OPINION & EDITORIAL
Nanny state will end Dems’ game
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Also by Bassey Etim:
- Religion: Does it benefit society? (November 29, 2007)
- Do Democrats take minority votes for granted? (November 15, 2007)
- It's the media, stupid: Political coverage misleads (November 8, 2007)
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by Bassey Etim
Monday, January 21, 2008
For generations, the Democratic Party has struggled to combine its two greatest flaws: high taxes and the nanny state. Why don’t the laws that govern large objects like taxes apply on the subatomic FCC-bleeping-out-“dick” level? How can Democrats create an equation that perfectly embodies the relationship between all the elections they’ve thrown away and their often idiotic legislation? Following years of painstaking research, state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Waunakee, has discovered the unified theory of everything: higher taxes on video games.
Politics is a game of perception, and even when they’re not filming installments of their long running series, “If you can’t beat us, we’ll gladly fuck ourselves” (coming soon to a November ‘08 near you), the left struggles to frame issues even when they’re right. So long as the GOP claims the low tax mantle, Democrats will primarily be a party on the defensive. That’s not a value judgment, just reality.
Of course, the video game tax is absurd. From the justification that because they are mostly bought by teens, they should fund juvenile detention programs (the average gamer is 33 according to the Entertainment Software Association) to the singling out of a generic culture-wars foe that has nothing to do with crime rates.
The pressing question for Democrats is whether perceptions like the one Mr. Erpenbach helps maintain makes their national platform a liability. Consider the death tax, and the fact that we’re even calling it a “death” tax. The estate tax helps maintain an American ideal — that merit, and not birth into a few privileged families, determines the distribution of wealth. The Democratic Party has certainly lost the rhetorical battle over the estate tax. And too many Americans living in conditions nowhere near eligible for the tax support its repeal, fearing the loss of whatever they might offer their children.
As the old cliche goes, all politics is local, and when voters see Democrats grasp at straws for any justification to raise taxes, it’s hard to blame them for being a bit cynical about the estate tax. Still, the longstanding GOP policy of cutting taxes for the rich to stimulate the corporate side of the economy can be turned on them in the upcoming election. While Senate and House Democrats have made the distinction clear in recent years, presidential candidates like John Kerry have muddied the message or run away from it.
If the Democrats run into a moderate Republican come November, their candidate must parry differences like these into broader philosophical conflicts. But if history is any guide, they won’t, and too many of our country’s poor will fear being slapped with a large tax when they die.
The left’s culture warriors
While the GOP’s moral police are well-known due to the party’s highly publicized efforts to appeal to evangelicals — unabashed paternalism by Democrats puts them in the same league. The most unsettling aspect of Democratic Party rule during the Clinton administration was the embrace of more FCC regulation on TV, blaming violent video games for society’s ills and a general scapegoating of media for poor parenting. Maybe we could chalk that up to a lack of definitive studies on media effects during the ‘90s, but the Clintons have maintained their embrace of the philosophy.
Hillary Clinton’s responses to a Common Sense Media survey suggest that in an age where the family unit seems weak, government can play the role of parent. Industry self-regulation just won’t cut it.
No doubt, many rank-and-file Democrats didn’t think much of getting sex off the airwaves or stopping the Mortal Kombat II video game from poisoning our minds. But they went along with it, offering a seat at every table to people who see no limits on the reach of government.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? Liberals ought to think twice before pointing fingers at the Bush administration for pandering to Evangelicals. Of course, over-regulating pop culture and denying civil rights to gay Americans is on a different moral scale, but Democrats have fallen victim to the same kind of rationalizing: “If we just throw some peanuts to these moral crusaders, we can get enough votes to win.” Before Republicans knew it, a fringe agenda became their platform, and that platform became handcuffs.
As much as many liberals lament it now, it must be understood that the Democrats were complicit in the rise of the nanny state. If their next president panders to the left’s culture-warriors, Democrats will face the abyss that has swallowed the GOP platform.
Anonymous (January 22, 2008 @ 6:24am):
Great piece!
Anonymous (January 22, 2008 @ 8:15am):
Translation: RONPAUL for President!
Anonymous (January 23, 2008 @ 12:22pm):
Have you ever noticed that there is a sticker on bleach bottles that says, "do not ingest"?
Why on earth wouldn't that be obvious to anyone literate enough to read the warning label? Yet, there must have been someone literate person out there who thought it was okay to ingest bleach, right?
How does anyone win the arguement against "the nanny state" when there are people with borderline intelligence drinking bleach?
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