LBJ’s New Golden Triangle: Taxes to Welfare to Slaves

 

We Chauvinists have welcomed a foreign exchange student for the school year who is attending our daughters’ charter high school — classical curriculum provided by Hillsdale. All exchange students are required to take US History and American Literature. To help our exchange student warm up to the topic of US History, we showed her the movie musical, 1776, so this scene (from which the title of this post) is fresh in my mind:

It isn’t completely fair to lay the blame for what’s happened in America on LBJ. A triangle, by its nature, means multiple parties are complicit. But, I call him out because of his infamous quote, which I leave here un-redacted in the hope that we can finally have the ugly truth out:

I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years.

Democrats haven’t changed their racist stripes — they’ve changed their strategy (h/t Bill Whittle). And it’s been working, hasn’t it?

What with Charlottesville and the cultural revolution in the process of tearing down our history, I’ve had occasion to engage with some apparently sincere liberals on Ricochet who are trying to understand what we conservatives mean when we say black Americans are living on the Democrat plantation. Consider this post a response.

Thomas Sowell can cite the numbers from memory, and, by almost every metric, blacks are worse off in the modern progressive era than they were even in FDR’s Great Depression: intact families, employment rates, income levels:

The anger and irrationality (but, I repeat myself) we’re seeing at the foot of Confederate monuments across the country is carefully cultivated by progressive “community agitators organizers” from kindergarten through graduate “studies” programs. It’s an insidious lie told to the aggrieved that they are not the masters of their lives, but must instead submit to the tender ministrations of some government master, who will stick it to the (typically white) Man and thereby improve their lives. They don’t even have to pick cotton. They just have to show up in the voting booth.

Dennis Prager recently did an Ultimate Issues Hour on Security Over Liberty. He likens government entitlements to heroin — just as addictive and life-destroying. I agree. It is human nature to take the path of least resistance — to fall for the empty promise of a comfortable, easy life at someone else’s expense, even if your own life is tragically diminished by the lack of struggle and overcoming. Democrats have been using this all too human weakness to farm votes for decades. They’ve been the authors of the worst ideas — the 16th Amendment, giving power to the government to take our property (Taxes); the Great Society, cultivating the natural inclination toward dependency to grow their voter base (Welfare); and, by breaking the Constitutional chains on government power, enslaving us all — both the taxpayers and the recipients of entitlement funds (Slaves). It’s very effective and “successful” if what you hope to achieve is centralized, unlimited power. One might even call it “diabolical.” I know I would.

Who makes up a second side of the triangle? Well, clearly the voters. It’s a false compassion that consigns others to this life of dependency just so one can feel good about “helping others” (by confiscating other people’s money and redistributing it through a ginormous bureaucracy). And, it’s foolish to think one can receive what one has not earned and lead a happy, fulfilling life. It just doesn’t work that way. There’s no free lunch.

But, I’m not finished yet. The Republicans have some culpability in this, forming the third leg. Knowing what they know about the Progressive Golden Triangle, their inability (or unwillingness) to push hard against these malicious, character destroying methods is shameful and cowardly. The stakes are certainly high enough (just look at the human wreckage in Democrat-controlled cities), that good men would be willing to wager their Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honor. That they’re not even willing to risk their next election to repeal Obamacare and reform the tax code I’m finding more and more unforgivable. It’s no longer a matter of politics. It’s a matter of justice.

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  1. Viruscop Inactive
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    Robert McReynolds (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    There are many reasonable people here who are consistent in their beliefs; however, there are many here who are kooks.

    Name calling is not necessary. And your “you guys” argument is deeply flawed. Just because you don’t like our challenges to do your own work doesn’t make us kooks. It makes us wise.

    So you wouldn’t call this post kooky? Not even the part where the OP links to a site that compares Lincoln to Hitler?

    So when you see the words of Hitler and compare them to the same sentiments of Lincoln, that states should submit to the force of a centralized governing power, you see kookiness? I see parallels. You and I are different. But here’s the thing: you can’t refute the parallel that Lincoln and Hitler held similar views about the structure of governments, so you resort to name calling. When Leftists resort to calling me names, that usually means I have taken the day.

