Al Rantel
Monday, Mar. 01, 2004

While all of these things are important in one way or another to various voters, there is one issue that lurks in the background even if not at the top of the mind of most American voters.

The issue is this: Is there one America, or are there two or more America’s at war with one another? If there is one America, President Bush wins. If there is more than one America, the artisans of class warfare, known these days as Democrats, win.

Over and over again on the primary campaign trail we have heard the drumbeat of one group of Americans being pitted against the other. Senator John Edwards even uses the phrase that there are “two Americas”.

There is the America where people have enough money to get whatever material goods they want or services they need, and then there is the America where most are exploited and miserable because all of their money was taken from them and given to the “rich”.

Of course we know which America Edwards lives in. His house is worth over three million dollars in Georgetown and he has made tens of millions as a trial lawyer and author.

Ditto for the “man of the common people” Senator John Kerry whose manse nearby his Senate colleague is worth even more. It is complete with enough bathrooms, bedrooms and fireplaces for the Brady Bunch to live in without ever seeing each other and who was raised with every privilege. Imagine the tough family decisions about which mortgage service to go with for the six million dollar re-fi?

Class envy has become a staple of the Democrats as they try to convince the average American that his enemy is other Americans, specifically Americans who are successful and wealthy.

Remember Howard Dean? His slogan was “Taking Back America”. Taking it back from whom? Who has stolen America anyway and just how do we “take it back” from these menaces?

What a far cry from President Reagan’s shining city on a hill where everyone can prosper and go as far as their hard work and abilities will take them living in the last best hope of mankind, the United States.

In the Democrats political reality, those who become successful are to be reviled and punished with oppressive and confiscatory taxation. Worse, they are to be considered the enemy of working men and women who are portrayed as conspiring to ruin the lives of average Americans.

It never occurs to the class warfare specialists that rich people got that way generally because they work hard and take enormous risks. And as I often remind them, I’ve never been hired by a poor person.

When John Kerry says he is going to pay for all of his programs by taking away the Bush tax cuts for the rich, he is talking about under 35 billion dollars a year. Fuzzy math, even for a Massachusetts liberal.

These class envy Democrats are farther away than ever from the words of President Lincoln who said, “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

Everything the Democrat leaders stand for today is the polar opposite of this guiding American principle.

Al Rantel is a radio talk show host on Los Angeles' KABC.

Editor's note:
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