Only When Necessary

The argument over dealing with our fiscal problems seems to have been won, at least for the moment, by Republicans and their Tea Party constituency. By their reasoning an expense is simply an expense and nothing more. A penny saved is a penny earned. But there are those of us who consider some expenses as investments and reducing them as penny wise and pound foolish. The right’s surest rhetorical winner has been to trot out “the future of our children and grandchildren” or the equivalent, and the debt we’ll be passing on to them. This, by itself, is a reasonable argument.

This concern evaporates when the issue is the environment. In that case research results are just another liberal hoax. I equate this with the Wizard telling Dorothy and her friends to “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” I hope they’re right since they’ve already made significant cuts for research and for the EPA to act on its conclusions.

This duplicity, in a more subtle sense, is also part of the right wing’s war against evolution. Excluded are Wall Street Republicans, the generals who finance the movement and have other interests. Included are Sunday school Republicans, the spear carriers who do the work and the voting. 

Try reconciling this conviction with the Paul Ryan budget plan that is now the stated position of the Republican Party. It is a textbook example of Darwinism which is inseparable from evolution. Help would be reduced for people who need it most and increased for those who need it least. It would be leading us back to the very old game of survival of the fittest. In this millennium fitness would not be a matter of our ability to catch or defend ourselves from wild animals, but of money. Ryan’s plan borrows not only from Charles Darwin, but from Ayn Rand, an avowed hero of his.

 

The intent of this effort is to point out the selective application of principles allegedly dear to the hearts of the right wing. This tactic was put to words concisely by the Hollywood script writer who gave us “white man speak with forked tongue.”