Why The Left Demonizes The Right Instead Of Presenting Better Ideas

Why The Left Demonizes The Right Instead Of Presenting Better Ideas
When those paid to be well-informed are uninformed, small wonder mischaracterizations of conservative ideas pervade public discourse.

By David Weinberger

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”—Mark Twain

The left routinely distorts conservative ideas, but it is not always clear whether their misrepresentations are deliberate or simply due to unfamiliarity with conservative thought.

Consider, for example, the left’s characterization of supply-side economics as “trickle-down economics” or “tax cuts for the rich.” Despite having been shown to utterly defy the facts, politicians and media continue arming themselves against these caricatures with invincible ignorance.

Never has a major marginal income tax rate reduction over the last 100 years slashed tax burdens for merely “the rich.” Every major tax cut—whether during the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s, the 2000s, or most recently under President Trump—has benefited all income groups. Furthermore, these cuts have made the tax code more progressive. Following the tax cuts of the ‘20s, for instance, historian John Steele Gordon writes:

The distribution of the tax burden became radically more progressive, not less. In 1921 those earning less than $10,000 had paid $155 million in taxes, 21 percent of person income tax revenues. In 1926 they paid only $33 million, or 5 percent. Mellon himself boasted in 1928 that a bachelor with a $4,000 income in 1920—enough to make him comfortably middle class—would have paid $120 in tax that year, but in 1928 would owe only $5.63.

NBC News has concluded that the same pattern followed the cuts of the 1960s, ‘80s, and 2000s..."
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