by Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n The election postmortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans\u2019 defeat, from the \u201cwoman problem\u201d and the \u201cHispanic problem,\u201d as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney\u2019s fat cat persona and his inept campaign. But there\u2019s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient Athens \u2014 Obama and the Democrats promised voters more free stuff.<\/p>\n The differences between the political mechanisms of ancient Athens and those of America today do not erase the similarities of mentality and sensibility popular rule creates in its citizens. Most important is the way democracy leads to radical egalitarianism: the belief, as Aristotle put it, \u201cthat those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.\u201d Because citizens are equal in their possession of political rights and some level of access to the machinery of the state, they then desire to be equal in every way. Yet everyday experience shows that there exist real differences of talent, ability, beauty, brains, hard work, and sheer luck among people, and these differences account for their varying levels of economic and social success. Hence the desire to use the coercive power of the state to level these differences, especially through the appropriation and redistribution of wealth through government distributed entitlements. The right to equality of opportunity then becomes the right to equality of result, with the power of the state as the instrument of achieving that utopian goal, usually at the expense of freedom.<\/p>\n Traditionally democracies have been faulted precisely for this tendency to use the power of the state to redistribute wealth and so erase the most glaring difference among citizens, that between the rich and the poor. Such policies are also attractive because they serve the shortsighted, personal material interests of the citizens, often at the expense of the state as a whole. As Thucydides\u2019 recreations of debates in the Athenian Assembly during the Peloponnesian War show, decisions of life and death, like the disastrous invasion of Sicily in 415 BC, were often the result of a selfish calculus of how the individual voting citizen would personally benefit, no matter how dangerous to the future wellbeing of the state such decisions might be. During the 4th\u00a0century BC, Athenian citizens could expect even more state pay almost every day of the year. They were paid to serve on juries, attend Assembly meetings, go to the theater, and participate in religious festivals. Even when the threat of Philip II\u2019s aggression against Athens became clear, it was dangerous for any politician to propose transferring money from the fund for paying theater and festival attendance to the military fund. By the time Athenians had realized the danger of Philip\u2019s power, it was too late. The Athenians lost the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, and with it their political freedom and autonomy.<\/p>\n For ambitious politicians, moreover, taking money from some citizens to give it to others was a way to further their careers. Demagogues and would-be tyrants aggrandized power explicitly by promising the masses that they would take from the \u201crich\u201d and give to the poor. They typically preyed on the class envy and resentment of the latter, as the 4th\u00a0century BC orator Isocrates wrote: \u201cWherefore these men [demagogues] would be most happy to see all of our citizens reduced to the condition of helplessness in which they themselves are powerful. And the greatest proof of this is that they do not consider by what means they may provide a livelihood for those who are in need, but rather how they may reduce those who are thought to possess some wealth to the level of those who are in poverty.\u201d Or as Obama might put it, \u201cspread the wealth around.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2nd-century BC historian Polybius famously described the threat to freedom and order that results from an ambitious politician exploiting the selfish interests of the people by promising them the wealth of others: \u201cFor the mob,\u201d Polybius writes, \u201chabituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence.\u201d Today, violent revolution is unlikely, not least because it is unnecessary. The expansionary federal government and its hoards of bureaucratic minions have replaced the ruthless tyrants of antiquity, creating the \u201csoft despotism\u201d de Tocqueville warned against. This entitlement leviathan increases its power and reach by giving more and more benefits and services to more and more people, all funded by expropriation of wealth from the productive.<\/p>\n Moreover, modern free-market capitalism and its dynamic of competition have sharpened the differences between \u201crich\u201d and \u201cpoor,\u201d even though by any historical measure those we call \u201cpoor\u201d today would have been considered more than comfortable in the past. Yet these disparities of wealth are even more painful for today\u2019s democratic egalitarians, who chafe at what they see as unfair inequality. Hence the appeal of\u00a0dirigiste<\/em>\u00a0or socialistic economic policies, which promise to erase a humiliating \u201cincome inequality\u201d and provide the wealth citizens can\u2019t obtain for themselves but that they envy and resent when possessed by others. In addition, as Jean Fran\u00e7ois Revel points out, the suspicion of free-market economies and the lingering affection for socialism \u201crelate to warding off two fears that are present in each of us: the fear of competition and the fear of responsibility. These feelings are not just vague apprehensions; they are dominating anxieties. Membership in a redistributive economy allays these fears and reduces stress. The statist machine promises the psychological comfort of not having to bear the burdens of responsibility for oneself.\u201d Redistribution of wealth, then, provides both material and psychological benefits.<\/p>\n This summary of democracy\u2019s dysfunctions is relevant as well to the decades of our wanton entitlement spending that has accelerated during the last four years. In 2010, government at all levels transferred more than $2.2\u2009trillion in money, goods and services to recipients. Since the 1960s, the government has spent nearly $20 trillion on the War on Poverty. The federal government now runs about 80 programs providing aid to the poor, and government at all levels spends nearly $1 trillion annually to fight poverty. Food stamp spending has doubled during Obama\u2019s first term, reaching $75.7 billion for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2011. From 2007 to 2011, spending on unemployment has nearly quadrupled to $120 billion. And don\u2019t forget the ongoing costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which in fiscal year 2011 ate up 43% of the federal budget at a cost of $1.56 trillion. On top of these already existing entitlement programs, Obama spent nearly $1 trillion on a stimulus package that benefitted political clients like state government workers, and another $25 billion on the auto bailout that mostly rewarded yet another political client, the UAW. As for Obamacare, the CBO calculates it will cost about $2 trillion over ten years, and still leave 30 million people without health care. As a result of Obama\u2019s increases in these wealth transfers, federal spending has now reached 24% of GDP.