Class Warfare is Not a Self-Evident Truth

The American DNA is set by the Declaration of Independence. The enduring greatness and goodness of America, sometimes called American ‘exceptionalism’, flows from its DNA, which includes the self-evident truths that all men and women are created equal, and endowed by God with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These self-evident truths are all about the power of the individual living in freedom and responsibility under God.

It bears remembering and repeating: self-evident truths resonate in the human heart because they are….TRUE. It is also in the nature of truth—as President Calvin Coolidge once said— that it is FINAL. It doesn’t matter what our gender or skin color is, who are parents were, where we were born, or what language we speak, the substance of the spirit of the Declaration of the Independence is universal and immortal. That substance and spirit is absolutely antithetical to collectivism or any other ‘ism’ that denies human individuality.

This is why the politics of class warfare can’t be squared with America’s heritage. Class warfare is all about the group, about collective victimhood, about denying individual responsibility. It’s the institutionalization of envy and coveting and hatred—the very opposite of the moral teaching of the Bible. It’s about instilling a worldview that every individual problem is somebody else’s fault; that there’s no sense trying to rise above any difficulties because everything is rigged by a system controlled by the other guys.

The temporary success of a Jerry Brown, who in large part rode class resentment themes to a victory over Meg Whitman in the California Governor’s race, is an unfortunate elixir to Democrats who seek to leverage them across America. Americans as a whole won’t buy them; they know these themes represent an appeal to their baser instincts, a denial of their higher nature. As we wrote before in a slightly different context: We do not want this.

And Californians are about to learn: they accepted class resentment as a basis to turn away a person at least ten times more competent than Jerry Brown, and now they will pay the price as the dysfunctional nonsense of liberalism is forced to come to grips with that proverbial moment Margaret Thatcher spoke of: what happens when you run out of other people’s money?

The lame duck Democrats’ rejection of the ballyhooed deal to extend current tax rates for two more years because it doesn’t hit the rich is in reality a gift to America—a reminder that an entire political party stands for class warfare--the very opposite of America’s DNA. Democrats deny and seek to distort and pervert it; in the very simplest of terms, they seek to change America’s foundational and revolutionary Declaration of Independence—and its core confidence in individual freedom and responsibility under God—into a weak and utterly collapsible Admission of Dependence and Victimhood controlled by an elitist, all-powerful state.

Class warfare is not a self-evident truth; it’s a false enticement of Americans to reject their exceptional heritage. May they instead reject the Democrats from this day forward, and forever.

Paul Gable

December 9, 2010