National Review's Salam Schools Klein, Vanden Heuvel and Zakaria on Tea Party and Taxes
National Review's Reihan Salam on Sunday proved once again that liberal media members no matter what their number are no match for one well-informed conservative.
On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Salam took on the host, Time magazine's Joe Klein, and the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel on a far-ranging discussion about how both sides of the aisle view taxes, the Tea Party, and social change with the conservative ending up looking like the only knowledgeable person in the room (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOE KLEIN, TIME: You know, one thing I find, I -- and I spend a lot of time out in the middle of the country -- is that people who are the Republican Party base and the heart of the Tea Party, who are white, tending toward elderly and so on, are kind of worried about the fact that this is not the country they grew up in.
You know, you go to a town in Arkansas and you find all the convenience stores are run by South Asians and there are Mexicans all over the place. And people talk to you about their grandson, who has just become gay, and their granddaughter, who is dating a Japanese guy.
And the President of the United States doesn't even have the good sense to be either black or white and his middle name is Hussein. They are scared about this. And the economy, I think, does ramify it.
Typical leftist nonsense from Klein to be followed by typical leftist nonsense from Vanden Heuvel:
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, THE NATION: But this is what I was talking about, the tectonic shifts in this country.
This is a period of change. And one can approach that change with fear, or playing to the electorates, the Tea Party's grievances and resentments, which I do think we see in all of these candidates, with the exception of Ron Paul.
But I do think we're living in a time where government is misunderstood by those who need its benefits. Tax cuts do not revive auto industries. That's why the Republicans are going to lose Michigan --
(CROSSTALK)
REIHAN SALAM, NATIONAL REVIEW: Well, they can --
VANDEN HEUVEL: -- and Ohio --
(CROSSTALK)
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: So we've got to -- we've got to --
SALAM: They can.
ZAKARIA: -- we've got to get Reihan in so --
And now for some much-needed sanity:
SALAM: How splendid that we have such consensus around the table, Fareed.
I would argue that tax expenditures are a very big part of the transfer state in this country. If you look at tax expenditures, there's $600 billion, according to one estimate, of tax expenditures a year.
We have a state, a transfer state, that is at least as large as what you see in Northern Europe. And the trouble with our transfer state is that, unlike those that you see in other parts of the world, it skews toward people who are middle income and people who are affluent. That is a genuine problem.
ZAKARIA: Yes, but answer the -- I want you to answer the point that all three have made, which is --
SALAM: Well, Fareed, but I'm trying to say that actually --
ZAKARIA: No, no, no --
SALAM: -- this way of exercising government policy is a way of making the exercise of government policy relatively less visible --
ZAKARIA: I understand.
SALAM: And I think that that's a real problem.
ZAKARIA: But I want to -- I want to hear --
SALAM: So I think that it's not quite --
ZAKARIA: -- I want to hear --
SALAM: -- oh, these people, don't -- they don't realize that they're on the take. Ha, ha, ha.
(CROSSTALK)
KLEIN: No, actually, there's a reason they don't realize that.
ZAKARIA: Right. But I want to ask you to...
KLEIN: But I'd love to hear the question.
ZAKARIA: -- to specifically...
SALAM: Yes?
ZAKARIA: -- address this issue that you have a lot of fear of social change. I mean there was the point Joe was making, this is the point -- you reviewed the Theda Skocpol book in "Foreign Affairs" --
SALAM: Fareed, in 1970 --
ZAKARIA: So what's wrong with it?
SALAM: -- the United States was 3.8 percent foreign born. Right now, the United States is 11 percent foreign born. And another 12 percent has at least one foreign born parent. I happen to be in that latter category.
Now, when you think about that, in the space of 40 years, you've had that extraordinary change, OK?
Now, when you think about the level of social peace and civic amity that we have in this society, given that extraordinary demographic change, I think that a lot of the nostalgia that you see on both sides, both on the left and the right, think about the nostalgia on the left, the idea that the mid-century economy in the United States is the way that an economy should always be, that model of New Deal social democracy is a way that an economy should be.
It happened in a world where there were no Thai restaurants, Fareed. The country was 3.8 percent foreign born.
(CROSSTALK)
SALAM: And when you have those changes, it actually accelerates, intensifies and exacerbates certain kinds of structural differences and inequality.
Fascinating. Take a moment to consider the point Salam made.
