Cal Voters Don't Want More Programs

NEVER MIND about Cal-50, the special election that Republicans won in California last Tuesday. Look at what California Democrats voted down on the rest of the ballot, writes liberal pundit E.J. Dionne.

There were 500,000 more Democratic votes than Republicans in the election because the main event was a contested Democratic primary for Governor, and yet good solid liberal issues went down to defeat.

California voters voted against Rob Reiner’s universal pre-school initiative and even a library building initiative. What gives?

The wealthy rebelled against the big income tax increase -- the top rate would have gone from 9.3 percent to 11 percent -- and bankrolled the opposition. Private preschool providers worried that the public provision of preschool would threaten their businesses.

Yes. Let’s hear it for the private pre-school providers. What does rich Rob Reiner care about them? Small businesspeople making an honest living, yet Rob Reiner is going to pull them up by the roots and substitute a bureaucratic model. Real smart, Rob.

Progressives have a lot to think about. For one thing, there remains a deep skepticism about government spending, even for the best purposes. On the same day that the two propositions went down, voters in five California counties rejected sales tax increases, mostly to fund transportation projects. Attacks on tax and spend sound old and tired, but they still have force.

You know, I should hope so, after a century of surging government spending. The point is, E.J., that is it one thing to say that something is desirable, even necessary, and another thing to say that it should be provided by tax-supported bureaucracies. That is a complicated way of talking about “tax and spend,” but you would have to be an imbecile not to see that most government programs are not about the clients they serve but about the clients who get paid: the teachers in education, the bus drivers in mass transit, and the government workers who provide social services.

Why not think about how progressive ideals can be served without the cruelty and the injustice of government programs? That would be really progressive.

And it could be a big vote-winner.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

Home

American Manifesto

Chapters

Chappies

roadtothemiddleclass

presented by Christopher Chantrill

Follow @chrischantrill • Contact