To the Editor:
Re “Budgeting for Opportunity,” by Ross Douthat (column, April 11): How could people really concerned with upward mobility and a general economic prosperity seriously pursue these ends by lowering marginal tax rates? It can’t be done. The Bush years proved that.
By proposing what amounts to a continuation of the Bush policies, Representative Paul D. Ryan and other Republican leaders prove that they aren’t really interested in general prosperity and upward mobility. The modern G.O.P. believes that the current distribution of property and opportunity is basically fair. It believes that, in essence, egalitarian measures by government entail theft.
Its anti-unionism implies that even government’s concern for equal bargaining power entails theft, for management’s unequal bargaining power represents property fairly earned. The modern G.O.P. is a Social Darwinist party. It’s time to face that fact and open an honest debate on its merits.
SOTIRIOS A. BARBER
Chicago, April 11, 2011
The writer is a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.
Note from KBJ: How can conservatives have an honest debate with the likes of this letter writer? First, he questions the motives of Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders: "they aren't really interested in general prosperity and upward mobility." Oh, really? Why don't you tell us what they're interested in, since you obviously know their minds better than they do? Second, he misrepresents the position of the Republican Party, which makes no claim about the "fairness" of the "current distribution of property and opportunity." The Republican claim is that people are entitled to their wealth, even if it is undeserved or unfair in some moral sense. (Is it fair that Barber has a cushy job and a good salary when many others have difficult, dangerous, dirty, low-paying jobs?) Third, he engages in juvenile name-calling: "The modern G.O.P. is a Social Darwinist party." That this man teaches political science is disgraceful. He is an ideologue first and a scientist second (if at all). By the way, I read a book by Barber many years ago while writing my doctoral dissertation. It was incomprehensible.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 