Class Warfare is Back

The most telling thing to come out of President Obama's first speech to a joint session of Congress was the undercurrent of class warfare. The new great divide in America is not between the rich and the poor. Instead, there is a battle in this country between those who hate the rich and those who don't.

The class warfare is not based, as in the past, on jealousy or envy. It is now predicated on raw disgust. The rich are evil. Implicit in this is they are undeserving of their wealth and immoral for keeping it.

This has been a major theme of Obama's campaign since his statement on the campaign trail equating making money with "selfishness." During the campaign, when the Republican ticket raised the specter that Obama's economic policies smacked of socialism, Obama responded, "John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness."

There was no question that Obama was referring to the Ayn Rand book, "The Virtue of Selfishness," which discussed the benefits of rational self interest -- the notion that the economy, the nation, would be better off if everyone worked hard in their own best interest. By contrast, according to Rand, those who opposed selfishness were espousing socialism or worse and would doom the country by creating a generation of takers instead of producers.

Obama's intention to pit the poor against the rich was done by framing the discussion as one of good versus evil. He used sarcasm and hyperbole in last night's speech -- saying "this time, CEOs won't be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks, or buy fancy drapes, or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over." It was subtle, but the phrase "buy fancy drapes" was to make him -- and by analogy all of us -- regular folks. Despite the fact that he made over $4 million in 2007, Obama is just one of us.

On the other side is "them" -- the rich. And under Obama, "they" will not be allowed to keep their exalted position. He identified the problem right at the outset of his speech: "A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future." In other words, government should not have allowed the rich to become richer, the money that went to the wealthy should instead have been taken by the government and redistributed. That should scare any freedom-loving American.

Our President is at war with Wall Street -- and that is not a war that America can win. He derided the institution last night when he pitted them as unreasonable and at odds with the regular folk, saying, "I understand that on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives banks bailouts with no strings attached, and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions."

Not only did he ostracize and vilify Wall Street, but he displayed a glaring lack of understanding of how Wall Street operates and what it values. At a time of economic trouble, we have a president who not only doesn't grasp the stock market but is taking it on as if it were the enemy.

He made his antipathy towards Wall Street crystal clear. "I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive," he promised. That's not the way to bring Wall Street into a partnership for the good of the country. Not surprisingly, Wall Street responded to the outright attacks by opening down today.

Of course, the most direct attack on the "rich" came near the end of the speech. Obama repeated what he'd promised throughout the campaign, tax increases for the top earners, saying, "In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

So the regular folk need not worry about the tax increases, because it will only hit them -- the rich. Ignoring the fact that depending on where you live, how many children you have, whether you're a small business owner, or a host of other factors, you're not "rich" on $250,000 a year -- it's a number that looks big and comrpises a small enough segment that the voting majority is excluded. So this tax increase only affects them, not us. They have it coming, those rich people. How dare they make that much money! Why should they be allowed to keep it and spend it as they wish? Who do they think they are?

It wasn't so long ago when everyone aspired to be rich and it was the American dream to work hard and achieve that goal. But now the goal is not to become rich, but to make those rich pay.

We have been warned. Obama spelled it out: "That day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here."