Free-marketeers in our time want to wipe away the favors of the tax code, many of which go to the middle class in the form of credits and deductions, and to end the taxes on capital which they say deprive the middle of opportunity.
That seems to be the upshot of the libertarian attempt to co-opt the meaning of the Dave Brat victory over Eric Cantor as expressed by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street urinal, for one. Central to that thesis is poo-poo-ing the importance of the immigration stance of Eric Cantor, which was attacked by Brat with the support of anti-amnesty conservatives, especially Laura Ingraham, and complaining about "the insane complexity of taxes".
What the kerfuffle shows is that Dave Brat is a mighty conflicted person, as are all libertarians, some more some less, a condition they share with liberals, and that he may end up being worse than the man he now replaces. Brat spent much of the campaign talking about closing loopholes and simplifying the tax code, but opposed more immigration because Americans are having massive trouble finding work. The better angels of his nature, all Christian, were at work there. But to his free-market self, there should be no reason why citizenship shouldn't be free. Why should there be a law restricting it to those born here? The federal government has no role "making my life work", he has said. See how well your life works when there's no army to stop an invasion, and there's no will to create one. Just ask Arizona.
Immigration is an issue which ought to direct the attention of the American right toward the bigger picture of what has happened to this country since the Reagan revolution slashed taxes, but hasn't because the right is now obsessed with principles over people. It has become as "ideologized" as any leftist camp. In fact the political discussion on the right deliberately obscures how libertarianism has already impoverished the many and rewarded the few. Some of its adherents today actually foresee an American future more starkly drawn that way, as did Ayn Rand. It isn't capitalism which is to blame for all the income inequality, it's libertarianism.
With the permanently lower tax regime in the US since Reagan also came a headlong plunge into global free trade which has created vast middle classes abroad where there were none before, at the expense of our own. The anchor manufacturing industries of the middle class in this country were exported to places where labor was cheaper, leaving the hollowed out shell of a service industry economy behind to pick up the pieces here.
Where's the patriotism, I'd like to know? Neither side wants to touch the trade argument, mostly because they are all profiting from the new status quo while we are fed a bunch of lies about who are the real conservatives. The answer is none of them are. They've all betrayed us and joined the global investor class where borders no longer matter.
To be a conservative in our time is to be for families with children here, for good jobs here, and for tax and trade policies which prop up those things here and put Americans first, not foreigners and disloyal Americans and disloyal American businesses.
If that's too complicated for you, maybe you shouldn't be in office.
