Moderate Bush vs. Grasping Gore 
Thomas Sowell
Nov. 2, 2000
www.newsmax.com

Long election-year campaigns can make you weary and disgusted with
politics. But, at the end of it all, is an election in which the
stakes are as high as the fate of this country and the future of
our children.

 

The way both political parties are vying with each other to give
away goodies to buy votes is a painful contrast to what John F.
Kennedy said at his inauguration: "Ask not what your country can
do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

 

This country has done more for us than we can possibly do in return.
And yet many are calculating whether they personally would get more
from Bush's plan for this or Gore's plan for that. What about the
infinitely greater question of what kind of country you are going
to be passing on to your children and grandchildren? Don't you owe
that much consideration to those who passed this country on to you?

 

First and foremost, are we going to be a country tearing itself
apart by pitting group against group with preferences and quotas,
the demagoguery of victimhood and the political promotion of paranoia
among the elderly, women, blacks and others? Al Gore's election
depends on such tactics. And, if he is elected, he will have to
keep such polarizing hype going, in order to get his agenda through
Congress and get himself re-elected.

 

The differences between Al Gore and George W. Bush are not in the
details of their particular policy proposals, much as media pundits
and policy wonks may focus on such things. The candidates' real
differences are in their overall vision of the role of government
power - and these are the differences that will determine what kind
of world we and our children live in.

 

Those who believe in the expanding power of government - under
whatever pretty names they call it - have already succeeded in
confiscating half the wealth produced annually by the American
people and using it to finance projects favored by politicians.
Taxing money at someone's death that was already taxed when the
person was alive does not bother liberals like Al Gore.

 

Politically, the people being taxed can simply be called "the rich,"
as if right and wrong changes according to how many zeroes are in
someone's income or wealth.

 

The issue of the role of government affects many aspects of our
lives and of the country's future. Will the erosion of our rights
as parents, homeowners or ordinary citizens continue, as bureaucrats,
judges and politicians increasingly micro-manage our lives? Already
the federal government prescribes everything from what kinds of
showers and toilets we can use in our own homes to whether we can
be hired on the basis of our qualifications to do a job or whether
someone else must be hired instead to fill a quota.

 

The right to raise our own children with our own values is
increasingly undermined by the propaganda in the public schools
and by the growing powers of education bureaucrats, shrinks and
social workers. They can tell you that your child has to be drugged
with Ritalin because he is bored and restless in school - and you can
even be charged with child neglect if you don't go along.

 

This is the ugly reality behind the pretty words of Hillary Clinton
about how "it takes a village to raise a child" - whether or not the
parents want their child raised by a village or its politicians and
bureaucrats. There are already "home visitation" programs that get
strangers into your home under a variety of pretexts, in order to try
to impose the values in which these visitors have been indoctrinated.
The next step is not having to use pretexts, but to send them in
whether you want them or not. "I cannot say enough in support of
home visits," Hillary Clinton declared. Nor should these visits
always be "consensual," she added.

 

Even at the local level, big-government advocates have made it an
ordeal for many people to try to remodel their own homes, without
inspectors getting underfoot and telling them what they can and
cannot do - with their own property. And God help you if they find
an endangered species on your land - which will never really be your
land again, because the government will call the shots, while you pay
the price.

 

You can't follow every detail of every policy proposal or track down
every lie told in a political campaign. But you don't need to eat a
whole egg to know that it is rotten. However, you do have to stop and
think. Is that something you are willing to do for your country before
entering the voting booth?