Pretending to be Great

So, what makes a great Society? Well, one could just declare a Great Society like Johnson did and kick off the second greatest socialization of our country since FDR. We never achieved greatness but we spent a heck of a lot of money creating massive poverty. In the NYTime this morning, actually it was in yesterday's NYTimes I just got around to reading it this morning, is one of the stupidest articles I have read in a long time: A Long Way Down. The theme of the article: The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, in particular the middle class suffered the most, under Bush. The solution proposed by the article: Tax the rich more and give it to the poor, i.e. More Government Spending on Social programs will fix every thing. The authors of the article, not given, also use code phrases like:

Policy makers must also resist the reassuring but false notion that renewed economic growth can, by itself, raise living standards broadly. Government policies are needed to ensure that growth is shared.

This is classical socialist mantra: Spread the wealth, by letting those that have pay for those who would try to get. In the next paragraph they come right out and spew the Socialist tripe:

More progressive taxation needs to be accompanied by more progressive spending, on public education and on job training and job creation. Support for unions and enforcement of labor standards would also help to ensure that in the next economic expansion, a fair share of profits would find its way into wages.

In other words the government needs to do everything it can to ensure that there remains a permanent welfare under class because if people begin to succeed by trying then the liberal socialist agenda will fail.

So I began by asking what makes a Great Society and can conclude that it is not by declaring it and then creating a welfare state as Johnson did and from which 40+ years later we still have not recovered from and which apparently intelligent people think we should bolster even further. Kennedy's vision put us on the moon, Johnson's have put us where we are today - a society, not of great vision and vigor, but one of small ideas dependent on a government to think and do for us.