Don’t let go the coat
Writing by treason on Tuesday, 27 of June , 2006 at 3:22 pm
“…At this point, I question a great deal of Bush administration policy, especially on taxes. But Karl Rove is why I am a Republican. He is how Republicans are. Richard Nixon was not kidding fifty-four years ago when he talked about his wife, Pat, not having a fur coat, but instead happily owned ‘…a good Republican cloth coat…’
The real Republicans are the hardware store owners in Little Rock, the factory workers in Kentucky who believe in life, the retired aerospace workers in Palm Desert who are concerned about the moral decay of the culture. The wearers of cloth coats. Those are Republicans, to me. The Republican Party is not really about ending the inheritance tax for billionaires. The real Republicans don’t even know billionaires. (Most billionaires are Democrats, anyway.) The real Republicans are not about Iraq or the ABM. They are about loving their neighbors and wanting to pass on the same great America they knew as children to their grandchildren.
Real Republicans are not haters. Not ever. It’s just not in them to hate, just as it’s not in any real American to hate any other American who lives within the law.
Anyway, I left the evening just in a state of amazement about Karl. This is the assassin? This is the thug? Wow, do his critics not know him. But you know what? They wouldn’t stop hating him even if they did know him, because that’s who they are, no matter who he is.
I don’t agree with the President about fiscal policy. I don’t agree with him about a happy ending in Iraq. But I sure like being in the same party as Karl Rove, and Julie Eisenhower, and Andy Card, and Senator McCain and Justice Scalia. The party that does not hate.”
– Ben Stein, “Why I Am a Republican,” The American Spectator
The Democrats can hold up John Kerry and deflect any criticism of the man, simply by stating (condescendingly) that Kerry isn’t wrong - he’s just nuanced. No, Kerry is just plain wrong. If the Left is looking for nuanced, they should look no further than Ben Stein.
During the Clinton years I subscribed to both National Review and The American Spectator, as well as an assortment of other periodicals from decidedly Libertarian to libertine. When I felt it was time to let go of some of these commitments to magazines, it was easy to hang on to NR, but it was tough to release TAS - mainly because I knew I’d miss Ben Stein’s Diary. I remember times I would pick up a new issue of Bob Tyrrell’s magazine and find myself sobbing brokenly during one of Ben Stein’s Diary “entries.”
Look at Stein’s resume and you might think it’s a practical joke - or the resume of a schizophrenic. Maybe they used to call people like him “Renaissance men,” but what do you call someone who lists actor, writer, economist, and lawyer on his resume? He worked for Richard Nixon and he does commercials for eyedrops. He’s relaxed and funny, humble and lovable; but he can also be fierce and humorless, self-obsessed, and downright grating.
In three sentences he can say something I both agree and disagree with. And usually it’s two ideas that ordinarily don’t come out of the same person. Or a sane person. But it’s one of the things that makes Ben Stein so endearing. And infuriating. And likable. And annoying. In this instance, the endearing part is the kind words about Rove; the annoying part is Stein’s stance on taxes. He’s been arguing lately that the rich should pay more because they can afford to pay more. Ben, they do pay more. And if you want to, there’s nothing stopping you from paying as much as you like. As much as you think is fair. Write a check. Unlike you, I support the death of the death tax. Why? Because it’s simply not fair to tax people when they’ve assumed room temperature. It’s not fair for billionaires, and it’s not fair for middle class people who have worked hard all their lives to accumulate something tangible to leave to their loved ones. “Wanting to pass on the same great America they knew as children to their grandchildren.” And wanting, Ben, to pass on part of the American dream to their children and grandchildren.
In this recent Diary entry, he nails what it is to be a Republican. The wearers of cloth coats. It’s what makes me continue voting for the GOP. Maybe they don’t wring their hands over the poor and the homeless, and make the people around them feel guilty for having food and shelter, but they quietly donate to charities, tip generously, stuff Salvation Army red pots with bills whether or not they can afford to, volunteer their time, and are kind to dogs.
Liberal friends who lecture about how unfair it is that some people work for minimum wage so the wage should be higher, can take up a table in a restaurant for four hours, run the legs off their server, then leave a crappy tip. One friend just said that he would never take another pet in to be euthanized - he’d rather it ran away or crawled off to die or wandered out in front of a car - because the experience of putting his last dog to sleep was just too difficult. Yet I’m certain we could spend hours arguing about animal abuse, assisted suicide, abortion, and human euthanasia - and then he’d insist that anyone who would allow his dog or partner or parent or child to die a painful death - like wandering out in front of a car - is inhumane.
My liberal friends are quick to say that people don’t pay enough in taxes, and I always find it odd that the Republicans I know who hate the way their taxes are spent dutifully pay them anyway; the Libertarians who insist taxing citizens is wrong pay theirs, too; but the Liberals who are most vocal about how taxes should be higher manage to avoid paying theirs entirely.
Their job is to lecture the rest of us about how we should feel bad about those who work in sweat shops and assemble our cloth coats and those who are so poor they cannot even afford cloth coats…even as they wear fur coats.
I cannot call that person nuanced. But I can call him sociopath.
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