The American Spectator : The Limitless Left

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The Limitless Left

By J.T. Young on 8.6.09 @ 6:07AM

Taxing and spending are mere starting points on it is agenda.

Two recent cases show the Supreme Court's limits and the Left's lack thereof. Decided as the Court's session closed, the cases struck at the bases of the Voting Rights Act in Texas and affirmative action in New Haven, Connecticut. They also laid bare the foundation of all the Left's programs: a lack of limits. This pervasive absence in the Left's agenda is more disturbing than any particular program: a willingness, if not eagerness, for unchecked government.

In the Texas Voting Rights case, the Supreme Court stopped just short of overturning the entire underlying statute. In the New Haven firefighters' complaint of reverse discrimination, the Court ruled for the plaintiffs and against the city, which had thrown out the results of an exam inconveniently failing to deliver the diversity it sought.

Interesting on their own, the cases are even more revealing of the Left's broader lack of limits to its actions. This broader trait is most often overlooked because our gaze is focused on particular programs. Yet the Left is as much defined by its lack of limits as it is by its taxing and spending. In the end, its policies become truly egregious precisely because it sets no limits to its goals.

In many of the Left's programs, the lack of their limits -- an end date, the total cost, the number of people qualifying, even the actual goals to be achieved -- are all explicit. Take funding for the arts. Despite the arts existing without public funding, the Left deems forced funding necessary, with no mention made that a time will come when it is not. However, there are many areas in which the public feels uneasy about government intrusion. Here, the lack of limits on such intrusion is implicit.

In both cases, the Left's programs are intended to go on forever -- like the dangling carrot leading a mule, the goal is forever seen, but never attained. Once they have intruded in an area, programs will not only continue, but continue to expand.

This lack of limits is endemic to the Left, because it eschews market solutions. As a result, there is no external regulator to government in its paradigm. In contrast, conservatives believe in markets -- that private citizens, free to pursue their own solutions, are the best regulator of their own conduct, affairs, and resources. Within a market, the interplay between the public's demand and a good's supply governs the extent any activity is pursued. Where markets already prevail, the goal is minimum interference. Where markets could exist, they are to be encouraged.

The Left dismisses the validity of such outcomes -- ultimately dismissing the public's values themselves. However, the question remains: If not the markets, what? What are the boundaries on the Left and its actions, other than the Left itself and its opinions?

The Left's opinion on limits is like Justice Potter Stewart's on pornography: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material but I know it when I see it." The problem is that the Left forever fails to see them. When it comes to taxing, to spending, to redistributing wealth, the Left cannot and will not say when is enough or where to end.

The Left is forever focused on the failings of the free market. Unfortunately, we tend to allow the markets to be put on the defensive -- despite the obvious benefits they provide throughout society -- without questioning the alternative. What is the Left's external regulator to government power? Its own good intentions should not be a comforting answer.

However one feels about markets, it is inescapable that they offer the Right something that the Left's paradigm does not: an external check on government's power. This is not an argument on market's economic efficiency, which is already proven by simply looking at where markets do not exist. It is an argument for markets' political and governing importance as well.

This argument is not new. It was propounded decades ago by Nobel economist F.A. Hayek. In his 1944 classic work, The Road to Serfdom, he argued: "…the 'substitution of political for economic power' now so often demanded means necessarily the substitution of power from which there is no escape for a power which is always limited."

It is not enough to say we will limit government -- even if the saying is codified in the Constitution -- without actually having a mechanism for limiting it. The continual confrontation between government and markets goes well beyond economic and social issues. It goes to the very basis of government and liberty itself.

topics:
Liberalism, Government Growth

About the Author

J.T. Young served in the Department of Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004 and as a Congressional staff member from 1987 to 2000.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (34) | Leave a comment

Mike| 8.6.09 @ 9:28AM

Want to know what the country would look like if the tea-baggers, the town meeting thugs, the birthers and other various and sundry right wing nuts gain control? Check out Jefferson County Alabama.

maximumrandb| 8.6.09 @ 9:32AM

A very good article. Interestingly, Faoud Ajami in today's WSJ also assails the lack of property and a private sector to countervail excessive government power as one reason the Arab states remain political autocracies mired in poverty.

