By Les Dunaway

The past weeks have made it clear that there’s a lot of folks in our country who don’t understand that the liberal give-away is over. The time that Maggie Thatcher foretold when she said “The trouble with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money” has come.

I’m not referring to those who are simply in denial. I’m talking about people who you’d expect to be reasonably well-informed and reasonably intelligent. You know the folks I mean – you sit next to them in church; you work with them. What’s really scary is that some of them are running the companies we depend on for our livelihoods. The question that, I believe, is really, really, really,… important is “How can that be so?”.

Ronald Reagan once said “Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”. In talking with some of these folks, I’ve identified several things that they “know that isn’t so”. I believe that those of us who are determined that “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” must learn and talk about why socialism does not, can not work.

We are aided in the conversation by the examples of Greece, Spain, Italy, England,… We are impeded by the fact that none of what’s happening there makes the 6 o’clock news.

The primary “thing they know that’s not so” that I have seen is about tax rates. There are many people in our country who believe that we can solve our current deficit problems by raising taxes on “the rich”. They will tell you that “back in the day” rates were at 90% and “everything was OK”. Now, this is where you need to avoid screaming in their face “How effing stupid ARE you?”.

Instead, show them the graph from “The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend“. You may be able to have a conversation starting with “This shows what actually happened. What do you think people did to avoid paying the higher rates?” You’ll have to listen to some amount of “crooks, evil corporations, …” just let it go by and then say “Did you hear that last week CitiBank and Mellon started charging customers for storing their cash, instead of paying interest on it?” Then ask, “Why do you think these people and companies are stashing their cash?” – maybe because they think taxes are going up? If they do it now, because they think taxes “might” go up, what will they do if taxes DO go up?

Another good article is “Probing The Limits of Federal Revenue“.

Good luck! If we can each educate just one person, we can solve this problem. However, even when Obama suffers the coming McGovern-like defeat, unless the stake of education is driven through its heart the monster that is socialism will rise again.