Now the Republican Party long boasted of its frugality. The Bush Administration, on the contrary, has stolen some of the Democrats’ old clothes while the sons of Jefferson and Jackson were out bathing. But those purloined garments are ragged; and Republicans look odd and unconvincing when clad in them.
Oppressive Taxation. With respect to a sharp increase in the level of taxes, it seems as if the Bush Administration really does not understand the principle of diminishing returns, or know the history of the consequences of excessive taxation. When computing our federal income tax very recently, my wife and I discovered that more than half our gross income is taken in taxation — federal income tax; Social Security taxes; state income taxes; village, township, and county taxes, school property tax; sales taxes. And we are not of the number of Franklin Roosevelt’s “malefactors of great wealth.” We are in the process of educating four young daughters, paying off mortgages, trying to save something for one’s declining years — I, being seventy-two years of age already — and contributing to charitable causes. Yet we are better off than many taxpayers. What straw will break the camel’s back?
A state that annually exacts in taxes half of a citizen’s income is more oppressive, financially, than the despotisms of old. In the ancient monarchies of China, a tax load of more than ten percent would have been thought unjust. Excessive taxation is a major cause of the decline and fall of great states: so writes C. Northcote Parkinson, the author of Parkinson’s Law, in his last book.
The Bush Administration had one handsome prospect for reducing governmental expenditure, reducing the federal deficit, and possibly even making a gesture at reduction of the federal debt: that is, the prospective contraction of the armed forces, what with the dwindling of the Soviet menace. Instead, Mr. Bush has plunged the United States into a war which, so far, has cost about a billion dollars a day. (You will recall that a billion dollars is a thousand million dollars.) Already, more taxation to pay for this struggle in the Levant is being discussed in Washington. So I quote Parkinson once more: “Taxes become heavier in time of war and should diminish, by rights, when the war is over. That is not, however, what happens. Although sometimes lowered when the war ends, taxes seldom regain their pre-war level. That is because the level of expenditure rises to meet the war-time level of taxation.”
Unless the Bush Administration abruptly reverses its fiscal and military course, I suggest, the Republican Party must lose its former good repute for frugality, and become the party of profligate expenditure, “butter and guns.” And public opinion would not long abide that. Nor would America’s world influence and America’s remaining prosperity.
But, time running on, I must turn to affairs diplomatic and military: Republican errors internationally. What are we to say of Mr. Bush’s present endeavor to bring to pass a gentler, kinder New World Order?
Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson were enthusiasts for American domination of the world. Now George Bush appears to be emulating those eminent Democrats. When the Republicans, once upon a time, nominated for the presidency a “One World” candidate, Wendell Willkie, they were sadly trounced. In general, Republicans throughout the twentieth century have been advocates of prudence and restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs.
But Mr. Bush, out of mixed motives, has embarked upon a radical course of intervention in the region of the Persian Gulf. After carpet-bombing the Cradle of Civilization as no country ever had been bombed before, Mr. Bush sent in hundreds of thousands of soldiers to overrun the Iraqi bunkers — that were garrisoned by dead men, asphyxiated.
And for what reason? The Bush Administration found it difficult to answer that question clearly. In the beginning it was implied that the American national interest required low petroleum prices: therefore, if need be, smite and spare not!
