David

Karki

Read David's bio and previous columns here

March 17, 2008

The Liberal Agenda: It’s Obviously Not to Solve Anything, So It Must Be Control

For far too long, liberals have gotten away with the bad results of their policies because of the good intentions they claim. But how can even good intentions compensate for beliefs that are so demonstrably false? And should we accept that those intentions are in fact good? Simple logic and common sense suggest an agenda quite different from the benign intent they publicly aver. Some examples:

Energy. We have plenty of resources to be self-sufficient, from ANWR to off-shore locations in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific to a potential 200 billion-barrel deposit recently found in North Dakota (10 times our current oil reserves). All we have to do is go get it, and build the infrastructure capacity to process and transport it. 

But radical environmentalist groups and government will not allow any of this over their dead bodies. Instead, they're forcing a massive ethanol boondoggle on us that effectively acts as a punitive food tax, and are subsidizing all sorts of “alternative fuels” that couldn't survive otherwise and will never be more than a trendy thing by which wealthier liberals can glorify themselves.

So being energy independent is clearly not their objective, unless you read that as being independent of energy – meaning not having any.

Transportation. Most of us would define efficiency here as enabling the most people to move from their point of departure to their destination as quickly as possible at the lowest cost. By that standard, the solution would be as much road capacity as is needed to handle the existing amount of traffic, since laying pavement is far cheaper than rail, and roads can go to far more places and be more easily re-routed than rail, thus providing flexibility. And it could even reduce the amount of fuel consumed and exhaust emitted as each vehicle would spend far less time running the engine with traffic thus minimized.

But environmental groups and government refuse to lay one more square inch of pavement, instead wasting our money on expensive rail that few will use. And vehicles continue to needlessly burn gas and chug out exhaust sitting in gridlock.

So having efficient transportation is clearly not their objective.

Education. Any business run the way public education is run would be out of business in a hurry, given the shoddy product, the low value in return for all the money invested and the fact that it's a monopoly. The more that's spent on it, the worse it seems to get. And there is almost a pride in inefficiency, if you compare class-size arguments with other businesses. (I can only serve a few customers at a time and I should get paid more for that!)

But teachers’ unions and government block this, stopping at nothing to keep their money machine going. In many states, education is devouring the budget, in some cases consuming two of every three dollars spent. And if you even suggest slowing its exponential growth, you're ferociously denounced as hating children.

Obviously, efficiency is clearly not their objective. If it were, government wouldn't touch it, and parents might just then be forced to once again take full responsibility for their children's education, rather than using schools as glorified day-care centers. And if schools had to be responsible to their consumers or lose tuition revenue to a competitor as a result, you'd see a better product at a better price.

Welfare state. We spent the better part of $6 trillion on the “War on Poverty,” and poverty won. Most of this money effectively acted as a perverse incentive to be irresponsible – the production of illegitimate children chief amongst that – and therefore encouraged more, not less, of these destructive behaviors. What was meant to help instead helped ruin.

If efficiency were really the goal, government wouldn't be involved with charity. Accountability between donor and charity and then charity and recipient simply doesn't exist with government the way it does privately. This accountability ensures maximum help for the dollar, on both the giving and receiving end. And that true charity is measured by how many no longer require it. Moreover, charity simply is not and never has been government's job.

So, what is the left's agenda? It's patently obvious that it's not the explanation they expect us to accept at face value, because they are doing things that have and will continue to accomplish the opposite. And this fact is plainly observable. Thus, if they truly meant well, they'd stop – or be declared insane for having repeated the same behavior while expecting different results for so long. That they not only don't stop but in most instances are hell-bent on going even further indicates they don't mean well. (Or are insane.)

The real agenda is control. When you can only go where rail goes when the train runs, because liberals have taken away the fuel and the road; when the state “educates,” so liberals can indoctrinate kids in order to perpetuate their own existence and drain your wallet simultaneously; when the welfare state entraps people, because liberals get re-elected by the check-dependent; all of this gives them control – of your movement, your behavior, your children, your life.

This must be stopped, for no one so controlled can possibly be free.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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