The Left and their media minions are constantly saying that conservatives and the Tea Party are stuck in the past pining for a return to the Reagan Era.
Yet what do liberals want? More New Deal types of legislation that will expand government's role in our lives while raising taxes.
As such, which side of the political spectrum at this point of history is truly stuck in the past?
As Salam implied, you could make the case both are which is somewhat logical given that neither is all that thrilled with the present.
But the Right only wants to go back 30 years. The Left still yearns for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Sound like progress to you?
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Comments
Wow...
Submitted by unkeeaf on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:14pm.
That was impressive and spot on.
My new hero!
Submitted by pilgrim4jc on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:23pm.
My new hero!
We must stop apologizing for the past
Submitted by MacWell on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:47pm.
As a 65 year old great grandfather, I have to ask what does the left have against the 50's? It was a wonderful time for kids to grow up in America. A great time for anyone who wanted to work and earn a living. I remember we kids could play outside well after dark without worry of some sicko throwing a pillowcase over one of our heads and throwing us in a van. Oh, don't get me wrong, there were perverts around then, we've always had them. They mostly kept to themselves or controlled their urges. They knew that if they were caught there was a very good chance that they'd fall down a few flights of steps on the way to the police station, if they made it there at all. We didn't treat criminals like endangered species. One could go to work in a factory and know that they'd have a job for life, if they wanted, a steady paycheck, retirement, usually medical insurance, paid by the employer. There was college for those that could hack it. Not like today with women's studies and the like. The left always brags about progress. Does anyone think that the hashed over Marxism they're pushing is something new? Same old same old, the only change is with the ruling class. They as the rulers, of course, and we the people as their serfs.
If we the people don't remove all those who believe that America needs to be "fundamentally transformed", then maybe we don't deserve America.
vanden dumb
Submitted by mmilesll on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 12:47am.
Salam was dead on, Katrina was dead off as usual. I have never heard one sentence out of this dumbo's mouth that made sense.
I would be happy just to go back to 2008, and have a do-over
Submitted by Rush Fan on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 12:49am.
of our Republican nominee. Perhaps if Mitt Romney or someone other than RINO McCain had been selected then, we wouldn't be in our current mess.
Stupid Liberals
Submitted by truth_to_hypocrisy on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 1:55am.
JOE KLEIN, TIME: You know, one thing I find, I -- and I spend a lot of time out in the middle of the country…You know, you go to a town in Arkansas and you find all the convenience stores are run by South Asians and there are Mexicans all over the place. And people talk to you about their grandson, who has just become gay, and their granddaughter, who is dating a Japanese guy.
He may spend time, but he seeks out stereo types or just makes things up to fit his liberal state of mind. God, Klien pisses me off.
I am a 60 year old white male from a flyover southern state; I have a Chinese son-in-law, Hispanic son-in-law, and Filipino daughter-in-law. My third daughter is married to a redneck, but we tolerate him.
My other six children married just average people I guess, they check the box; white, not Hispanic on job applications.
Apparently I failed to raise my children as racist, prejudice, democrats who see all other people through the prism of color and race instead of just good people.
Joe, you need to trot your happy ass over here to Kentucky show I can show and tell you what real people think and don’t even get me started on Vanden Heuvel.
I may not be a card carrying Tea Party Member, but you would be hard pressed talking to me to think otherwise.
Salam is so right.
Salam reviewed Theda Skocpol book in Foreign Affairs Monthly?
Submitted by lrgon on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 2:10am.
Foreign Affairs is the flag ship publication of the Council on Foreign Relations. It's interesting that Foreign Affairs published an article titled the Hard Road to World Order [read world government] by Richard Gardner in which he called for the demise of the USA as people in the 1950's new America. In the 50's there was less government, less taxes and more prosperity and hope.
Consider Gardner's words: "In short, the "house of world order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great booming, buzzing confusion, ...but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault....some of these specialized arrangements should be brought into an appropriate relationship with the central institutions of the U.N. system..." --Richard N. Gardner The Hard Road to World Order Foreign Affairs 1974 >>http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/24506/richard-n-gardner/the-hard-road-to-world-order
Oh,yes the ever sacred UN,we can't have a NWO without the "diplomats" at the UN, the ones that vote 99% of the time against us in the General assembly, right?
