Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is on the campaign trail with the Senate seat once virtually owned by Ted Kennedy and currently occupied by Scott Brown as her goal. She’s a good speaker, and knows her liberal audience well. Recent comments in support of higher taxes for the wealthy have gone viral on the internet and are quoted here for purposes of rebuttal:
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
All good propaganda falls into one of two categories. One is the lie so big and bold that it’s difficult to imagine someone making such a claim if it weren’t true. An example might be, “The Tea Party is a direct spinoff of the KKK.” This type of propaganda is mostly meant to inspire those that already believe or want to believe rather than to convince skeptics. It might be thought of as inspirational preaching to the choir.
The second type of propaganda is based on enough truth to sound believable and is designed to convince those unaccustomed to critical thinking. Ms. Warren’s comments are a very nice example of this type, but they also contain an element of the first type with the implied Big Lie that her audience wants to believe, “The rich pay no taxes”. She delivers the lie not explicitly, but by repeating over and over that “the rest of us” pay, implying that the evil rich being addressed do not. This double approach propaganda is very effective and was well delivered and has liberals posting her comments all over the internet. An informed response is needed.
It’s true that no industrialist or rich business tycoon did his or her work in a vacuum; since earliest times societies have advanced together and have established and paid for governments meant to protect citizens from violence, and provide essential services that are impractical for private entities to provide. But it’s also true that in every era there have been a small minority that stood out as doing more, creating more, inventing more, pulling harder on the cart of progress than their fellows. There have also been those that hindered progress – clinging to the status quo and throwing obstacles into the path of the innovators.
During centuries of western civilization clearly drawn class lines made education and opportunity available only to the aristocracy intermingled with the clergy. With rare exceptions both the innovators and the hinderers were members of these elite estates while common society was simply along for the ride, but was never-the-less important as workers, consumers, and taxpayers – in some countries practically the only taxpayers. Those class lines were blurred in England by the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution in the seventeenth century, and virtually eliminated on this continent by the founding of The United States of America a hundred years later, but Ms. Warren seems to think she’s in pre-revolutionary France where clergy and nobility were exempt from most taxes. She seems to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the left’s favorite advocate of the “Social Contract” that she mentions, but Rousseau had valid reason to oppose hereditary aristocracy; Ms. Warren has no such reasons and no aristocracy to oppose, yet chastises an imagined one to impress her audience.
The second type of propaganda is based on enough truth to sound believable and is designed to convince those unaccustomed to critical thinking. Ms. Warren’s comments are a very nice example of this type, but they also contain an element of the first type with the implied Big Lie that her audience wants to believe, “The rich pay no taxes”. She delivers the lie not explicitly, but by repeating over and over that “the rest of us” pay, implying that the evil rich being addressed do not. This double approach propaganda is very effective and was well delivered and has liberals posting her comments all over the internet. An informed response is needed.
It’s true that no industrialist or rich business tycoon did his or her work in a vacuum; since earliest times societies have advanced together and have established and paid for governments meant to protect citizens from violence, and provide essential services that are impractical for private entities to provide. But it’s also true that in every era there have been a small minority that stood out as doing more, creating more, inventing more, pulling harder on the cart of progress than their fellows. There have also been those that hindered progress – clinging to the status quo and throwing obstacles into the path of the innovators.
During centuries of western civilization clearly drawn class lines made education and opportunity available only to the aristocracy intermingled with the clergy. With rare exceptions both the innovators and the hinderers were members of these elite estates while common society was simply along for the ride, but was never-the-less important as workers, consumers, and taxpayers – in some countries practically the only taxpayers. Those class lines were blurred in England by the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution in the seventeenth century, and virtually eliminated on this continent by the founding of The United States of America a hundred years later, but Ms. Warren seems to think she’s in pre-revolutionary France where clergy and nobility were exempt from most taxes. She seems to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the left’s favorite advocate of the “Social Contract” that she mentions, but Rousseau had valid reason to oppose hereditary aristocracy; Ms. Warren has no such reasons and no aristocracy to oppose, yet chastises an imagined one to impress her audience.
Do factory owners use government provided services? Of course they do - we all do; but while they pay at least their fair share toward the cost of such services, we can’t all say we share in that part of the equation. Except for the implied Big Lie which she is smart enough to not state explicitly, Ms. Warren’s statements are meaningless bits of truth – she points out that industrialists use government provided services – OK, stipulated. She demands that they pay a “hunk” of their profits in taxes – OK, what’s the point? They already are.
We all use government services; we don’t all “pay forward for the next kid that comes along”, but the “rich” people that Ms. Warren addresses so caustically for the benefit of her liberal audience certainly do, and much more so than most of that audience, the choir to whom she preaches.
