You don't have to listen long to politicians in Washington,
D.C., to hear the rhetoric of class war. Both major party presidential
candidates have used it at times with strategic purpose -- that is, when it
advanced their ambitions.
The expanding government bailout of institutions and individuals
caught up in the national financial fiasco, however, points to a real class
conflict in this country. It is not a conflict that divides Americans by
wealth. It is a conflict that divides Americans by character.
First, consider the phony class war -- the one both John McCain
and Barack Obama have tried to exploit.
When President Bush in 2001 offered a proposal to cut income-tax
rates for everyone who pays income taxes, McCain -- who had lost a bitter
primary campaign to Bush the year before and who still desired to become
president -- could not bring himself to vote for it.
Bush's proposal cut taxes too much for the rich, McCain argued.
His solution: Cast a vote to deny non-rich people a tax cut he decried as
too small -- on grounds he was saving them from paying for the rich to get a
tax cut that was too big.
"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many
of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of
middle-class Americans who most need tax relief," McCain said on the Senate
floor.
In this campaign, Obama has expanded the phony class war by
introducing a third group of potential combatants. He now classifies
Americans as being either "rich," "middle class" or living in a sort of
income-bracket no man's land.
In a forum at the Saddleback Church last month, Pastor Rick
Warren asked Obama to define "rich." Obama eventually said: "What I can say
is, is that under the approach I'm taking, if you make $150,000 or less, you
will see a tax cut. If you're making $250,000 a year or more, you're going
to see a modest increase."
What about the Americans making between $150,000.01 and
$249,999.99? What will Obama do to their tax bills? How does he want to
manipulate them politically? Does he want to make them feel like victims, or
does he want to hold them up as economic evil-doers to the worthier -- yet
put-upon -- people making a mere $149,999.99 per year?
In real wars, there are unjust aggressors and victims forced to
defend themselves. Presumably, if there were a class war in America, the
unjust aggressors would be those who wrongfully take money or other things
of value from those to whom it rightly belongs.