David Broder seems genuinely enthusiastic about Rep. Barney Frank’s (D) deep thinking about why we are not creating more jobs. Frank says: ""The ability of the private sector in this country to create wealth is now outstripping its ability to create jobs. The normal rule of thumb by which a certain increase in the gross domestic product would produce a concomitant increase in jobs does not appear to apply." Because the economy now creates wealth but not jobs, this deep thinker recommends that we raise taxes on the wealthiest of Americans, and give that money to various levels of government so they may create jobs (you know, pick up garbage, fight fires, build bridges, on what Frank calls, "socially useful purposes"). In short, another New Deal job corps program. "Our problem today," Frank said, "is too little government." I’m thinking that Broder may be ironic in claiming that this is deep and bold thinking. I hope he is.
New Age liberals are very much like your average businessman. Whereas the latter’s arena is the marketplace where he seeks to moves goods and services while maximizing profits, the liberal merely seeks to transfer wealth from one to another based largely of the latest whim of determined by the politics of morality and meaning. Today, one class of Americans are fully expected to pull the load full of those folks screened by Barney and Friends, and thus deemed suitable to recieve the blessings of Big Government.
To say, however accurate it may be, that this is Marxism is to invite scorn and ridicule of course. Marx inspires Pol Pot et al, not Barney and Friends. No, theirs is a much higher calling; a calling to civic virtue, and sacrifice for the good of the community as a whole. Theirs is the highest of all noble callings. And they feel very good and wonderful because they, unlike the greedy Republicans like Bush, have answered that call.