“No war, no warming,” sign carried by arrested protester in recent demonstration. We have
seen the future and it has lost the use of the conjunctive.
The sign above is instructive to show the peculiar combination of causes that empowers
these motley crews of protesters to gather in various cities around the world. Driven by
a hodgepodge of pseudo scientific claptrap, anti-business and anti-work notions and
propelled by the results of a failed educational system these tribes are joined mainly by
their desire to complain and get something for free.
They are trying to create a new system of government: an Idiocracy. A word I give credit
for the creation to filmmaker Mike Judge from the movie of the same title. Despite the
amusement we derive reading their hodgepodge of signs and applaud the artistic talent to
build various papier-mâché models of President Bush and cardboard coffins to be carried
around on their shoulders we must admit an Idiocracy is emblematic of failed governence.
Years of pandering public policy has resulted in whole swaths of people who, as Ronald
Regan put it, know so much that isn’t true. The occasional facts ladled into this mess
created by antagonism toward the successful and productive is like steak sauce on an
especially tough piece of meat.
These observations arise as we listen to the Democratic spending proposals as each
presidential hopeful ups the ante on government giveaways, and Republicans try and paint
themselves as Ronald Reagan and their opponents as Eugene V. Debs. The Democratic side
approaches a nomination like a poker game, each trying to raise the ante of what they
would give away in return for votes. This transfer of wealth for a trip to the voting
booth has resulted in a series of policies that have rendered this Idiocracy the
constituency of the left and if they are not careful they will become slaves to it.
The creation began with President Kennedy drafting a so-called Harvard brain trust to run
the government. Thereafter, under liberal Democrat administrations we have had groups of
academics that couldn’t run a washing machine trying to decide how General Motors should
build cars. The country became their experiment and the national petri dish was
inoculated with all types of mad scientist concoctions. As the years passed each liberal
administration managed to lower the bar further for what it took to be an acceptable and
productive member of society. The direction seemingly now being proposed by presidential
contenders on the left would place the country just somewhat South in its political
philosophy of Great Britain in the mid 1970s. A period that even most of the British
Labour party would admit was a failure.
But we don’t have to look off our shores to see the results that intense government
involvement in society can create. We have only to look at Washington D. C., not the
capitol, but the city. Intense management by government and liberal oversight has
conspired to create a situation where per capita tax collection is in some cases twice
surrounding cities and towns, yet the city still manages to overspend its budget by $1,000
per resident. The result of these policies beginning in the 90s has driven families,
black and white, out, destroyed business and created a climate to which living in some
parts of the city is more of a sentence than an opportunity. It has been ruled over by a
mayor filmed doing crack cocaine and then reelected to city council on a platform of
income-redistribution and victimhood. The District of Columbia has managed to create a
police force which is the envy of none and a school system that produces students who for
the most part are so disserved by the educational process they should be given their money
back.
This would be our future if one answers the sirens song of the checks promised to be
written by the liberal left in its quest for the White House. They would create either by
accident or design a sad shell of a country eventually reduced to providing bread and
circuses for those who know no better. Just say no to Idiocracy.
