. . . that's what they were talking about, way back then.
The fact was that in this country, we had gone very much further toward socialism than most democratic countries in Europe -- in the extent of the public sector, with the nationalized industries, and the amount of control, and to some extent the attitudes. We had to turn back. In other words, the center is always the midway between two points, and the whole of the political debate had gone to the left. . .
. . . so the center had moved to the left and I think we are well on the way to pulling it back toward the center. But one wishes to go further. . . . (Margaret Thatcher, Interview, Wall Street Journal, March 31, 1983, reprinted at wsj.com, April 9, 2013 (emphasis added))
Here is why the British experience is important to all of us. For over a generation we have been assaulted -- castrated is probably closer to the right word -- by the notion that socialism is the wave of the future. That explanation is given us, sometimes patiently, sometimes impatiently, in those accents of ineluctability that tend to drown out dissent. It is a statement that has indulged those little oscillations between social democracy and Christian democracy in Europe. Tory and Labor in Great Britain, Republican and Democratic in the United States. But it has always been possible for the leftward party to say about the rightward party that its platform is roughly identical to the platform of the leftward part one or two elections back. There is no doubting the truth of the observation. Roosevelt would have considered the Republican Party platform of Richard Nixon as radical beyond the dreams of his brain-trusters. (William F. Buckley, 1979, reprinted by Jonah Goldberg, "1979 Was the Year," nationalreview.com, April 10, 2013 (emphasis added))
While we're at it, how about this from Peggy Noonan?
[Government has] always grown! It's as if something inexorable in our political reality -- with those who think in liberal terms dominating the establishment, the media, the academy -- has always tilted the starting point in negotiations away for 18 inches [on a figurative 36-inch yardstick], and always toward liberalism, toward the 36-inch point.
Democrats on the Hill or in the White House try to pull it up to 30, Republicans try to pull it back to 25. A deal is struck at 28. Washington Republicans call it victory: "Hey, it coulda been 29!" But regular conservative-minded or Republican voters see yet another loss. They could live with 18. They'd like eight. Instead it's 28.
For conservatives on the ground, it has often felt as if Democrats (and moderate Republicans) were always saying, "We should spend a trillion dollars," and the Republican Party would respond, "No, too costly. How about $700 billion?" Conservatives on the ground are thinking, "How about nothing? How about we don't spend more money but finally start cutting[?"]
(Peggy Noonan, "Why It's Time for the Tea Party," Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2010)
Unca D once put it this way:
Unca D has often made these same points, but less well. My figure of speech is a ratchet -- a machine that moves things in one direction. Pump the handle up, nothing happens; pump it down, the car rises. Up, down, up, down. Pretty soon you have lifted a three-ton automobile off the ground.
My larger point is that American politics consistently ratchets things in only one direction, to the left. That is not entirely true, of course. Occasionally we see small shifts back to the right, accompanied by wailing from the left about how we're going back to the Depression, Jim Crow, and women barefoot and pregnant.
The ratchet clicks away, even as we speak, ineluctable as always. On spending, the Houston Chronicle and other Texas progressives yak endlessly about the need to expand Medicaid in this state. The arguments are moral (People who are almost poor deserve to have their doctors' bills paid by someone else, just like real poor people) and financial (Free money!).
"Free money!" refers to the teaser rate -- the feds will pay the whole thing for two years -- and ignores the costs that loom over the horizon, especially as the feds sink into de facto bankruptcy. Medicaid expansion is designed to ratchet welfare spending up, never to go down again once people are hooked.
Ratchet, ratchet, ratchet.
Meanwhile the ratchet is also being fitted to jack up taxes. President Barack Hussein Obama proposes to raid IRAs of $3 million and up. It won't happen anytime soon, of course. Too many people remember how politicians told them taxes on IRAs would be deferred until the money was withdrawn.
But most of these people will die in the next two or three decades. Then the chirrun whose lives have been ruined by this present generation's unwisdom -- for example, by enlarging Medicaid without having the money to pay for it -- will gladly loot the old folks' saving accounts to keep the fiscal merry-go-round spinning.
Progressivism is a long con. Mr. Obama is America's grifter-in-chief. The Houston Chronicle is one of his media shills. Americans who save, invest, innovate, work, and take care of themselves and their families are their marks.
A tax on IRAs is now in play and, sadly, as ineluctable as every other dumb and morally dubious policy of modern progressivism.
Ratchet, ratchet, ratchet.
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