Tom| 8.6.09 @ 9:34AM

To Mike - Jefferson County Alabama is run by left-leaning bureaucrats who have spent the county into oblivion just as Obama is trying to do the same for our country.

KC| 8.6.09 @ 10:00AM

Mike has never been to B'ham and has no clue who has been minding the store in recent years...

ncatty| 8.6.09 @ 10:00AM

Thank goodness we have the Chinese to exert a check on our government spending. And they are Communists!

Gill O’Teen ✝✡| 8.6.09 @ 10:01AM

Unfortunately, our foolish government will not understand a limit until it runs out of our money and the Chinese quit handing it blank checks.

pete the mediocre| 8.6.09 @ 10:44AM

Ronaldus Maximus used to say that the closest thing to eternal life on earth is a government program.

Mike| 8.6.09 @ 11:32AM

Tom- Left leaning bureaucrats ( or any other kind of bureaucrat for that matter) don't set tax rates or make policy. KC - Rino or Dino- who cares. These are people who think government is the problem, not the solution and that if you lower everybody's taxes revenue will magically flow into the government's coffers. Hasn't quite worked out. Think government is a problem, you get bad politicians. Fight taxation at every turn, the government goes broke. Forget party labels, these are the spiritual heir of Reagan and Laffer.

L. Ross| 8.6.09 @ 11:44AM

Mike:

Let's try a thought experiment, shall we?

Let's say that the government, in an effort to raise tax rates, taxed all wages at 100%. Almost everyone would immediately cease working (at least at any job the government could see), and net taxes would drop to nothing. Just the same as if taxes had been set at 0%. Assuming you desire the greatest amount of tax revenue from the public's efforts to earn a living (a position I don't think is moral, I would prefer taxes to be the minimum required to provide basic services) you would have to agree that the rate of taxation which will result in the greatest tax input into public coffers is somewhere between 0% and 100%, since those two extremes yield a net return of nothing.

Mike, that IS the science of the "Laffer Curve". There is an optimal tax rate, and taxing beyond that rate will result in lower tax revenues. How you can be so stupid to not comprehend this boggles my mind. Learn something before you post.

pete the mediocre| 8.6.09 @ 11:58AM

"Let's try a thought experiment, shall we?"

Thinking might tend to be a problem for Mike. He evidently has no problem with The Annointed One renigging on campaign tax promises to the middle class.

Mike| 8.6.09 @ 12:04PM

L. Ross,

I am well aware of this thought experiment. One problem. In the real world when government lowers taxes, the government runs a deficit and adds to the national debt. The tax revenues don't keep expanding over time which is a favorite fiction of those who believe in supply side economics. What some people refuse to accept, or just don't get, is that we are all "socialists" now. I love the people who are on Medicare protesting health care reform at town hall meetings. I love people who cry out for weapons systems the Pentagon doesn't need or want just to keep jobs (welfare by any other name). I love bankers who run to the government for a bailout when they destroy their own institutions and nearly destroy the world economy. I mean, DUH!!!

Warrior| 8.6.09 @ 12:30PM

Governments should never be allowed to run a debt. Politicians did not include a cap (I believe it was 17% that was debated) when instituting the income tax because in their shortsidedness they believed the government would never have to resort to a figure that high.

I encourage every legal voting citizen to primary the incumbents. While it didn't work in Conn. last cycle, it definitely sends a message.

L. Ross| 8.6.09 @ 12:36PM

Mike:

Alright, you agree that there is an optimal tax rate for raising the most taxes from a population. The big question is, "What is that tax rate, and how do we know that we aren't above it?"

Your knee-jerk desire to raise taxes is what I have problems with. If you said, "We need to increase tax revenues," you would have an intellectual leg to stand on. The question is, what is the best tax policy to raise revenues, if that is your goal.

