Liberals Never Learn

By Alan Burkhart

There is an old saying that goes thusly: "It is a form of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result." Or as I prefer it, "If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keeping getting what you've always got."

A valid test of a person's overall intelligence and common sense is how well he or she learns from experience and mistakes. Even the lower animals learn from their life experiences. Laboratory rats navigate mazes and water tanks with hidden exits. Dogs learn their limits in yards with "invisible fences."  House pets learn from positive and negative feedback about not getting on a particular piece of furniture.

Evidently the average laboratory rat is smarter than most of the liberals in Washington. For half a century, the American Left has failed to learn one simple lesson: You cannot tax a nation into prosperity.

You'd think it would be simple to understand. The more money you take away from people, the less they have.  In that grand socialist experiment known as California, businesses are leaving in droves for friendlier climes. Unemployment is continuing to climb. More and more people are forced to seek government benefits when they cannot find work. And every time the money runs out, which is often, the state government  raises taxes yet again to make up the shortfall. And yet the state government continues to wonder why people are packing their bags for greener pastures.

On the national level, Barack Obama's nascent empire is already starting to crumble. Independent voters and some Democrats are feeling the pangs of voter's remorse and the Democrats are sagging badly in the national opinion polls. The principal reason the Dems are losing ground is that most of the American people have in fact learned that simple lesson I mentioned above. Our Democrat leaders unfortunately have not.

Exactly what "change" have we seen in the Democrats? After all the promises of bipartisanship and transparency, the Left simply defaulted back to its decades-old agenda of environmental extremism, wealth redistribution and massive government programs. There has been no change. We're seeing the same tired old liberal policies as before, even in the face of strong opposition from the people. The Democrat party is gleefully flushing America down the financial toilet with trillions of dollars in new debt.

I've never been one to pay much heed to an individual poll. But I do watch the trends of all the polls. There is no mistaking the evidence - the Left is on its way to a well-deserved train wreck in the midterm elections. My only hope is that the Republicans can muster enough opposition to hold the line until that time, and that they'll have the good sense (a lot to ask, I know) to not repeat their own mistakes that got them kicked out of power before.

We do not need out-of-control government spending at any time, and certainly not with our current bleak economic climate. We need government, regardless of which party is in power, to rein in spending and cut taxes so both individuals and businesses will have money in their pockets. We need government to cease and desist its class warfare politics and recognize that businesses, both large and small, are the backbone of our economy. There is nothing inherently evil about being wealthy as long as that wealth is honorably earned.

We need the Left to own up to its culpability in the subprime lending fiasco instead of blaming the banks for making loans in which they had no choice but to make. Or, does anyone remember the Community Reinvestment Act, signed into law by Jimmy Carter? Does the Left remember how leftist "community organizers" pressured and threatened banks into making loans  to people who had no chance of repaying them? And now Obama and his cronies are blatantly lying about where the fault lies, blaming the banks for a mess not of their making.

We need the Left to come clean about its environmental agenda. Even  some of the IPCC's own scientists are now backtracking on the most recent UN climate report. Evidence is mounting that the entire concept of human-caused global warming is a fraud, pushed onto world in the name of a globalist political agenda. Al Gore, who has made untold millions pushing his "Inconvenient Truths" should be hauled away in chains. And yet the Left continues to push this false  agenda - an agenda that will finish crushing our economy if they succeed.

Barack Obama once said he wanted to "fundamentally change" this country. This country doesn't need his kind of change. We need to get back to the basic principles that made America great. The Left and the RINOs in the Republican party need to learn that the money they're spending doesn't belong to them. The money, and this nation, belong to the people. That's a change I'll believe in when I see it.