Waiting for Palinurus
Conservatives often do not need to look beyond the classics of Greece and Rome to reaffirm their belief in the constancy of human nature. Pertaining to the debt crisis, perhaps the Aeneid can provide some insight.
In Book V, as Aeneas attempts to navigate his fellow Trojans to the shores of Italy, he is continually harassed by Juno, who was bent upon stopping their quest due to her grudge against the Trojans. Venus (Aeneas’ mother) guards over her son’s quest, thus pitting herself against Juno in a divine squabble over the course of the epic. As Aeneas struggles to lead his men ashore, Venus ultimately turns to Neptune, god of the sea, for assistance. Neptune agrees to guide Aeneas’ men to Italy, thereby ending this prolonged naval dispute, but holds that one life must be lost for the others to be saved. That turned out to be Palinurus, the ship’s helmsman, who, overcome by the god Somnus, was cast overboard at the dead of night.
Perhaps we can follow a similar course. After a few human sacrifices out at sea, our national crisis will be over! But as we pray to Neptune, the left pushes for “shared sacrifice” – an equally unproductive option. Clouded by irrelevant issues like corporate jet taxes, national attention is being distracted from a clear economic truth – our crisis is due to a fundamental, systemic problem with expenditures. But, Democrats still look to “revenue raising”, pointing to a small, faceless (yet wealthy) minority to solve our crisis – our economic Palinurus.
The magic bullet of taxing the rich has never existed and is in its least applicable state now. Economist Walter E. Williams underscores this fact: “If Congress imposed a 100% tax, taking all earnings above $250,000 per year, it would yield the princely sum of $1.4 trillion. That would keep the government running for 141 days, but there's a problem because there are 224 more days left in the year.” We wouldn’t close the deficit even if we liquidated the wealthy and their businesses. Moreover, talks of taxing the rich ignore the detrimental consequences on our wealth-creating mechanisms.
Nevertheless, we still seek our Palinurus – a small group that, with minimal impact to us, can alleviate this national burden. Bernie Sanders’ recent petition to President Obama encapsulates this tactic, comprised of blanket characterizations against this faceless body of wealthy bourgeoisie. The idea to bleed the few to save the many is, at first glance, tempting. But its pursuit and implementation has been historically detrimental to all. We ought always to be mindful of our mythology, both literary and economic.
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Dec '10
Re: Waiting for Palinurus
Notice that the leftists never propose a tax on wealth, which would access the dollars acquired by Theresa Hienz, through marriage. Or the wealth of her husband through the marriage to the Hienz widow. And, yet, the ketchup factories in New Jersey where my father once worked employ only security guards, as they sit empty and Hienz makes 70% of it's products overseas. A wealth tax would reach out to the Kennedy fortune built from bootlegging and speakeasies, but that is never proposed.Only income is demagogable (is that a word?), never festering and unproductive wealth, that funds foundations and liberal politicians.Just for fun, we should attack accumulated wealth in public, on the subject of "shared sacrifice". The Harvard endowments. Warren Buffett's wealth, not his income. Bill Gate's wealth, not his income.How long, do you think, before the leftists would just shut up, as they peered over their windowsills at the torches and pitchforks?
Dec '10
Re: Waiting for Palinurus
In the second Star Trek movie the climax revolved around Spock telling Kirk that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. He said this as he sacrificed himself to save the rest of the crew. This is the image Obama and the left attempt to portray when they talk about shared sacrifice and taxing the wealthy. The difference they fail to notice is in who is making the choice. In the movie it is Spock choosing of his own free will to sacrifice himself for the good of others. In the left's scheme, it is the many choosing to sacrifice the few (or the one) for their own good. Sorry, Barry, sacrifice is a check valve. Good only flows one way through it.
Dec '10
Re: Waiting for Palinurus
In the Obama version, it would be Spock telling that to Kirk as he pushed him into that little plexiglass room and locked the door.
May '10
Re: Waiting for Palinurus
Am I the only one who saw this title and thought we had another entry on our Sarah?
Anyhow, a more recent example of the scapegoat that was going to cure a voracious wolf of his predations, if only it were sacrificed, is the Sudetenlanders. How'd that work out for Europe?
I like CJRun's idea of taxing accumulated wealth. Of course, it's "those people," George Soros and the worthless Paris Hilton types, that we think of when the demagogues talk about taxing "the rich." And that's what they count on, because they aren't terribly sympathetic. Of course, as we here know, those aren't the ones being taxed. The onerous taxes are on successful physicians, businessmen, entrepreneurs, generally people who sacrificed to get where they are today and are finally making a hard earned good living. Funny, too, that the likes of Bill Maher, etc, persist in claiming the "filthy rich" are all Republicans, when that also isn't true.
What mystifies me is that no one on our side is correcting the lies. We know it, but many people who vote don't seem to.