Regarding weapons systems the Pentagon doesn't need or want, take it from a career USAF pilot. We do want those weapons systems. We do need those weapons systems. It is just that we have even more pressing priorities in an era of a shrinking military and shrinking budgets.

If you are discussing the F-22 program, we originally planned to purchase 500 of them and purchased just under 200 of them. That means we will have roughly 60 to 100 tops available for combat use at any given time. Hardly what I would call an overwhelming force.

If you doubt that the military is shrinking, consider this. When we were in Desert Storm, we used F-4's, F-111's, FB-111's, EF-111's, had a fleet of 100 B-1's, hundreds of B-52's, had over 600 KC-135's, hundreds of C-141's, A-7's, F-15's and F-16's. All the F-4's, F-111 variants, C-141's, and A-7's have been retired. Our B-52 fleet is down to less than 60, our B-1 fleet is about 66, our KC-135 fleet is 400. They are looking to retire about 500 F-15's and replace them with less than 200 F-22's. The Air Force is trying so hard to do more with less that soon, we will be qualified to do anything with nothing.

Paul| 8.6.09 @ 12:38PM

Mike,
It's not that revenue hasn't increased as rates have fallen. Revenue was at record levels after the Bush tax cuts but so was spending. The problem is that the politicians (R&D) increase spending faster.

William| 8.6.09 @ 12:42PM

Mike, the small, twisted, raging Pol Pot that lives inside your heart will never, ever accomplish the hivemind objectives over Americans.

In the long run all of you hivemind commissars will fail utterly, as you always do.

If you are lucky, perhaps you will be reincarnated as a red ant.

JP| 8.6.09 @ 1:34PM

Guys,
Mike is aka Bob. Bob is the only one here with a anti-supply-side fetish. Apparently he harbors some deep animosity to Reagan, Kemp, Wanniski, Laffer, et als.

You see Mike (or Bob) the federal government is already spending nearly $4 trillion of the public's shrinking pile of wealth. Medicare, even if left alone, is due to go bankrupt in 8 years. And the total amount of unfunded liabilities now facing the US in the form of Social Security and Medicare entitlements is over $40 trillion. The total net worth of the US in 2005 was $35 trillion. Do the math. There isn't enough wealth (stored, or otherwise) to pay off these liabilities. It isn't a matter of philosophy, but math. The 2 conerstones of the socialist agenda are starkly unsustainable. Even if the US and the world enjoyed 4% GDP growth for the next 50 years (which is highly unlikely), we still cannot afford either Medicare or Social Security as they are currently funded.

There is one way out, but it is a little late in the game to adapt it. If every family produced 5-6 children for the next 3 generations, and the US could still grow the GDP at an average rate of 2-3%, and the taxpayer was willing to see increases in both Medicare and Social Security payroll taxes of 20%, these 2 programs could survive. As of now, there just are not enough taxpayers with the income to fund either Social Security or Medicare.

Tony in Central PA| 8.6.09 @ 2:07PM

A lot of this liberal legislation being argued at this point really does fit in with the overused analogy of rearranging the deck chairs on the " Titannic ". We have a debt problem that is simply not going to disappear. If nothing else, this debt is going to economically enslave future generations of Americans. The default response from this Administration and most Democrats is to massively enlarge the government. Create programs that will become additional entitlements which will mire us even deeper in debt. Tax businesses into exiting our borders. Enact legislation that will further destroy the fabric of a successful society. These are their answers to everything and yes, they are without limit or reason.

Michael Tomlinson| 8.6.09 @ 2:46PM

Mike want to know how bad off the nation is under Obama and Democrats look at the numbers on unemployment, foreclosures, the sluggish or near dead retail market (one exception is the sell of guns and ammunition) and the efforts by Obama and Democrats to turn America into a Stasi state.

Anything wrong in the great state of Alabama or this country can be laid at the door of Barack Obama and the tax and spend Democrats.

