No matter what your ideology, it’s good when Americans get together to air their beliefs and grievances with the government. The ability to do so separates democracies from totalitarian states.
There’s been much debate over whether the protests held throughout the nation on Wednesday were truly a grassroots phenomenon. Who cares? Hundreds of thousands rallied. When that happens, the message — anti-tax, anti-spending, small government, anti-politician — is worth examining.
At times, the rally here drifted into a hyperbolic, fact-ignoring, I’m-mad-as-hell temper tantrum, rooted in the November election defeat of the conservative and libertarian political philosophy.
There were references to the “silent majority,” the insidious term Richard Nixon used to divide the country during the late 1960s and early ’70s.
Here are a few things toconsider:
n No one likes the bailouts for people who should be punished for their misbehavior. But the process of undoing the harmful economic policies (the lack of regulation of exotic financial products, for example) by the Clinton and Bush administrations will, unfortunately, reward some for failure in order to ensure their mistakes don’t take the rest of us down with them.
n Everyone hates paying taxes, but most of us recently got a tax cut. The tax cut may seem small because payroll taxes have been reduced instead of the government cutting us a check, but it’s an extra $400 annually.
n If Barack Obama is for socialism, it’s for a version unrecognizable in any economics textbook, past or present. Real socialism means that the government would take over the production and distribution of goods and services to ensure that everyone makes the same amount of money. Obama won’t even nationalize the banks, as some liberal economists have urged, in order to end the banking crisis.
n Everyone should be concerned about the federal budget deficit and the accompanying national debt. But in this crisis, like the Great Depression, government must temporarily ramp up spending to stimulate the economy. When the economy recovers and people and businesses resume spending and stimulating the economy on their own (hopefully, in a more responsible manner than before), the government can dial back.
It’s important to remember the United States ran up enormous deficits during World War II (which had the effect of a super-stimulus package) that were eventually brought under control.
Rallies are great exercises of our democratic rights. But we wish they were done with less ranting and more consideration of the facts and totality of the nation’s problems.
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Larry wrote: (he's not with the sj-r)
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