Brussels Sprouts In Washington

November 10, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Economic issues, Obama administration 

Dr. Gannon’s post about the top ten most irritating words and phrases in the English language omitted “drink the Kool Aid,” which perhaps, unlike Dr. Gannon, never made it to Oxford, which compiled the list. As I recall, it came from the Jim Jones-inspired mass suicide in Guyana in 1978 (I wonder how many bloggers breezily write “As I recall” when they just looked it up at Wikipedia), which may make it a uniquely American irritating and overused phrase.

In any event, Mark Steyn isn’t drinking. He isn’t sipping. He isn’t even waving it over his martini:

My Republican friends are now saying, oh, not to worry, look at the exit polls, this is still a “center-right” country. Americans didn’t vote to go left, they voted to go cool. It was a Dancing With The Stars election: Obama’s a star and everyone wants to dance with him. It doesn’t mean they’re suddenly gung-ho for left-wingery….

I disagree with my fellow conservatives who think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank liberal behemoth will so obviously screw up that they’ll be routed in two or four years’ time. The President-elect’s so-called “tax cut” will absolve 48 percent of Americans from paying any federal income tax at all, while those that are left will pay more. Just under half the population will be, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on the dole. By 2012, it will be more than half, and this will be an electorate where the majority of the electorate will be able to vote itself more lollipops from the minority of their compatriots still dumb enough to prioritize self-reliance, dynamism, and innovation over the sedating cocoon of the nanny state. That is the death of the American idea — which, after all, began as an economic argument: “No taxation without representation” is a great rallying cry. “No representation without taxation” has less mass appeal. For how do you tell an electorate living high off the entitlement hog that it’s unsustainable and you’ve got to give some of it back?

At that point, America might as well apply for honorary membership in the European Union.

Hat tip to John Barr.

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