Under Bush and Republicans things were so much better. A few fact from the Bureau of Labor. Jobs created under President George W. Bush averaged 19,000 per month from January 2001 through January 2009 (since Obama has taken office monthly a minimum of 500,000 Americans lose their jobs). During the time Republicans held Congress (the Bush years), jobs grew from 132.469 million to 137.180 million. That’s an increase in 4.7 million jobs for an average of 65,000 per month for 72 months. That period includes the impact of the 2001 recession inherited from the Clinton administration, the 2001 terrorist attacks and the most economially damaging natural disaster in the US -- Hurricane Katrina (made worse by Democrat Governor Blanco and Democrat Mayor Nagle).

Democrats took control of the House in January of 2007. Since that time, the U.S. has lost 5.488 million jobs, in 29 months. That’s an average of 189,000 jobs lost per month.

If Obama and Democrats keep at it they will successfully in one year killed millions of jobs in the US while creating tens of million in India and China.

Take heart freedom loving Americans unless Democrats steal the elections next year, as they routinely do to "win" office, the green shoots of freedom will be sprouting as more Republicans are seated in Congress.

Al Adab| 8.6.09 @ 2:48PM

Indeed the Left is on the march. In lockstep (goosestep?) they are forcing the rest to share their house of mirrors world view. Unfortunately, we are being forced to pay for these grand designs. It was Hayek who wrote "The road to serfdom". He warned us where statism led and now we see for ourselves the result and are aghast.

A failure to end this remorseless jugernaut of power and coercion by legislative action, leaves us little choice in opposition. Forbid it that other recourse becomes our only path. Let our legislatures and Congress understand that Liberty is more important than all the social causes they tout. It must end somewhere and the time is now.

RDN in Houston| 8.6.09 @ 2:50PM

I've noticed that many of the comments to free market, conservative oriented columns are opened by a statist or statist myna bird, aka Mike today. Do these people have a real job or are they being paid by Moveon.org or some other leftist blog to sit at the computer all day and transmit propaganda? Who are these moonbats and who supports them?

Ken| 8.6.09 @ 3:13PM

Mr. Young............WOW!!!!!!!

Splendid article. You nailed it, guy!

Thank ou for the clarity.

ben| 8.6.09 @ 3:24PM

Want to know what the country would look like if the Collectivists, Multiculteralists, Truthers and others from the Socialist left continue their policies of power, corruption and oppression? Check out Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Broke California, Broke New York, Broke Massachussetes, Broke and unemployed Europe, Totalitarian Venezuela, etc, etc, etc.

Ken (old Texican)| 8.6.09 @ 3:37PM

Our brilliant AmSpec IT guys delete all posts with my former user name.

Is'nt that cool? Some ACORN fellow stole my identity, and Amspec doesn't have another answer.
Beware, guys, that words may be put in YOUR mouth here.
All I can advise is contact the editors.
I did so via phone... see "contact" on left.

You guys are simply seeing the BEGINNINGS of the shape of our country if these liars and communists are allowed to spread their deceit.

Al Adab| 8.6.09 @ 5:46PM

KEN (old texican?)

If that is you I've wondered where you were hiding.

My suggestion is for everyone here to forward these "fishy" posts to flag@whitehouse.gov and bring their servers down under the load of a million posts. Let's bury them in their own stew.

Ken| 8.6.09 @ 6:15PM

Old Adab
Been there...done that!

As of 2 this afternoon some twenty million folks did the same after one of Rush' caller said HE was.

Cool huh?

I am working feverishly on a new web site...will keep you guys posted...Team uniforms are coming off the press.

Marc Jeric| 8.6.09 @ 6:21PM

If the "cash for clunkers" is so good for reviving the now union-owned car industry, then I can propose to those congressional morons more such ideas. For example, let us burn all houses older than 20 years and give the newly homeless a $50,000 check to buy a new house. A brand new housing industry boom! I will leave now - you can add new ideas here; but do not forget that old French economists Bastiat from 200 hundred years ago who already then discussed such cases.

ben| 8.6.09 @ 7:52PM

Ken (old Texican)
Take it as a compliment. The leftards on this site couldn't refute your arguments so they instead assumed your identity to discredit you. You must've really hit a nerve with the truth.
I'll be looking for that Texas Flag in DC.

