We're all aware that, for a price, the mafia afforded
protection to those apparently unable to obtain it through normal
means. Today's Democratic Party uses much the same mechanism to
purchase votes, providing an ever expanding system of protections to
citizens. However, in the process, the nation has moved from cultural
adulthood into adolescence, and is now 'progressing' rather blindly
toward infancy.
Promising the nation's helpless protection from
'aggressive credit card practices,' U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY),
is competing with her colleagues to provide a robust--read,
intrusive--panoply of new regulations for the financial services
industry, to save us from ourselves. Someone reading this from a
distant decade--say, 40 years ago--might be justifiably have concluded
that the freedom to act in an informed manner, in one's best interest,
has been abrogated. Otherwise, why would the government need to step
in to preclude companies from offering consumers products they can
simply decline?
Mark Furletti, a Philadelphia attorney who represents
lenders, noted that inhibiting lenders from providing a flexible array
of services will likely limit their ability to provide
services to those with higher risk profiles. But, not unlike marginal
tax rates, if the left can punish the 'rich' in the process of enacting
confiscatory tax increases, whacking the credit card industry is good
political theater, even if it produces policies counter to one of their
presumptive constituencies--those with lower incomes, which is to say,
higher risk accounts.
The reason for this march into infantilization is
obvious, but bears noting nonetheless. If people are informed and make
decisions on their own--and reap the benefits or suffer the
consequences--the liberals have written themselves out of the political
equation. Whether it's saving the country from the scourge of guns, or
keeping it 'safe' for unfettered abortions, or proscribing choice in
education, every policy decision is meticulously calibrated to created
a predictable electoral outcome.
It's at once shameful and cynical, but in our culture
where the government has become synonymous with 'helping' us, it's more
politically palatable than merely reducing taxes and regulations, which
makes unpleasant demands upon individuals, demands which we all took
for granted as recently as 45 years ago.
Having the government protect us from every ill, real
or perceived, may feel comforting to some, but it's creating a nation
of culturally disabled people who are rapidly becoming disconnected
from the consequences of their behavior. That, of course, is what they
left wants, because then it's a short stop to the land of socialism,
where every decision, from garbage collection to burial plot selection
is made on our behalf.