What Can We Do?

David Horowitz gave an interesting answer tonight when asked by Glenn Beck what we can do to oppose the gathering power of the radical Left in the halls of our government.

He said Republicans need to start going into the inner cities. The major metropolitan inner cities have been controlled 100% by Democrats and their Leftist policies for a Century. In every case, in every instance, the very people they say they are trying to help are the very ones that have been the most harmed. Blacks, Hispanics, the Old, the Young, pick a victim, any victim that the Democrats have championed, and in every case, the result has been to establish a permanent underclass of victims.

And a permanent voting block for Democrats. Which, of course, is why the Left promotes the obviously destructive policies they do. Once they get whole peoples to imbibe their political narcotic, those people and their children can do nothing except stay with the pusher that got them there in the first place.

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This is an important point. Conservatives need to start going after the Democrat base in the inner cities, as well as every other jurisdiction where Democrats seem the most solidly entrenched (can you say, New York State? California?). Not on some abstract "Freedom!" agenda, or a "Balanced Budget!" slogan, which often sways the more mainstream American electorate, but has little resonance with traditional Democrat constituencies. But on the same grounds the Democrats attracted their base in the fist place: "Republicans are the Party that can help you and your children. Our policies will work to give you a job, true self-esteem, and a future for you and your loved ones. The Democrat policies have failed you year after year after year."

It was little noticed, but Ronald Reagan actually set the stage for this sort of thing. In the 60's and 70's, the Republican domestic agenda for less regulation and taxes was justified with various mantras about balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility, and limited government, all grounded in a very solid philosophy of liberal democracy and the appropriate role of government in society. But these sorts of arguments had little appeal in the face of the sycophantic assurances that the Democrats would protect the little people with ever greater government programs and gushers of money.

As everyone knows, Ronald Reagan pushed through an historic reduction in tax rates. But what has not been commented on to my knowledge was the primary rationale he offered: across the board tax cuts would help everybody, not just those who had income. Thus, he did not justify returning people's money to them on any principle, theory or Constitutional argument; he did so on an explicitly empirical basis: as he put it, a "rising tide lifts all boats."

When I noticed this in the 80's, I remember being quite thrilled. Because now, the acrimonious Left-Right philosophical battles could be fought on common ground: empirical studies. Everyone will either benefit more than they would have in the absence of tax cuts, or they wouldn't. We could all quit arguing and fighting and just let the 1,000's of research assistants in economic departments across the land polish up their pocket protectors, compile the numbers and give us the answer.

Of course, this was a naive dream. What has become abundantly clear to me ever since is that the Left is not interested in their victims becoming non-victims, precisely because theirs is a moral position, not an economic one. They don't like capitalists or capitalism. Tax cuts might benefit the poor with jobs and opportunities and a future of self-reliance for them and their families, but that would only make the poor into pale imitations of capitalists. The Left does not want the poor to be self-reliant; they want them self-dependent, on government largess and the Democrats who control that largess.

The Left has an ideological agenda in which all societal victims are but tools to their larger purpose. America's Seniors are starting to understand this; Republicans have an historic opportunity to put a wedge between the Democrats and their other large constituencies, constituencies which Democrats have so savagely brutalized with their de-humanizing policies.