Religion Taxes And Programs - Road to the Middle Class

MANY DEMOCRATS think they are losing because Karl Rove is a genius or because the American people are dumb. But maybe they are losing because they are wrong on the issues.

The first thing that Democrats have got wrong is their war on religion. The party that was once the champion of Catholic Irish and Italians has become a bigoted enemy of all enthusiastic Christianity. In the Fall 2002 Public Interest, Bolce and De Maio found that about half the delegates to the 1992 Democratic National Convention frankly hated “fundamentalist Christians.” They rated them at zero on a “feelings thermometer” from 0 to 100. After 11/2, the anti-religious diatribes of Dowd, Kinsley, and Krugman tell us that things have got worse. What is there in the Democratic program of tolerance, diversity, and helping the underprivileged that requires this anti-religious bigotry?

The second thing that Democrats have got wrong is their war on Reagan-Bush economics. Democrats cannot bring themselves to admit that the Reagan-Bush program of sound money and low tax rates is good for America. So they flop around with fashionable diversions like Rubinomics, the notion that budget balancing promotes lower interest rates. Meanwhile the world is illuminated with the rocketing red glare of nations like Ireland, Russia, and China that have pushed tax rates down and growth rates up.

The third thing that Democrats have got wrong is their one-size-fits-all philosophy of government, the idea that the only way to shape society is through comprehensive and mandatory government programs—government education, government pensions, and government health insurance—run by an enlightened and educated elite. The one-size-fits-all folly began in the 1830s and 1840s when today’s elite Democrats were high-toned Whigs and decided, in reaction to the populist Jacksonian Democrats, that the nation needed to educate its children to Americanism in a centralized and uniform Common School system. Since then, as Progressives, New Dealers, and Great Society reformers they have applied the one-size-fits-all education template to social insurance, pensions, health care, and the environment. Today, Republicans are trying to tame these monopoly giants before they bankrupt the nation—with no help from Democrats.

If the Democrats could just tame their obsession with these three shibboleths, they would take power from the Republicans in a moment.

Democrats could call off their war on enthusiastic Christianity and still practice their own religion of creativity. Tolerance, remember, means putting up with people when you disagree with them.

Democrats could call off their war on low tax rates without betraying their commitment to the poor and the marginalized. Come on Democrats! What do you really want? To make the rich pay for your programs, or to punish them with punitive rates? The share of income taxes paid by the richest Americans has gone up during the last quarter-century of Republican tax cuts. So what’s the problem?

Democrats could call off their knee-jerk defence of the one-size-fits-all welfare state and work with Republicans to reform it. The idea is to empower people, isn’t it, rather than experts and bureaucrats?

The dirty little secret is that if the Democrats could do these three little things, there wouldn’t be a need for Republicans any more. Democrats would get to rule the world. But don’t hold your breath.

It seems more likely that the Democratic war on religion, the hatred of supply-side economics, and the devotion to government solutions is hardening into a liberal fundamentalism. Just as Social Gospelers like Harvard President Charles W. Eliot a century ago provoked traditional Christians into returning to the “fundamentals,” the success of Republican conservatism is driving Democrats back to their liberal fundamentals, the glorious days of FDR, Social Security, Give-‘Em-Hell-Harry, Happy Days Are Here Again, and the Civil Rights Movement when Democrats were winning and all was right with the world.

You have to feel for the Democrats. Twelve years ago, when Bill Clinton won the presidency, it really looked as though happy days were here again after the Reagan nightmare. The Democrats had won back the White House and had a solid Democratic Congress. Then the Republicans unaccountably won the Congress in the sweeping mid-term election of 1994. Then the dastardly Clinton haters nearly drove the reelected president from office in 1998. Then the Republicans “stole” the election in 2000. Then the Republicans won back the Senate in 2002. Then the stupid/incompetent/evil Bush won reelection in 2004, and increased majorities in both House and Senate. How much worse could it get?

It could get a lot worse. In The New York Times readers reacted strongly to an article recently that suggested that maybe Democrats should get more friendly to religion. Do that and we’re out of here, they wrote in several letters to the editor.

Go ahead, pal. Make my day.

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

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Religion, Taxes, and Programs

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