I have often been amazed at the argumentation that I hear from the political left.  How could some of these things be said with a straight face.  Most especially when those statements are so easily refuted, with but a moments thought.  Let’s shag a few pop fly balls for practice. 

The C.W. Mills Power Elite Theory, which states that our national leaders will come exclusively from the 11,000 wealthiest of Americans.  That the average person born in America really does not have the ability to rise from whatever social strata they were born into and achieve political fortune.  The refutation of course would be Presidents Ford, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Johnson, Truman, Lincoln, and probably a few more.  That was an easy warm up. 

How about another easy one?  Chicken Hawk is a term we’ve all heard over the years.  Actually, I first read this refutation in an article pointed out to my on Pajamas Media.  The easy out is that it is nothing more than an adhominem attack.  That means, for those liberals reading this, the argument itself has not been refuted in any meaningful way, it is simply meant to end debate by insulting the person on the other side of the debate.  In this context that debate would be the use of military force.  Since this is still practice, and we actually need to get our swings in, we’ll refute the chicken hawk charge further.  The person using this as a debate tactic is in fact stating that only people who have served in the military should be allowed to have a vote on when the military should be used.  Carrying that to its logical conclusion then, should only police or former police be allowed to have a say so on political decisions on how the law enforcement working for any municipality are to conduct themselves?  How about other professions?  Should all tax laws be written and decided upon by CPA’s only.  The latest Financial Industry Reform Law which Obama is touting, was that written and voted upon by only people with the proper securities credentials?  To take this argument even further to where it inevitably leads, how do we all think it is going to be regarded by the people who employ it in the first place?  The Constitution, very smartly I believe, establishes civilian control of the military.  In other words, the armed forces answer to the elected executives of the nation.  The chicken hawk argument destroys that.  By stating that only those in the military should be included in the use of military debate, civilian control is removed.  I seriously doubt that the very people who so virulently hate the military would somehow welcome martial law.

Sufficiently warmed up, let’s debate a meatier issue.  Soaking the, “rich,” will solve our national economic problems.  This is predicated on the mistaken belief that our economic system, and in fact our entire society is zero sum.  When we were all in kindergarten, we knew that if Jane and Bill had the ball to play with, Tony and Betty did not get to play.  That is of course, until Betty’s mom bought Betty a ball of her own, thus introducing a second game into the kindergarten society.  Betty, by asking her mom for a ball, showed an industrious initiative and created the wealth of a second ball.  For those who missed the metaphor of kindergarten economics, I’ll explain.  Our society works the same way.  Wealth is not zero sum.  The so called rich are not rich because they stole money and goods from everyone else.  They are rich because for the most part, they created something which other members of society found a value in.  Bill Gates did not become wealthy by sneaking into every home in America and stealing $60 and leaving a copy of his operating system on the night stand as a calling card.  His operating system enabled every person in the United States to enjoy benefits of owning their own computer and made the experience easy to utilize, so much so that people who were fine without a computer at home now go ballistic if theirs stops working.  People were willing to fork over $60 to Mr. Gates really without much thought.  They in turn used this to build their own businesses in many cases, to save themselves time and money, (wealth in other words,) and to use it as an inexpensive form of entertainment.  Mr. Gates provided a value to millions of people around the world.  He created wealth.  Now that it has been deemed useful to most everyone in society, many people are arguing in favor adding it to the public largess as a newly formed basic Constitutional Right.  Bill Gates is being vilified for his success by people on the left as a monster for stealing the wealth of the average American. 

Many times a week, I will accidentally hear a spinmeister on the Telly say that our current economic crisis was caused by reckless tax cuts for the, “rich.”  This is pure stupidity for a few reasons.  One, tax cuts are not something which need to be paid for.  The rich became rich by providing value which benefits other members of society.  Tax cuts are merely a cessation of the government’s confiscation of the created wealth.  When the Bush Tax Reforms took place, the percentage of taxes contributed by the top wage earners in this country actually increased.  Not only that, but the total revenues of the Federal Government also increased.  The reduction in overall rates actually produced a tax increase.  Why this fact is conveniently left out of the media narrative is easy to see.  The main stream media is biased in the most dishonest and evil way possible.  They have an agenda to see government grow.  What did cause the financial meltdown, that is an easy one.  It was something called the Community Reinvestment Act.  This was first signed into law by James Carter.  It was later strengthened by Bill Clinton.  It basically dictated that banks, would now be forced to loan money to people who were not credit worthy to avoid criminal prosecution for their executive officers.  It also enabled banks, and wall street firms the ability to devise schemes to keep banks afloat despite this insane business practice by creating exotic investment vehicles to hide the pea under the shell in the largest game of 3 card monty perpetrated on the American Public.  Eventually, as with every capital market bubble, it burst.  The same politicians who passed this madness into law, and then threatened those who resisted with prison and fines, raced for microphones to call the bankers and wall street execs. evil.  I still marvel at how people to this day are saying, “there’s plenty of blame to go around.”  No, there is not.  Democrat politicians are to blame, period, dot, end of story. 

The latest bit of lunacy that I’ve heard is that America is not broke.  That we have plenty of cash, if only we would just go and take it away from those greedy bastard rich folk who have stolen whatever they have from society.  Bill Whittle provides a great visual of how stupid this is.  He credits Iowahawk for the legwork and research at the end of his video.  In a nutshell, if we take every bit of wealth away from every corporation and rich person in this country, we could operate at our current level of spending for a year.  Then what do we do?  After every bit of wealth has been taken and redistributed, we would still need $3.5 Trillion for the next year, and there would not be any jobs left for anybody, as we would have liquidated everything to pay for this year.  Enjoy the video.

Crossposted at Musings of a Mad Conservative