Mr. Salam's lukewarm debate with CFR member Fareed Zakaria is not going to change the direction of America away from her loss of sovereignty. What is frustrating is that conservatives journalists from National Review never look to their flank and believe that an honest bebate with the liberals will win the day. Therefore debating the left is a waste of time unless their actions in transforming America are exposed.
Perhaps Mr. Zakaria has never read that particular CFR journal article about ending US nationhood. But it's fair game to bring it to his attention and use it against him since Fareed is a very influential man as editor of Newsweek.
Zakaria's name is listed: http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html?letter=Z
Theda Skocpol is a left wing as they come and a cry baby as well. She claimed Harvard denied her tenure just because of her sex. Well, she got her way eventually at Harvard. She has a penchant for writing books on social revolution, which doesn't surprise me. What Salam is doing interviewing her at Foreign Affiars magazine is another interesting facet. But Salam has penned another article for Foreign Affairs on the "Missing Middle In American Politics":http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137287/reihan-salam/the-missing-middle-in-american-politics
IMHO
Submitted by amyshulk on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 4:33am.
It is amusing to see the D's forever trying to put people into a box. Identity politics is their bastion, but they have yet to figure out to keep them once they live in the real world and learn to judge people one on one!
To get back to FDR's time, we'd have to go back to all the things the D's tore down over the years and accuse the R's of wanting;
Women barefoot and pregnant - leaving the workforce to the menfolk.
NO "furreners" allowed.
Cradle to grave working for a big corporation to get the pension and gold watch.
And MOST important?
Keeping ALL others stuck in 3d world status to reduce competion. Maybe allow them 2nd world status, so they may trade with us.
Ronald Reagan
Salam expressed what many of us on NB have written for years
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 9:43am.
The self-proclaimed progressives are not introducing a new ideology. They are trying to resume the unfinished business of progressivism, begun around the turn of the last century and shifted into overdrive by the New Deal.
Much of that progressivism continued throughout our post-WW2 history, though usually under the radar, and Obama is merely shifting the gears again to accelerate it.
But while the Left wants to accelerate "social change" through the engine of the Federal government, the car is running out of gas -- in other words, $$$$. The previous progressive programs -- especially the entitlements -- are breaking us, yet the Left wants to add more.
A cynic might observe that if the Left's long term goal is a socialist state -- even a Marxist state -- then ruining the current American system economically and socially it a means to an end. The bitter irony is that if capitalism fails in this country, it won't be because capitalism is unsustainable. It will be because it is increasingly supplanted by unmanageable socialist policies and programs by people whose objective is to replace capitalism with an unmanageable socialistic system.
Added irony comes from the Far East, where the People's Republic of China realized as far back as the 1980's that its Maoist system would fail if it did not change, and so began introducing capitalism. Now, though it has not completely embraced capitalism and terminated the vestages of state-owned industry and single-party dictatorship, the PRC's economy has been booming for decades.
Katrina so wrong for so long
Submitted by dmaley1714 on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 9:56am.
When she says tax cuts do not save the auto industry, GM record profits this year are due to a special tax exempt status for GM and Chrysler. So in actual real life the tax cut is saving the profits for GM. She is blinded by her hatred. The TEA party cares nothing about skin color or nationality. If you believe in less government then welcome aboard. The inherent racism of this bunch is they think people who are not white males can not succeed with the governments help. What used to be called the white man's burden is now the socialist's burden.
The question is who is really on your side?
Submitted by lrgon on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 1:09pm.
Salam writes articles for a publication -Foreign Affairs - that has included articles calling for the demise of the United States of America.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=richeard%20N.%20Gardner%20Hard%20Road%20to%...
Does having a bit of a tiff with Fareed Zakaria who also writes articles for Foreign Affairs supposed to make the shaved headed Reihan Salam a conservative hero?
Salam is trying to work both sides of the fence- appearing to defend Post WWII America and yet writes articles for the Council on Foregin Relations' magazine Foreign Affairs which is a known bastion of anti-American independence.
The CFR is, and according to the former the 20th US Navy appointed JAG, Admiral Chester Ward, who co-authored a book Phyllis Schafley warning Americans about the very organization Slam is penning articles for! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Advocate_General_of_the_Navy#List_of_...
Who are you going to back the JAG officer or the shaved headed journalist that is still wet behind his Foreign Affairs ears?