April 17, 2010

And Another Thing...

Earlier I posted some comments and observations on a real libs of genius video by Secular Stupidest. Not to give away the ending, but I focused on a minimum wage issue. But I missed another, probably more important point at 55 seconds into that video.  The protester who is protesting the protest (i.e. the liberal guy) mentions that he wants the power in the hands of the people and not the corporations.  The conversation he is having is polite (good for him, as well as those he is talking with) but it is misguided.

He's asked by a Tea Party advocate what if the people would rather provide aid to the poor themselves via churches and community activity rather than through government.  He slips, without a second thought into the talking point of keeping power in the hands of the people and not the corporations.  That it is entirely extraneous to the conversation is a glaring problem.  I'm embarrassed that I missed that previously.  But since it's now on the table, let me address the issue. Here are a few points to consider.

(1)  The government is a bigger, more ominous centralization of power than any corporation or group of corporations.  Therefore, it further removes the individual from any type of decision making process than any corporation ever could.  One concrete example is that it makes all decisions about where support for lower income people is spent and how it is spent.  You want your feed the poor money to go to those in Oakland - that's too bad for you if the government sees the problem in Detroit as far worse and allocates your tax dollars there.

(2)  The issue of taxation in order to feed the poor is wholly unrelated to the power of corporations.  A corporation cannot stop you from donating to a charity.  The government can however.  They can tax away your disposable income, and that of corporations for that matter, to the point where no one has left over money to contribute anywhere.

(3)  Corporations have brakes - they must comply with legal rules of operation.  Failure to do so results in punishment by the government.  The government has no such brakes.  Sure there exist rules to stop individuals within the government from breaking the law.  But if the government wants to do something that breaks the law, it only has to rewrite the law to suit its ambitions.  I ask you - out of those two choices where would you rather see power, where it can be overseen or where it can't?

(4) This one is a bit more political - how are you supposed to debate this guy? He's been duped into thinking the government sees all, knows all, can do all, and so should have the power it needs to do so. The real challenge for conservatives, is as always, to educate people to allow for competing schools of thought and then to offer a choice. This guy, as many others has been brainwashed into a false choice model.  He's been brainwashed into thinking the greatest evil is the corporation.  It allows liberals to distort the election cycle by using corporations as their whipping boys for a perverted purchase of votes via a fabricated class warfare.  How do you overcome that?  The only way I can think of is to convince people that corporations do indeed have a human face, as they are run by people, not "fatcats".  If you can convince people that corporations have been and can continue to be, predominantly a force for good, it would go a long way to defeating liberal specious arguments and dishonest agenda.

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