A Response to "Political Terminology"

A Response to Political Terminology & Critical Thought, by Glenda

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         I should explain straight away that I fully intend on writing responses to more of your pieces, which could very easily be done in this editorial, but Political Terminology & Critical Thought provides a very nice launching point of a lot of the key issues I’ll be referring to in any other pieces I might reply to and, for brevity’s sake, I’ll stick to just that piece at the moment.

         It’s hard to argue with the statement “disagreements in our society today are the result of spinning vocabulary words.” I could make the point that spinning of topical words has created disagreements in our society since the drafting of the Constitution, but it’s very near a moot point and most certainly an argument of semantics. Looking back at my high school American History and American Government classes, I was left with a very murky understanding of what went on in that mysterious and majestic place known as the District of Columbia. However, I believe I may be one of the lucky members of the final generation have picked up some form of critical thinking skills in my public school career. My parents certainly helped to reinforce what little the schools did for me, probably to the point of being mostly responsible for my ability to think independently and critically in any variety of situations. Not everyone [read: most everyone] is not that fortunate.



         So, looking at the word progressive, we can easily see that right-of-center policy-makers and voters generally use it to describe people who they consider too liberal – essentially anyone more liberal than themselves. As it turns out, it’s also used by media outlets – even the decidedly liberal-slanted media (MSNBC, NPR, BBC World Service, etc) – to describe people and groups pushing for broad and/or dramatic change to existing policies. A good example is the health care reform bill initially proposed by President Obama, which was labeled across the board as a progressive reform bill, which it was.

         Progressive, in the sense of classic political thought – the same thought developed by those great, early democratic thinkers such as Plato – is considered a shifting of social and political ideals, practices and principles away from the traditional methods and to methods which have not been put widely into practice. You can judge the progressiveness of a situation either looking at its context in world history, local history, modern politics or a complete political history. A wonderful example of a very progressive movement is women’s suffrage – it very drastically moved the policies and practices of society away from an old, traditional way of thinking to something that was never before realized on such a scale. Other classically progressive movements are social democracies, labour movements, equal taxation, and civil rights organizations.

         Regressive – the antonym of progressive – refers to any policy or practice that returns methods and power structures to a more traditional style. Unlimited campaign donations from corporations is a prime example of regressive political action because it allows the privileged few to influence the governance of the many, much like in feudal Japan or the many kingships of Europe of centuries past. You may notice you hardly hear anyone refer to anything as regressive; a journalist here or there will label, usually accurately, some tax action or piece of legislation as regressive but the media and politicians alike generally like to refrain from using the word. Regressive just sounds bad, doesn’t it? You don’t want to hear about how regressive a Supreme Court decision was, you’d rather hear a different word; that word is conservative.



         On to the topic of government finances and, well, there is a lot to be said on this topic. I’ll do my best to be brief.

         Revenue is revenue, be it from a governmental perspective or a private one. Revenue is simply the flow of money into a specified entity. A governing body must have an inflow of revenue in order to balance its outflow, just as an individual or a business must break even in order to maintain a desired level of stability. Individuals must expend hours and skills in order to receive payments. Businesses must offer a good or service to be purchased, some requiring more expenditure than others, in order to attract consumers which provide inflow. Government must collect levies from those under their jurisdiction in order to maintain revenue equal to outflow. These levies can include any range of customs duties, excise duties, income, property, and sales taxes.

         Tax credits are, quite clearly, credits awarded against owed taxes. They are effectively exemptions and there are literally thousands of credits available to the entire range of taxpaying citizens. However, an untold casualty in this are those citizens making little enough money to be exempt from paying income tax who get no credits for spending money on things like daycare services or gas while using a personal vehicle as a company delivery service (pizza or newspaper delivery).

         “Entitlement programs” has been one of my favorite catch phrases of the past two years’ political realm. The suddenness with which the word “entitlement” has come to mean this ghastly notion of expecting the government to make good on a service it offered to provide is astounding. Qualified retired Americans are, in fact, entitled to social security because the government signed into law a provision which would provide that service for them. Certainly a sense of entitlement can be taken too far, probably personified by incumbent Representatives feeling entitled to re-elections and cushy lobbying jobs once their tenure in Congress is done.

         Subsidies – as they’re known when given to hard-working and well-off individuals and companies – or welfare – as it’s known when given to poor people – is non-taxed, often non-returned government money. I prefer to use the term welfare, since it is usually given under the impression that it is better for the welfare of all involved. If you would like to know more about federal welfare then just ask Newt Gingrich; his district received more federal welfare dollars in 1996 (while he was Speaker of the House and touting welfare reform) than any other district. Only he didn’t call it welfare – he called it subsidies because it went to companies like Lockheed and Boeing.



         I’ll close with a few comments about your notion of this “free market” you accuse the government of regulating.

         First, the concept of a free market is a ridiculous fantasy cooked up in some sterile economics lab to be touted as an irrefutably divine method of doing business. The free market as it is continuously proclaimed to be is impossible and anyone with any amount of critical thinking ability can figure that out. Furthermore, even a shallow glance at the practices and principles of corporations can quite clearly show that the main hindrance to a real free market is the businesses themselves.

         Free market models assume altruism exists almost without exception in the business community; we can look very openly at countless examples of the utter lack of altruism in the global business community in order to write that off. They also require an informed consumer base, which simply does not exist in this day and age. I cannot tell you the number of labour hours, the schooling requirements, the cost of ingredients, packaging, shipping and marketing for each of the different brands of wheat bread at my local grocery store, therefore I cannot make a consumer choice based on the market – just the marketing. The free market model doesn’t account for multinational companies threatening to move labour to cheaper workforce markets in effort to undermine the job security and wages of workers in the United States.



         Second, and lastly, this concept of moving money and power away from a Federal government and into the hands of business is the epitome of undermining democracy and freedom. A Federal government we have a chance of affecting; a chance of making a difference and having the voices of the majority heard. In business, you have no voice, only money, and if you don’t have enough you might as well have none.