Preview of 2012? Voter landslide in Colorado against new school taxes

By David McElroy · November 2, 2011

When politicians want more money, their favorite words are, “It’s for the children.” Even those magic words didn’t work in Colorado Tuesday, as voters rejected a $3 billion “temporary” tax hike for government-run schools. Penn Pfiffner, chairman of the underfunded group opposing the tax, showed his joy last night at a celebration in the Denver suburb of Littleton.

Is this a preview of the 2012 election? Republicans hope so. Democrats hope not. I don’t think you can draw a conclusion other than saying that many voters are angry and don’t intend to vote for anything they see as a sacrifice for them. Conservative voters are going to reject even the most well-intentioned tax hike. (Check out this story if you want to know what the Colorado tax would have done.) Liberal voters are going to reject anything they see as being favorable to people who they believe already have money or privilege.

In other words, it’s going to be an especially polarizing election in 2012 in many places. In their anger, people aren’t going to be voting for someone as much as they’re going to voting against someone who represents something they hate.

Republicans will end up nominating one of the usual suspects (such as Mitt Romney), and Democrats will presumably stick with Barack Obama. Republican voters won’t love their nominee, but they will hate Obama and work passionately to defeat him. Democrats won’t love Obama, for the most part, but they will hate the Republican nominee, who they will see as a representative for “the rich.”

If the economy stays the way it is now, I suspect the Republican will win, simply because Obama has been the president while the downturn has gotten worse. But if McCain had been elected three years ago, Democrats would be licking their chops about their chances — because McCain and his people would have taken pretty much the same statist economic actions that Obama’s people have taken, with the same (predictable) results.

People are mostly too ignorant to realize that the problem isn’t Democrat vs. Republican. News outlets mostly assume that’s the only story, so that’s they way they frame it. The truth is that the real issue is the coercive state vs. the free market. Democrats and Republicans are pretty much united in standing with the coercive state, despite their differences in rhetoric. They’re Tweedledum and Tweedledee. As long as either side of the red vs. blue battle is in charge, the coercive state still wins — and we still lose.

The 2012 election is a year from this Sunday. As Republicans go into the year, they honestly believe they’re going to elect someone to bring about change. Democrats who were supporting Obama or Hillary Clinton at this time four years ago believed the same thing. Democrats were wrong in their naive beliefs then. Republicans are wrong in their naive beliefs now.

You’re not going to get positive change from majoritarian politics. You’re only going to get it by returning power to individuals. Opt out of the system. The only way to win is not to play the game.

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Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

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