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The Redtape Letters

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Lee Whipple has written a delightfully spicy account of how a devil might try to create a latter-day Liberal out of an ordinary citizen (in this case, a conservative college student from a blue-collar background). Ticker Tape is a Liberal college student, whose conservative roommate Dan has become an unwitting candidate for conversion. Ticker's Uncle Red shares some devilish ideas of how to bring this transformation to pass.

(Please observe that there is a very large difference between the latter-day Liberals--who believe that government can solve just about every problem--and classical liberals who prefer limited government.)

Early on (page 6), Uncle Red observes that "conservatism fails to make things Perfect." In the quest for perfection (who could fault this lofty goal?), Liberals create ever-expanding government bureaucracies to "organize" complex systems, and then devise complex and rapacious tax codes to generate the revenues needed to fund them.

Any societal imperfection is game for government intervention. The Homeless? An ideal "hero class" that can be trotted out each Election Year as proof that more government programs are needed. Does someone lack health insurance? Aha! No insurance, therefore no health care, so a new monolithic National HMO is called for. Notice that equating "health insurance" with "health care" is quite a stretch, but since there are always needy (or sick) people around, the case for more government intervention becomes a no-brainer. (It would be interesting to see a study of how many people who do not have health insurance actually lack access to health care, but Liberals do not need such a study to see a crisis requiring massive restructuring of "the health care system.")

In his book, "The Vision of the Anointed," Thomas Sowell observed that every problem can easily be morphed into a crisis, and every crisis into a "need" for some new government program. If the government program fails (or, if--as in the case of the Great Society--it appears to make matters worse), this is only proof that the programs must be pursued with even greater vigor and at even greater cost. Only the True Believers (or "Troobs," as Uncle Red calls them) can be trusted, because any and all opposition is viewed as mean-spiritedness and proof of a lack of feeling for the pain of those who are in need.

Readers of this collection of letters may not come away convinced that Liberalism is a devilish scheme, but they will at least be more aware of some of the clever tactics used by Liberals like Senator Ted Kennedy (Old Ned in this book) to fight their political enemies. And, Liberal activists will find it harder to defend their claims to "the moral high ground" in their efforts to justify these tactics.

The book is worthy to bear the namesake of one of Mr. Lewis' classics, The Screwtape Letters. Mr. Whipple manages to strike the same balance of humor, accessibility, depth of thought in piercing short chapters covering topics from philosophical thought and morality to tactical concerns of the day or through history such as abortion, poverty, elections and many others. His insights into how modern liberals often refute logical arguments with emotional justifications and/or pursuit of utopia rings true and may help many think more critically of topics being currently debated.