Equality the Last Refuge of a Scoundrel?

Over in the liberal Amen corner, they are all singing the same hymn: "Equality."  And James Pethoukakis does us a favor by listing the five parts to the song: The People's Budget, the Brandeis Inequality Tax, Doubling of top income tax rates, Osawatomie Bam, and the Occupy movement.

For conservatives, the question is: why now?  Liberals have kept their longing for equality down to a low rumble for many years.  Why are they swelling into a thunderous chorus right now?

My guess is that President Obama is the chap that has pulled out the stops on the liberal organ.  And so the other players have upped their volume too.

As I've written before, it's a bit scary when the liberals start marching their class warfare army around.  Because it is so divisive.  And you have to assume that the reason they don't normally do it is because it is electoral poison.  Maybe it will be this time, or maybe not.  Maybe it will die a quiet death in the spring when the president's handlers decide that it's not working.

Here's another thing I wonder.  I wonder if President Obama's strategy of running against Congress is really such a good idea.  They say it worked for President Truman in 1948.  But the Do-Nothing Congress of that era had actually done rather a lot, including the Taft-Hartley Act to roll back the powers of organized labor.  In those days, when 30 percent of the work-force was unionized, there were plenty of people who might be annoyed with Congress.

In my view, the American people expects the president to bash heads together and get things done.  I'm not sure that bashing heads together and not getting things done can be expected to get the American people excited about a president's reelection.

And there is this:  If Bush were  president the air would be full of the horror of unemployment and people choosing between heating and eating.  But with Obama in the White House the air is surprisingly calm.  That's just the way the mainstream media operates.  But coming up is the presidential campaign, a time when the non-political moderates actually get to hear the Republican side of the argument for a change.  That can't be good for the president.

So maybe the reason the liberals are all worked up about inequality is that, with Keynesian economics a failure, they don't have any other brilliant ideas.