When conservatives struggle against the left-wing impetus toward more socialism and more statism, we have a fundamental problem because the odds are stacked against us. We are ourselves funding, through our taxes, the very same operations and organizations which constitute the real base of the democrat party.
Just look in Craigslist for Employment advertising in the not-for-profit category. The numbers of them out there are staggering.
Dan Greenfield explains that we can win in the long run by reducing the size of our adversary, simply by defunding it.
Take a look at your tax bill. Take a look at your property taxes, especially. Much of the money you pay goes to fund the infrastructure of the left, its government bureaucracies and its non-governmental organizations, which still rake in fortunes in government grants. That infrastructure is wrapped up in a thousand divisions and causes, many of which sound benign, from health to civil rights, from education to diplomacy, from the environment to better government, all of which sound nice at a distance, but exist to embed and perpetuate the power relationships of the left.
The right does not need this kind of infrastructure. A system that is not out to control everyone’s behavior all the time, that is not looking to turn every tenth person into another warm body in its endless war against individual freedom, does not need this kind of manpower or indoctrination. Grandiosity, the sheer size of the left, makes it vulnerable. That size is built on a maze of groups, agendas, laws and guidelines in the name of a thousand causes, which intersect with one another to form the beast that we are up against.
The beast is big, but it’s vulnerable. It needs power and money to live. It gains that power by serving as an intermediary between people and the government, even when it is the government. The more intermediaries it adds on, to demand one thing or another, to organize the people, while demanding that the government listen to the people it has organized, while paradoxically taking grant money from the government to organize the people to demand that the government listen to them– the more power and money it gains.
The first and most popular attack on the beast is to take away its compulsory powers. It’s popular because Americans don’t like being compelled to do things. Decades of brainwashing have gotten people to repeat some, “It’s for our own good” talking points. But it’s still unpopular, and most people are not so far gone, that they won’t cheer when given a way to opt out.
W. C. Taqiyya
Of course, your primary point is correct. De-funding would diminish the ability of the government to interfere. Overlooked in this piece however are the rather large impediments to this objective. First, the people of this nation, most of them, rely on the government, at least to some degree, for their sustenance. They like their goodies, they always vote for more goodies and they don’t want their goodies to go away. Americans are hooked up and plugged into the government. Matrix style. Second, the president, congress, governors, legislatures and courts at every level from local to national will never volunteer to officiate at their own demise. They enjoy their power and they live to pass out gobs of cash, never forgetting to enrich each other and their clerks. Further, this applies equally to republican and democrat alike. Thus, no executive orders, legislative initiatives or court rulings to reduce funding will ever appear. The only way to de-fund the government is to organize a large scale refusal to pay taxes. Like, if the Tea party grew some stones. However, because almost every financial transaction is, at some point, electronic, the government can just take the money. Plus fines and fees and interest of course. In addition, the government can seize your property and garnish your pay. So, unless at least several million middle and upper class folks decide to drop out of the system, de-funding will remain a pipe dream. Let me ask for a show of hands please, who is willing to go underground and risk arrest for this cause? Nobody? That’s what I thought. Yes, I know about electing Tea party candidates. Please check out the Cato report on how they voted since being elected. It seems many of those esteemed fiscal conservatives left their ideals at the door of Congress. Money and power corrupts, it has always been that way.
Judith
Where is the “how” part in this piece?
“The first and most popular attack on the beast is to take away its compulsory powers.”
Which compulsory powers? The power to tax? Ain’t gonna happen. Even if the inevitable isn’t as dark as W. C. TAQIYYA suggests (but he may be right and it’s surely an ongoing hazard) – we will always have a government that collects taxes.
I don’t know what the concrete steps are – defund ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and presumably many others? I’d be glad to have that happen and hopefully some will be in a more strongly Tea Party Republican Congress. (I’m a little more optimistic than Taqiyya.)
I clicked on this link for the “how” part. There was absolutely none.
Judith
P.S. But, ending or at least strongly curtailing the collective bargaining rights of public unions is a big step forward.
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