The Centre Cannot Hold

 

Although the man in the White House is blaming everyone except the tooth fairy for the nation’s economic woes: George Bush, Congress, Republicans, Europe, the weather, the Japanese earthquake, Standard and Poor’s, the Tea party and, and … He might consider looking in the mirror or at his progressive brethren in university faculties. They have been peddling their ideological wares to legions of vulnerable young people already conditioned to believe in the higher morality of income redistribution by the public school system, the media and the entertainment industry.

According to the Tax Foundation, politicians have been all too happy to comply. Between 1986 and 2009 the percentage of Americans who pay zero or negative federal income taxes increased to 51% from 18.5%. Conversely, the share of federal income taxes paid by the top 5% of earners rose to 59%. Meanwhile, the national debt increased to 100% of GDP from 42% in 1980.

Has the soaring rhetoric of class warfare so admired by the media now unleashed “the blood dimmed tide.” People who have been persuaded that they “deserve” (fill in the blanks) don’t worry about budget deficits. They mean to get their “fair share” of whatever it is they feel entitled to have.

In Chicago, marauding youths attack commuters and bicyclists and rob stores. In Wisconsin union thugs disrupted the opening ceremonies of the state fair, adding to their ignominious record of threatening legislators in Madison. Roving gangs of young blacks, quick to learn from their elders, beat and harassed white fair goers as they tried to leave. Or if one observer of the after fair mayhem is to be believed, the young thugs were just having a good time “wilding.”

Is this what happens when, as Margaret Thatcher so succinctly put it, “we run out of other people’s money?” Ask the London police.

*Excerpt from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War.