Doug Smith: A “Better Deal” with whom?

Doug Smith:  Free State Patriot history and society editor

July 26, 2017

So, the Democrats, party of the New Deal, The Great Society, All this and World War, too, have decided to solve their problem (nobody votes for them anymore) with a “Better Deal”.

Hmm. Really?

Well, I have not written a book about deals, nor have a stayed in a Holiday Inn Express recently, but I have made and observed a few deals in the past 60 years and offer some observations and lessons learned.

1. Who you make a deal with matters. I have made business deals with people I had reason to mistrust, but a desire to trust; an alcoholic, a thief, a chronic liar. (not all the same person!) Those deals have, predictably, gone south.
2. Examine your motivation. I made those bad deals because they promised a lot that I wanted. I wanted those things badly, for reasons of my own, but they were a little too good to be true. In perfect hindsight, I should have passed.
3. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it most likely is. Trust your gut.
4. Deals offered by Democrats have a poor track record. (The 7 years of broken promises by my own party, the GOP, is a subject for another time.)Wilson ran on a strong anti-war platform: “Too Proud to Fight. “, “He Kept us out of the War” (WW1, if you were wondering.)  He was inaugurated Jan, 100 years ago, for his second term. And in April, he went to Congress to launch the US into WW1.

   Reagan made a deal with the Democrats in 1983 for $ 1 of tax increases for every $ 3 in spending reductions. So, the Dems promised, and sent him a budget including the tax increases, which he signed. Reagan noted in his memoirs, and I note now, 34 years later, that we are still waiting for any Democrats, anywhere, at any time, to ever reduce spending on anything.

   Bush 41 made a deal with Ted Kennedy that he, Bush, would break his “Read my Lips, No New Taxes” pledge, in exchange for which Democrats would lower spending a commensurate amount. (Note that at that time, they still had not come through on those promised to Reagan, Bush’s predecessor.)  As noted, we are still waiting on those spending decreases.

   Since I have written at length about it, I won’t belabor the point too much, but Barack Obama s shovel ready jobs, which he laughed off, are still not done or filled, the 2500 a year savings never happened, we cannot keep our Doctors or plans, and whatever else it may have done, the “Affordable Care Act did not make Health Care either more affordable, or more available. Indeed, it had nothing whatsoever to do with “Care” but a great deal to do with “Insurance. “(Also, worth noting that the Insurance companies heartily signed on to a deal with a Dem that promised to assure them that 350 million people, under force of law, would be customers. And how did that work out for them?)

5. Which brings us to a lesson learned by observations: if you make a deal with someone who does not keep their word with others, don’t expect them to keep their deal with you.
6. Deals made with other people’s money are easy for the deal maker, (the Dems), enticing for the beneficiaries (their voters), brutal for the people whose money they spend (Me. You, if you pay taxes.) and once again, too good to be true. (See 3, above. See also Detroit, Illinois, black youth unemployment, minimum wage workers in Seattle.
7. There is no real wealth, other than the fruits of labor. That is what we work and do. We assign an arbitrary value to gold and diamonds, yet if I were to lock you in a room with all the gold and diamonds you wanted, and nothing else, you would starve. You could not build a car with it, except if you used it to build a factory, buy raw materials, and hire workers. The Gross Domestic Product, the yardstick of the wealth of a nation, is not about the number of zeros at the Federal Reserve, (on the ledger, not the people. Yea, I know, cheap shot.) It is about the goods and services we produce, and the value that potential buyers assign to them, and are willing to pay, in their own valuta, time, or work to obtain them.Only in the Garden of Eden was all that a man and woman needed available to reach out and take. Only in the Garden of Eden was sex available, commanded, and totally without consequence, all the time. Only in the Garden of Eden was there no need to work, and produce.

There, and in the yearning for that which was lost, which comes to be expressed in the Utopian fantasies from Plato to Marx to Wilson to Obama.  And time and again, throughout history, there have been those who try to overturn the natural order, and operate on Eden Standard Time, the way we wish things were, instead of the way they are.  Every attempt has been met with failure, and disaster, and misery.

So, the Democrats’ promises are based on the Utopian ideal: we can replant the abundance of Eden and make it grow, we can go back to how it was, and make it happen again, just put us in charge.

And they reject the promises attached to the Eden story, because they contain unpleasant realities they wish to reject: By the sweat of your brow will you eat bread, until you return to the dust, for of dust you were made, and to dust you shall return.

To accept that means to accept that men will not be perfect, that we are subject to a higher power, and that we must obey certain rules.  Progressives, notably Democrats, do not want any rules but their own, and certainly not those rules.

But that pronouncement is not all bad. You Shall eat bread, by the sweat of your brow.  Not such a terrible thing. You no longer get the Eden deal, because you broke that one. But you do get this one: You won’t go hungry, but you must work for it now. But the Democrats keep trying to establish the Eden Deal, and, failing the power to do so, find it to fail over and over.

Tragically, the lesson they learn is not that it won’t work, which is has not for millennia. No, they come away saying, if we do the same thing over and over, we will eventually get a different result.

Einstein called that insanity.  So, it is. And so, is making a deal with the Democrats, whether you are a President or a voter.

Tags: democrat better deal, DOUG SMITH, free state patriot, LIBERALISM, progressivism