Hillary Clinton On Her Own - Road to the Middle Class

WE’VE ALREADY expectorated here on Sen. Clinton’s characterization of President Bush’s Ownership Society as an “on your own” society. It is deeply offensive to the American spirit to claim that the independence secured to Americans by their work and wealth is a selfish and individualistic thing.

Of course, Rich Lowry, comments

she offers a collectivist vision of “shared responsibility for shared prosperity,” making the case for it based on a farrago of mistruths about the state of the economy

And the first mistruth is the idea that a high-tax high-spending state has anything to do with sharing anything. Government is always about force and compulsion. It is the democratic majority voting to tax the rest of the country to spend money on its projects. Sharing and responsibility are things that people do out of trust and reciprocity, not out of compulsion.

Now she wants “to hit the restart button on the 21st century and redo it the right way,” she says.

Sorry, Senator. I’d say that the achievement of President Bush in avoiding a major economic meltdown in 2001-2002 (remember: it was the biggest bear market of our lives) is something to be celebrated on both sides of the aisle. It makes the idea of hitting the restart button not merely ignorant but dangerous. You want to go back and go through all that again? And risk getting the policy mix wrong? And put the American people in harm’s way again? Come on Senator, you know better than that.

The problem with speeches by Democratic politicians that utterly misrepresent the past, that completely miss the contribution of spending restraint and capital gains tax cuts to the prosperity of the 1990s, that utterly blanks out on the touch-and-go months of 2001-2002 in the aftermath of the collapse of the tech bubble, is that they fail to educate the very ignorant Democratic party faithful about economic reality.

You could say that Democratic leaders and the Democratic base like it that way. But the American people are going to have to pay for this misrepresentation some time down the road.

Because when you don’t look at the past with an open mind it means that you are going to have to learn the lessons of the past the hard way.

And that, in an elite politician like Senator Clinton, is inexcusable.

Because it is never the suits that pay the price. It is the ordinary people.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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