SPOILS
1. a. Goods or property seized from a victim after a conflict, especially after a military victory. b. Incidental benefits reaped by a winner, especially political patronage enjoyed by a successful party or candidate.
2. An object of plunder; prey.
3. Refuse material removed from an excavation.
4. Archaic The act of plundering; spoliation.
Something about the weekend seems to bring out the socialist in the New York Times. Last Saturday and Sunday I described how the Times and its Beantown-subsidiary Boston Globe published an op-ed and editorial exemplifying classic liberal-think.
The Gray Lady is back at it again today with its editorial, "The Employment Tea Leaves." In perhaps the most revealing essay of all, the Times makes clear its view that the fruits of Americans' labor, risk and ingenuity are mere "spoils" to be distributed at the whim of politicians.
Writes the Times:
The Republicans will almost certainly renew their calls for tax cuts on investments and multimillion-dollar estates, arguing that such cuts would pump up the economy. But lower taxes for the rich would not benefit the middle class and would only worsen the budget deficit. Republicans may also continue to champion financial deregulation as a way to juice the economy. But that led to the housing bubble — and the current mortgage mess.
Democrats, or some Republicans with a change of heart, must articulate — and Americans must demand — a program for ensuring that the middle class gets a bigger share of the economy’s spoils than it has received during the Bush era, when gains have largely been funneled to the richest Americans.
There it is in black and white. American's don't earn their wealth; they have no intrinsic right to it. Wealth is merely a pie, spoils to be distributed as by Roman legionnaires after their latest triumph [photo from HBO's late, lamented "Rome"]. How to do so? In the next paragraph the Times predictably prescribes "more progressive income taxes, better public education and more help for workers whose jobs are displaced by globalization." Translation: take from the rich, pump more money to the teachers unions, and open the cash spigots for new or expanded welfare programs.
This is how liberals think.