<\/p>\n To pay for all this largesse, the federal leviathan borrows money, as Obama has done to the tune of over $5 trillion. But it also redistributes income through the most progressive tax system among advanced economies. In 2009, the bottom 20% of taxpayers earned approximately 5% of the nation\u2019s income but paid just 0.3 percent of all federal taxes. Households in the middle 20%, which earned almost 14.7% of national income, paid only 9.4% of federal taxes. Americans in the top 20%, earned 51% of the nation\u2019s income, but paid 67.9% of all federal taxes. As for the evil 1%, they earned 13.4% of all income and paid 28.9% of all federal taxes. As a result, nearly half of all taxpayers contribute next to nothing to the costs of funding the government\u2019s entitlements.<\/p>\n Another way to see how the tax system redistributes wealth, consider how much each group receives in federal spending compared to how much they pay. According to the Tax Foundation, households in the lowest 20% of income received roughly $8.21 in federal, state and local government spending for every dollar of taxes paid in 2004, households in the middle 20% received $1.30, and households in the top 20% received $0.41. In other words, tax payments exceeded government spending for the top 40%, meaning there was a net fiscal transfer of between $1.031 trillion and $1.527 trillion from one group of taxpayers to another. If this isn\u2019t income redistribution from the \u201crich\u201d to the \u201cpoor,\u201d nothing is.<\/p>\n But like an ancient demagogue haranguing the Athenian Assembly, during the campaign Obama demonized Mitt Romney as the heartless tool of the rich who cared nothing for ordinary Americans, a plutocrat itching to cut programs for the poor, sick, and disabled, and shutter factories to send jobs to China, all so he could cut taxes and increase profits for the \u201cmillionaires and billionaires.\u201d And Obama promised even more government booty, now disguised as \u201cinvestments\u201d to be paid for by appropriating even more money from those same greedy plutocrats. It was class-warfare at its nastiest, and it worked. Indeed, according to Jay Cost, it worked with the \u201clower-to-middle class, socially conservative whites\u201d almost 10 million of whom, Cost calculates, stayed home because Obama had turned Romney into a super-rich \u201cother,\u201d alien to the experience of the struggling masses.<\/p>\n Of course, people voted for reasons other than economic self-interest and the promise of more benefits to come. But thousands of attack ads turning Romney into the Grinch who wanted to steal the perpetual Christmas of entitlements paid for with other people\u2019s money, along with the promise to make the \u201cmillionaires and billionaires\u201d pay their \u201cfair share,\u201d were enough to make millions of voters ignore Obama\u2019s manifest economic malfeasance, even as fiscal disaster looms ever closer. The ancient critics of Athenian democracy wouldn\u2019t be surprised.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine The election postmortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans\u2019 defeat, from the \u201cwoman problem\u201d and the \u201cHispanic problem,\u201d as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney\u2019s fat cat persona and his inept campaign. But there\u2019s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of democracy starting in ancient […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,96],"tags":[176,12,77,1026,1028,32],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-5O","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":335,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/explaining-the-democrats-success\/","url_meta":{"origin":360,"position":0},"title":"Explaining the Democrats’ Success","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The election postmortem has identified all manner of causes for the Republicans\u2019 defeat, from the \u201cwoman problem\u201d and the \u201cHispanic problem,\u201d as Peggy Noonan put it, to Romney\u2019s fatcat persona and his inept campaign. But there\u2019s a simpler reason, one consistent with the critics of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":346,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/messengers-messages-and-voters-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":360,"position":1},"title":"Messengers, Messages, and Voters: Part 2","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage \u00a0 At their retreat in Williamsburg a few weeks ago House Republicans continued the post-mortem of November\u2019s debacle. A big topic was how to better market the Republican brand. A Domino\u2019s Pizza executive gave \u201ca well-received talk about selling a damaged brand to a modern audience,\u201d\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":523,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-ryan-choice-means-for-november\/","url_meta":{"origin":360,"position":2},"title":"What the Ryan Choice Means for November","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Last week\u2019s poll numbers seemingly confirmed the doubts about democracy\u2019s viability expressed in last week\u2019s\u00a0column. After a barrage of outrageous smears fired off by the Obama campaign, which accused Romney of killing a woman with cancer and failing to pay any income tax, Obama is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2534,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-philosophy-stupid\/","url_meta":{"origin":360,"position":3},"title":"It’s the Philosophy, Stupid","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The Democrats\u2019 position in the negotiations to raise the debt limit and deal with runaway government debt can be summarized in one mantric phrase: the rich must \u201cpay their fair share\u201d in taxes. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, for example, said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/moral-equivalence-is-moral-evasion\/","url_meta":{"origin":360,"position":4},"title":"Moral Equivalence Is Moral Evasion","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The failure of the Congressional budget \u201csuper-committee\u201d to address our geometrically expanding debt and deficits should surprise no one. From the beginning the committee was political theater designed to create the illusion of action when the will to act is missing. Unfortunately, this perennial\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1011,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/no-labels-no-democracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":360,"position":5},"title":"“No Labels,” No Democracy","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com Earlier this month, Republican David Frum and Democrat William A. Galston published a\u00a0manifesto\u00a0in the\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0announcing the birth of a new political movement, No Labels, the first meeting of which was December 13. The \u201chyper-polarization of our politics,\u201d Frum and Galston write, \u201cthwarts an adult conversation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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