Victor Davis Hanson: The Ongoing Melodrama of Victims and Oppressors
[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.]
President Obama, in the tradition of progressive Democratic leaders, believes government should ask the more economically fortunate citizens to be responsible for helping the less well off.
But the president seems to fail to acknowledge that there are plenty of actions an individual can take to avoid becoming part of that growing crowd of "less fortunate." Instead, in Obama's world, there exists a simple zero-sum melodrama of victims and oppressors....
Surely life is too complex to be such a fairy-book morality tale....
Everyone should pay some income tax. So, why does the administration talk about raising rates sharply and adding even more taxes on the 5 percent who already pay 60 percent of all federal income-tax revenue?...
...Obama commendably wants to help the less fortunate. But he seems to care far less for those who act responsibly — except to demonize them if they question whether it is either fair or even sometimes wise to subsidize those who at times don't.
Read entire article at VDH's Private Papers
President Obama, in the tradition of progressive Democratic leaders, believes government should ask the more economically fortunate citizens to be responsible for helping the less well off.
But the president seems to fail to acknowledge that there are plenty of actions an individual can take to avoid becoming part of that growing crowd of "less fortunate." Instead, in Obama's world, there exists a simple zero-sum melodrama of victims and oppressors....
Surely life is too complex to be such a fairy-book morality tale....
Everyone should pay some income tax. So, why does the administration talk about raising rates sharply and adding even more taxes on the 5 percent who already pay 60 percent of all federal income-tax revenue?...
...Obama commendably wants to help the less fortunate. But he seems to care far less for those who act responsibly — except to demonize them if they question whether it is either fair or even sometimes wise to subsidize those who at times don't.