Michael Tomlinson| 8.6.09 @ 8:18PM

Some facts Mike and the left are missing tax revenues are down under Barack Obama and deficits are skyrocketing. Under President Bush tax revenues were up and deficits were actually lower per capita than President Reagan's.

If people of any age or group want to protest regardless of want Obama and Democrats think that is their Constitutional right. Unlike Muslim terrorists having Constitutional rights as claimed by Obama and Democrats.

Of course, want Obama Democrats want is a Stasi state of informants and gulags for those that don't agree with them. This is the most anti-Constitutional and democracy administration in US history.

WR Jonas | 8.6.09 @ 10:24PM

I thought Mr. Youngs article was very well done , but its only a skirmish in what the battle is really all about . Its not about The Constitution , or financial policies, or economics or social justice or environmentalism any of the countless other onslaughts against Americans . It's really about the truth.
The Democrats and the left have now found that the truth is easy to defeat with the control of every aspect of our lives . The press is openly pro government . Democrat control of the educational and judicial system is nearly complete and with the majority of the press tirelessly spreading lies and distortions they can now smell a total victory over the opposition.
Who believes anything this administration claims ? Its all fantasy and lies and more lies to cover up ongoing lies . Their entire philosophy is to lie and deny and never yield to a truth. For there is the real enemy. They believe the words they utter because no one can make them see the thing they hold in their hearts is a lie.

Jewish StockmarketFRAUD| 8.7.09 @ 4:15PM

9
JEWISH CRIME

"Of all the areas of Jewish enterprise," notes Gerald Krafetz, "none has been so overlooked as the field of crime. And it isn't because of a lack of Jewish criminality. For an introspective people, this oversight is significant. It is as if Jewish crime did not exist, an unsavory skeleton is best left in the family closet ... The sociopathology of Jews is not an acceptable notion since it runs counter to both religious precepts and preconceived ideas that Jews have of themselves." [KREFETZ, p. 112] "Jews were ... involved in many of the most visible and spectacular frauds of the post-Civil War period," notes Benjamin Ginsberg, "as well as in economic dislocations and financial manipulations that characterize the era." [GINSBERG, p. 75] In one much publicized scandal for instance, the Jewish governor of South Carolina, Franklin Moses, oversaw the issue and selling of $6 million in fraudulent state securities, as well as funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds into his own pocket. [GINSBERG, p. 75]

In a broader financial sphere, very visibly at the top of the socio-economic pyramid, Jewish businessman Joseph Seligman's nefarious activities in the late 1800s helped to create the infamous "Black Friday" stock market crash. Benjamin Ginsberg notes that the crash

"ruined thousands of investors, implicated President Grant, and led to a
Congressional investigation of [Jay] Gould and Seligman ... Similarly, in
the early 1890s, Jacob Schiff collaborated with E. H. Harriman in the
latter's attempts to wrest control of the Northern Pacific Railroad from J.
P. Morgan and James Hill ... When the price of the Northern Pacific
Stock collapsed, the entire market crashed in the notorious 'Black
Thursday' panic that led to a nationwide economic depression."
[GINZBURG, p. 73]

Jews Bankrupt USA| 8.8.09 @ 2:39PM

Zionist Jews crimes against USA!

The nation of Israel and Jews, friend or foe of America? Actions speak louder than words;

June 8, 1967; Israeli jets attack the USS Liberty, killing 34 American soldiers.

May of 1970; Perle passing secrets to Israel during Kissinger and Nixon term

1973-2001; according to the Christian science monitor, Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. Top Jewish senators and Jewish congressmen in the US are voting to take tax payer’s money to support Israel. If divided by today’s US Citizens, that is more than $5,700 per person. That is more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War. Israel receives over 2 billion per year as a peace accord agreement, yet still to this day violates that agreement.