    Yeah, it was kookiness, and I don’t think that is just my opinion.

    Why didn’t it get promoted to the main feed?

    • #91
  2. Robert McReynolds Member
    Robert McReynolds
    @

    Gumby Mark (View Comment):

    Robert McReynolds (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    So you wouldn’t call this post kooky?

    @robertmcreynolds is one of our most intelligent and talented writers. I don’t always agree with him, but he regularly finds creative ways to explore a topic. No, I wouldn’t call it kooky.

    Thank you Mrs. Quinn. (I assume that you are married.)

    It may not be kooky, but it is ridiculous history.

    Ridiculous? It is historically accurate. Having slogged through Mein Kampf, there is a specific section where he talks about states being diminished as a necessary function of a powerful centralized government. And that is exactly the same sentiment voiced in Lincoln’s first inaugural address. You don’t have to like it, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

    • #92
  3. Robert McReynolds Member
    Robert McReynolds
    @

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Robert McReynolds (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    There are many reasonable people here who are consistent in their beliefs; however, there are many here who are kooks.

    Name calling is not necessary. And your “you guys” argument is deeply flawed. Just because you don’t like our challenges to do your own work doesn’t make us kooks. It makes us wise.

    So you wouldn’t call this post kooky? Not even the part where the OP links to a site that compares Lincoln to Hitler?

    So when you see the words of Hitler and compare them to the same sentiments of Lincoln, that states should submit to the force of a centralized governing power, you see kookiness? I see parallels. You and I are different. But here’s the thing: you can’t refute the parallel that Lincoln and Hitler held similar views about the structure of governments, so you resort to name calling. When Leftists resort to calling me names, that usually means I have taken the day.

    Yeah, it was kookiness, and I don’t think that is just my opinion.

    Why didn’t it get promoted to the main feed?

    Well it did, so you don’t know what you are talking about. Thanks for playing.

    • #93
  4. Larry Koler Inactive
    Larry Koler
    @LarryKoler

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Robert McReynolds (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    There are many reasonable people here who are consistent in their beliefs; however, there are many here who are kooks.

    Name calling is not necessary. And your “you guys” argument is deeply flawed. Just because you don’t like our challenges to do your own work doesn’t make us kooks. It makes us wise.

    So you wouldn’t call this post kooky? Not even the part where the OP links to a site that compares Lincoln to Hitler?

    So when you see the words of Hitler and compare them to the same sentiments of Lincoln, that states should submit to the force of a centralized governing power, you see kookiness? I see parallels. You and I are different. But here’s the thing: you can’t refute the parallel that Lincoln and Hitler held similar views about the structure of governments, so you resort to name calling. When Leftists resort to calling me names, that usually means I have taken the day.

    Yeah, it was kookiness, and I don’t think that is just my opinion.

    Why didn’t it get promoted to the main feed?

    It was.

    • #94
  5. Viruscop Inactive
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    Robert McReynolds (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Robert McReynolds (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):

    Susan Quinn (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    There are many reasonable people here who are consistent in their beliefs; however, there are many here who are kooks.

    Name calling is not necessary. And your “you guys” argument is deeply flawed. Just because you don’t like our challenges to do your own work doesn’t make us kooks. It makes us wise.

    So you wouldn’t call this post kooky? Not even the part where the OP links to a site that compares Lincoln to Hitler?

    So when you see the words of Hitler and compare them to the same sentiments of Lincoln, that states should submit to the force of a centralized governing power, you see kookiness? I see parallels. You and I are different. But here’s the thing: you can’t refute the parallel that Lincoln and Hitler held similar views about the structure of governments, so you resort to name calling. When Leftists resort to calling me names, that usually means I have taken the day.

    Yeah, it was kookiness, and I don’t think that is just my opinion.

    Why didn’t it get promoted to the main feed?

    Well it did, so you don’t know what you are talking about. Thanks for playing.

    I believe that it was taken off the main feed, at least for a short time. Why was it on a neo-Confederate site?

    • #95
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