When preparing their budgetary prescriptions, of course, our friends on the right do not speak of what they are taking away from the poor -- such as food out of their mouths, doctor visits when they are ill, or a chance at having a roof over their heads. Our friends on the right say they are forcing people to give up "dependency" on government largesse, eliminating the "nanny state" and helping to "build moral fiber."

To make but a single point, in a nation where a full third of the households are headed by single women, most of them working,

I'm quite sure that if the landlords and merchants on the Right were willing to charge women 72 cents for every dollar a man was charge, on rent or groceries, daycare and transportation --- as they are more than willing to pay them 72 cents for every dollar paid a man to do the same job -- our women would have far fewer complaints about the social order.

Rod Amis

What exactly are taxes for? What are they supposed to provide? Well, let's see:

1. A national defense
2. A physical infrastructure for life and commerce (policing, fire departments, roads and bridges, schools, buildings in which to house these and the governmental functions and functionaries to administer and support them)
3. Salaries to support the real people performing tasks one and two.

Intriguingly, our friends on the right fail to ever mention that the United States has the least taxed population in the industrialized world. We pay far less for everything from education to gasoline for our cars than any other industrialized nation on the face of the earth, in fact. One suspects that they ignore this reality when whipping this particular boy because we also happen to be the least educated, most unhealthy people on earth, too --- unless we are rich.

There's a strange correlation between the people saying that we DON'T need higher taxes and those who can afford to buy privately what most Americans have to have some assistance in acquiring --- like adequate healthcare, for instance.

It's also inconvenient for our friends seeking lower taxation to have to admit that there are potholes in our major highways, our cities are rotting like old, bad apples and that our schools are over-crowded and crumbling.

They certainly believe that if we invest more money in tests, rather than good teachers, the results will be more positive in the educational sphere.

It is patently clear, to move forward, that in a nation where 99% of the population can trace their roots to some other country that immigration is an evil. How could we leftists have missed this fact so evident to our friends on the right?

One of the primary reasons that immigration is evil, their argument goes, is that it serves to dilute and mongrelize the ineffable, rock solid American character and heritage. America was not founded as an experiment in democracy at all, you see, and the Bill of Rights was a grudgingly accepted add-on to what was otherwise an admirable Constitution.

Those words that Frenchman put on the Statue of Liberty are an heretical burden and should likely be expunged.

No! There is a long-standing American heritage, a Christian-only heritage as unchanging as a Norman Rockwell cover on the Saturday Evening Post: white, small-town, provincial and virtuous. It speaks English only and does not stoop to learn other languages as people might on other continents, steadfast as it is in its purity. It goes by the name of Babbitt... or Buchanan, Will or Buckley, and would never have a name like Gershwin or Brezinski, Frankfurter or DuBois.

This fabled America must be defended from being weakened and mongrelized by the threatening political notions and religious challenges that come with bringing foreigners into our midsts -- they remind us, these guardians of our national character -- because it is so fragile (like a hot-house flower of their imaginings) and unsure of itself.

Again, as with all of their prescriptions for society, ANYTHING which threatens their power or privilege is suspect. We are again called upon, we misguided leftists and our fellow-travelers, to ignore the historical reality that whenever this argument of exclusivity to a special or divine right was put forward in human history it has had as its handmaiden inquisitions, pogroms, ostracisms, genocide and victimization.

And, finally, we come to the problem, the cruel nature, of Big Government.

One of the worst crimes of Big Government, of course, is that it regulates commerce and society. Big Government makes it more difficult to leave arsenic in the drinking water, to deplete the ozone, to contaminate the rivers with chemical run-offs and the clouds with acid rain. Big Government and its damnable regulations fetter the growth of Big Business, which we all know benefits everyone, by requiring vehicles, toys, drugs, food, tools, housing, etc. to be safe for human beings --- at great and unreasonable expense to Big Business. Surely, anyone with half-a-brain, goes the argument of our friends, can see that all these regulations are a burden and stunt the growth of the free market!

While stuffing the wallets, paying for junkets, and generally wining and dining politicians in return for favors or pouring money into political parties is just an expression of the Free Speech of Big Business, supporting the notion of having a government which just might still manage to protect the health and (urp!) welfare of its citizens is bad for society.

Their homilies try to convince us that the rights of the average person are their concern and the reason they are against Big Government. But look past the homilies and to the legislation they put forward and support and you will immediately see that our friends are not inherently against government, they are against government that keeps them from doing whatever they damned well please to make a buck, safe or unsafe.

They could not care less about the impact on the average person. They never think about the average person. They only think about their net worth and how to make it larger. Period. When government -- by way of rules and regulations which benefit the little guy, keep him from getting poisoned or injured --- stands in their way, it is immediately demonized as "Big Government."

I bring these hard facts to your attention because some time today, or tomorrow at the latest, you're going to hear one or all of these Whipping Boys trotted out by someone in your government or the press. Keep them in mind and enjoy a cynical laugh with me.

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