prove it. I guess you are only good for a couple of sentences followed by your beyond boring Fuhrer-et with another incomprehensible lecture on the same.
I guess I better crack open a beer or two because the THX altruism drinking game is in effect. Ah that’s better. Nothing like a cold one to wash out the bitter taste of Objectivist failure…..right?
Time to call your 5-7 sycophant votes to bolster your phony non-existent upvotes. I must ask, what permanent great change did the Randian philosophy cause?
I’m glad you can still afford to buy beer. I like a cold one now and then but here in CA, a six pack costs more than ten dollars and a case costs more than twenty. A 1.75 liter (whatever a liter is, I don’t speak Nazi) bottle of vodka only costs ten or eleven bucks, and that shit will knock you on your ass.
I think I’ll buy a six pack or twelve pack the next time I go to the store, though. Here in San Jose there isn’t a good selection of beer, though. Mostly IPAs, which taste like bitter horse piss (not that “I’ve ever drank horse piss) and Bud, Coors and Millers, which are close to water, as Monty Python said. I think it was John Cleese.
Around here you won’t find a porter or stout and no ales either. About the best on offer is Blue Moon Belgian Wietbier, which is crisp and tasty but pretty light. You can drink a whole sixpack and not even get buzzed.
Jeff, time to bail on Crapifornia. Why are you staying there? I got out 10 years ago.
In AZ gas is cheaper and even though Guv Hobbs cheated her way into office, she is unpopular and corrupt and will hopefully be defeated in 100 days, or the next time she runs.
re: beer….Kilt Lifter is still reasonable. But I buy Vitale Vodka @ 12.99 at Albertsons until it goes off sale in Dec. And there is an even bigger bottle of the Kirkland brand at Costco for the same price. Just bought one yesterday. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between those two and Grey Goose. Vodka is my buzz of choice.
Our sniffy friend in NYC probably hates the cheaper stuff but then, he hates football and baseball too 🙂
If the D-Backs keep winning it looks like they are playoff bound again. Until the Cards dump Murray at QB they are going no where.
Yeah, it’s like the surface of the sun for three months out of the year but the bad heat is starting to abate. Then we get into the holiday/Spring sweet spot for 9 months. Killer temps and weather for winter and the spring.
You’re kidding! so man is a what? Capable of what? / Responsible to nothing but his enate self-ordain folly. Very Jewish mentality. worth! The Rapture.
Reading and reflecting upon the fractured thinking of KH, especially when she addresses equality and equity, the words of Alexander Hamilton come to mind:
“Free people are not equal and equal people are not free.”
Excellent article.
I need to remember that quote.
which quote is that — this is silly Thursday — I’m waiting for 2 of my favorite commentators to weigh in on each other — how can you not be silly with the demonic silly demons of the DNC spewing their lies and BS and swamp shite across the already damaged Chicago and the media — what lies
Great quote, but surprising coming from a Federalist who always thought that the average American colonist was too stupid/ignorant to rule himself.
The Main Stream Media has been helping the candidates cover up their true agenda, without being exposed, and it isn’t about Hope. Its about the. Fundamental Change that Obama started, from Capitalism to Marxism.
It should be well known by now who controls the MSM in this country and what their agenda is. Their interests aligns more with the interests of the Chinese communist party than anything American based. Moreover, it’s nothing new and has been that way for decades.
What’s shocking is that most Americans naively (and dangerously) think that the American media is honest and objective media.
That notion can be easily disproved. Proof? CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS. most printed news rags, etc.. QED.
Vacuous promises, interpreted however the hearer would like make up the meatless hamburger of the DNC message. That ‘joy and hope’ line is insulting in its dependence upon the ignorance of the audience.
Who would order a meat light burger delivered by a clown car full of Marxists?
Face it, thanks to “progressive” policies the Constitution is largely dead. Much of what the DC establishment does is outside enumerated powers—meaning the people had no voice via the amendment process and DC simply usurped the power. The vast majority of law is made by regulatory bureaucracies that represent an unconstitutional delegation of Congress’ lawmaking power (another way to ensure the people have no voice that might interfere with DC masterminds). Supposed law enforcement agencies—FBI, DHS, IRS, DOJ, etc.—act to suppress free speech, suppress 2nd Amendment rights, loot the people, thwart execution of laws inconvenient to leftist programs, and otherwise bludgeon citizens into compliance with official state policy. Combatting this is not a political choice, it’s a moral imperative for every decent human being remaining in America.
You now why Prof Thomas Powell doesn’t comment on stupid Cackling Kamalala? Because Dr. Powell does not do stupid — it’s like the gum or worse on the bottom of his shoes he has to get off — of course I can hear in Dr Thomas Powell’s melodic voice — “you can’t fix stupid, there is no vaxx for stupid but stupid is very infectious in today’s so-called informed public with computer access”
Look at that wrinkly forehead, fake eyebrows, jowls and turkey neck. What a skank. Some conservatives say she’s attractive which is crazy. Would any of them fuck her? I sincerely doubt it. I know I wouldn’t.
My takeaway from her speech is that she’s a communist.
Destroying the country economically is their goal, and they’re almost there.