Blood From Stones
After watching our commander-in-chief’s bravura performance of the famous political play, Glib Obliqueness, which he staged in lieu of a press conference yesterday, a little snooping seemed in order. After all, if he’s presently using more smoke and mirrors than a Kiss concert to conceal the fact that the preponderance of his plans – from car care to healthcare – constitute open-ended promises with closed-ended funding, the buck has to stop somewhere, right? It does, indeed. And it cashes out in a simple question:
If you had something to give and it were taken from you, would you give more?
If your answer to the question is no, should this be surprising? The fact that charitable giving is down is not the result of a lack of means or a suddenly hardened spirit. It’s a matter of vocabulary and psychology. If people give what they choose to give, that’s called giving. When they see the positive results of their giving, they incline to give more. If people have taken from them what they otherwise would have chosen to give, that’s called stealing. When they feel the corresponding senses of indignation and violation, they incline to be protective of whatever they might have left. Having what otherwise would have been your charitable contributions taken by the government is the rough equivalent of having your paper-route earnings stolen by larcenous parents, then having them tell you to cough up some money for the collection plate in church so others can be helped – and to cover their share while you’re at it. If someone’s getting the free ride, it may as well be them. After all, they’re the adults in this relationship. And yesterday’s rendering of Glib Obliqueness was about nothing, if not parentally arbitrary condescension.
This comment from the article cited above warrants particular note:
Most charities were faring adequately in 2008 until the final quarter of the year – traditionally the quarter that brings the most donations, said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The downward trend has continued into 2009, Palmer said, “and that means a lot of groups are doing pretty badly.”
No mystery there. At the height of the 2008 election season, the panic was on. Belts tightened. They became tourniquets after Inauguration Day when our new commander-in-chief showed no reluctance whatever at putting both of his hands in our pockets and telling us he had better ideas for their contents than we did. Then he let us know he’d not only be propping up failing businesses with our money, we’d better be ready to support unions when they passed the plates, just to make sure the fix not only was in but that those failed businesses remained corrupt.
While we’re on the subject of picked pockets, you won’t want to forget vocabulary when it comes to the healthcare our commander-in-chief is going to provide for us (at the expense of an indefinite number of subsequent generations). An admonition apropos of business and politics says, “Never believe anything until it’s officially denied.” And we’re getting proof aplenty from the administrations minions that Obama Care (under the guise of Kennedy Care) is going to cost us plenty. This lady contends Dr. Barack’s cure will never take public money. Right. She seems disarmingly careful not to define her terms. The definition of never is self-evident. Precisely what she means by public is a little more squishy. And this shameless shaman of chicanery contends that whatever it is that’s actually going on (he didn’t say) constitutes buzzwords. Buzzwords? If the money for a government-created “public healthcare option” is NOT going to come from public funds (taxes), where will it come from? Christina Romer’s not saying. My guess is we won’t get a straight answer from our friend the Mortgage Man, either.
But the tab may be coming due for all the free lunches, and our commander-in-chief’s rhetorical flights of fancy may be coming home to roost. Abraham Lincoln famously said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” You’d think somewhere, sometime in his schooling – between classes in law and theatrical pyrotechnics – Papa Barack would have had time to learn that one. He didn’t. Fooling 17,869,542 people in the 2008 popular election only emboldened him and made him ignore Honest Abe’s advice all the more.
You can be sure there’s trouble brewing when The New York Times comes out in opposition to anything on the Democratic agenda. Given the prospects of going out of business, perhaps The Gray Lady has opted to be objective for a change, or – dare I say it? – to publish some semblance of truth, especially since they don’t have George Bush to kick around anymore? Nah! More likely this is an errant attack of common sense that happened to slip by the editorial board. We probably can look forward to news of David Brooks being pilloried in an upcoming edition. And if our commander-in-chief’s poll numbers are really tanking by then, they’ll probably pin the decline on Brooks. After all, what good is barnyard reporting, if you don’t have a goat around?
But I digress. The point is it would take some truly perverse spin on Stockholm Syndrome to make us continue our loyal adulation for a presidential pilferer who wants to tell us that emptying our pockets at the point of a figurative gun will create more jobs, give us better healthcare, and allow us to contribute more charitably to the greater societal good. The Giving USA Foundation knows better. The polls know better. Even The New York Times knows better. The test will be to see if voters have learned better, beginning with the 2010 mid-terms.
See you at the polls.