I don't often get the Wall Street Journal due to the cost, and relative lack of dispensable capital from the economic downturn, but this weekend's opinion gave me something to think about.
The article compares Cantor's worldview contrasted against President Obama's and makes reference to a Freudian term known as the Narcissism of small differences. The concept was put forth in order to understand how small communities seem to always be warring with each other based on these, relatively-speaking, small differences in philosophy and culture.
WSJ paraphrased the statement a little differently, calling it big differences, and focused on the rather large gulf that exists between the ideologies of the political left, who think that redistributive policies are the key to prosperity, and the thought by the political right, that freedom to seek one's fortune rest largely with an opportunity to create and innovate, and that growth comes from the successful application of endeavor.
What was interesting in the article is how the President's insistence on increases in taxes for the wealthy, while continuing to expand the government was met by an equal, and intractable resistance by Cantor against such a philosophy. The bitter divide politically has created an economic chasm whereby so many people are now dependent upon a government that has likewise become increasingly dependent on a smaller taxpayer base to perform such services.
In Cantor's view, the problem for Americans rests with the senior magistrate. Cantor sees the choice as a stark one. According to the WSJ article he states, "They need to change Obama's Washington, but it's really a return to what we know is America. Obama ran as an agent of change, and I don't know what that hope and change really was at this point. It's turned out to be something a lot different than what most people thought. But, we need to change and take the country away from President Obama."
The staggering challenges facing this country fiscally and politically will continue to pit Americans as either a class of people committed to doing the hard work to build ourselves, and therefore our nation, or a class of people enslaved by our government. The Narcissism of Big Ideas, as the article details, has to be bridged for the continued success of our country.
One way through this problem may in fact lie if the retirement of the long-standing policies that have created the chasm to begin with. A complete restructuring of the U.S. tax code may provide the key to both increasing revenues and fundamentally increasing the number of participants. What this would look like would require great minds to come together instead of throwing political jabs across the aisle.
It is obvious from the current debt fiasco that the world markets are not amused at our lackluster attempts to solve these squabbles.
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