1979-1981 During the US hostage crisis in Iran, Israel was specifically asked to stop supplying Iran with weapons while Iran was holding US hostages. Israel was selling 500 million dollars per year of weapons to Iran, even after America asked Israel to stop.

October 1983; Israel deliberately allows 241 American Marines to die

1984; Israel denies U.S. Justice Department demand to extradite Marc Rich, a convicted Israeli spy against America.

August 1985, Israeli American scientist arrested for stealing 800 nuclear weapons triggers from America and sending them to Israel

November 22, 1985; Jewish US Navy Employee Arrested as Israeli Spy

October 27, 1991; Israel enflames race tensions in America by supplying apartheid South Africa with weapons and forcing the Bush administration to waive sanctions against Israel.

March 1995; Israel Charged With Systematic Harassment of U.S. Marines

August 23 1996; CIA accuses Israeli spies of theft of U.S. corporate scientific and technological data as the type of espionage that poses the greatest threat to U.S. economic competitiveness.

September 1997; Israel, as a haven for Jewish American murderers to flee to and be holed up in, refuses to extradite the Jewish murderer of an American.

June 18, 1998; Israeli businessman convicted selling chemical and biological weapons components and know-how to Iran for $16 million.

January 28, 1999; Israel transfers laser technology to Communist China, despite American outrage

February 24, 1999; Another Jewish American murderer flees to Israel and is holed up there, after killing another American.

July 30, 1999 Israeli hackers attack Pentagon

February 24, 2000; Israel again sells donated US military technology to Communist China, in the face of US outrage.

September 11, 2001; Israeli spies caught by FBI and Police cheering and photographing the WTC as it fell. What was their excuse? They said they were making a Documentary of 9/11. WTF? If they knew we were going to be attacked then why did they not warn us?

On 9/11 a group of Israelis were arrested.
1) Celebrating the attacks on us.
2) Trying to blow up the George Washington Bridge.
3) Blowing up a Van on King St near 6th and 7th.
911 Missing Links documentary. Very Interesting Information!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7877765982288566190

15 March 2002; Israel ignores US demand to leave Palestinian territories, damaging American credibility and making America look like a hypocrite for forcing Sadam out of Kuwait but not Sharon out of Palestine.

June 28, 2002; Israel Reports Weapons Development in Iraq, also prodded by 25 neo-conservatives, mostly Jewish, Bush went to war with Iraq, costing nearly a thousand American soldiers their lives, no weapons found.

August 28.2002; Israel Supplying Iran again: Germany holds up Israeli military shipment said headed for Iran

October 4, 2002; 9/11: WHAT DID ISRAEL KNOW? – and when did they tell us?

November 17, 2003; Israel blatantly uses American weapons in violation of AECA agreements between both countries which stipulate that Israel not use such weapons in civilian territories, enraging and inflaming the animosity in the Middle East against America, even though Israel can use Israeli weapons since Israel is the 6th largest weapons producer, it consistently showcases American weapons against civilians, spreading the guilt onto America by association.

25 Apr 2009 A Delta Airlines passenger jet en route to Tel Aviv from New York had to make an emergency stop when an Israeli man attempted to hijack the plane.

Today; Israel forces America to keep silent about Israel’s nuclear weapons, again destroying America’s credibility world wide and leaving America looking like a hypocrite on it’s goal to end weapons of mass destruction world wide, also allowing the “unsecure” Israel to attempt to guard that nuclear stockpile from the Middle Eastern black market.

In conclusion, since the founding of Israel in 1950, no other country has cost America more lives, money, and damage to credibility than Israel.

Mola| 3.29.10 @ 10:34AM

Ihmisten kiinnostus tuota pientä mutta niin terveellistä marjaa kohtaan on ennennäkemätöntä.

Tuskin koskaan aikaisemmin yksi tuote on ylittänyt uutiskynnyksen niin ainutlaatuisella tavalla. Amerikan mantereella voidaan jo puhua Acai-hysteriasta, sen terveyttä edistävät vaikutukset ovat siellä jo muodostuneet käsitteeksi ja kaupallinen menestys sen myötä.

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