President Obama has raised the issue of why anyone would object to asking the very rich “to give some more” through increased taxes.
As he put the matter, “What is wrong with asking those who make more to pay a little more?”
It’s been pointed out by all too few people that what Obama & Co. advocate isn’t to ask anyone to give. It is about confiscating from them what Mr. Obama & Co. want to have available for the redistribution of wealth as they see fit.
Never mind that you and I and other citizens are all doing some serious redistribution of our wealth already, spending based on or own decisions and giving by our own lights, with no need for help from Obama & Co.
Yet hardly anyone in the mainstream media raises any principled objections to the president’s view.
Millions of Americans, including wealthy ones like Mitt Romney, are asked to give to myriad nonprofit organizations, and they come forth with generous contributions. I know I often do, though I am hardly what one would consider wealthy. Millions and millions of others send contributions to victims of tsunamis or hurricanes or other disasters and difficult circumstances here and abroad.
The media is giving Obama & Co. a pass on so many fronts one wonders if they are sound asleep at the wheel.
A point like the one about “asking” versus coercing through taxes is seldom raised, even on Fox News.
It’s as if there was a kind of code of silence in place.
Maybe it is because so many folks—even those opposed to Obama’s massive forced redistributions—support some such policies. Perhaps they know that if they raise the issue, then the case for taxing us all for their own pet projects—e.g., the war on drugs, military engagements overseas, etc.—would be undermined.
The slippery slope might account for this silence. Talk of asking people gets mixed up with talk of coercing people, and no one in the public forums objects.
Competent journalists are supposed to discern the difference between asking and making people pay. One can only speculate what sorts of questions are being rehearsed in schools of journalism. It doesn’t seem as though the students are enlightened about the difference between forcing and asking people for support.
I am by no means being original in pointing out these matters, but few if any prominent journalists, pundits, commentators, et al., make it a point to raise the issue.
Why?
