PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
This is the story that government school left out.
1.As America entered the 20th century, it did so as a world power. By 1905 the navy was 20% of the federal government. With the increasing pressure for federal taxation came a taste for redistributing income. The Civil War produced the first tax on personal income, but it was to pay for the war, and was abolished in 1872. But, having had a taste of taking and using free money, politicians passed more than 60 bills designed to reinstate the income tax over the next 20 years.
David G. Davies, “United States Taxes and Tax Policy,” p. 22.
2. Congress substantially increase pensions for veterans, and realized it could use ‘entitlements’ to bring different groups to support them in elections. While the post-Civil War Republican party dabbled in this sort of thing, making inroads in the nation’s economic life, Franklin Roosevelt turned it into an artform.
3. In 1913, along with Progressive, racist, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, came the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and enactment of the income tax. The Progressives were all over it! They had been focused on forcing the “money class” to pay “in proportion to their ability to pay…’ which, essentially was the first half of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
See where this is goin'?
4. “New Deal policies were calculated not merely to please or placate existing constituencies but to create many constituencies…who would be dependent on the government whose programs summoned them to dependency.
Before the 1930s, the adjective ‘liberal’ denoted policies of individualism and individual rights; since Roosevelt, it has primarily pertained to the politics of interest groups. Roosevelt’s wager was that by assiduously using legislation and regulations to multiply federally favored groups, and by rhetorically pitting those favored by government against the unfavored, he could create a permanent majority coalition.” George Will, “The Conservative Sensibility,” p.292-293
5. “The mere existence of this mechanism (federal income tax) altered America’s political culture by quickening the itch of the political class to provide benefits to client groups who were convinced that they would be net winners from income transfers…..hastened the growth of the politics of envy, clothed in the language of ‘fairness’….an ever expanding menu of popular benefits that would ostensibly would be paid for by unpopular minorities (the ‘rich’, and ‘corporations’).” Op. Cit., p.293
6. No longer would government allow the pursuit of happiness…..now Franklin Roosevelt would rob some Americans to guarantee that happiness to his selected groups…
‘With this broad purpose in mind, I have further described the spirit of my program as a “new deal," which is plain English for a changed concept of the duty and responsibility or government toward economic life.” http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msf00563
Radio address, October 6, 1932
What we find in Progressives, and Franklin Roosevelt in particular, is a desire to turn back the advances of political history to feudal times, where a king was in charge of everything, and was responsible for the food and shelter of his subjects.
That ‘new deal’ announced that government would now provide everything for the serfs, if they would simply turn over all their freedom to him.
Exactly the way Tocqueville described Liberalism.
1.As America entered the 20th century, it did so as a world power. By 1905 the navy was 20% of the federal government. With the increasing pressure for federal taxation came a taste for redistributing income. The Civil War produced the first tax on personal income, but it was to pay for the war, and was abolished in 1872. But, having had a taste of taking and using free money, politicians passed more than 60 bills designed to reinstate the income tax over the next 20 years.
David G. Davies, “United States Taxes and Tax Policy,” p. 22.
2. Congress substantially increase pensions for veterans, and realized it could use ‘entitlements’ to bring different groups to support them in elections. While the post-Civil War Republican party dabbled in this sort of thing, making inroads in the nation’s economic life, Franklin Roosevelt turned it into an artform.
3. In 1913, along with Progressive, racist, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, came the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and enactment of the income tax. The Progressives were all over it! They had been focused on forcing the “money class” to pay “in proportion to their ability to pay…’ which, essentially was the first half of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
See where this is goin'?
4. “New Deal policies were calculated not merely to please or placate existing constituencies but to create many constituencies…who would be dependent on the government whose programs summoned them to dependency.
Before the 1930s, the adjective ‘liberal’ denoted policies of individualism and individual rights; since Roosevelt, it has primarily pertained to the politics of interest groups. Roosevelt’s wager was that by assiduously using legislation and regulations to multiply federally favored groups, and by rhetorically pitting those favored by government against the unfavored, he could create a permanent majority coalition.” George Will, “The Conservative Sensibility,” p.292-293
5. “The mere existence of this mechanism (federal income tax) altered America’s political culture by quickening the itch of the political class to provide benefits to client groups who were convinced that they would be net winners from income transfers…..hastened the growth of the politics of envy, clothed in the language of ‘fairness’….an ever expanding menu of popular benefits that would ostensibly would be paid for by unpopular minorities (the ‘rich’, and ‘corporations’).” Op. Cit., p.293
6. No longer would government allow the pursuit of happiness…..now Franklin Roosevelt would rob some Americans to guarantee that happiness to his selected groups…
‘With this broad purpose in mind, I have further described the spirit of my program as a “new deal," which is plain English for a changed concept of the duty and responsibility or government toward economic life.” http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/_resources/images/msf/msf00563
Radio address, October 6, 1932
What we find in Progressives, and Franklin Roosevelt in particular, is a desire to turn back the advances of political history to feudal times, where a king was in charge of everything, and was responsible for the food and shelter of his subjects.
That ‘new deal’ announced that government would now provide everything for the serfs, if they would simply turn over all their freedom to him.
Exactly the way Tocqueville described Liberalism.
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