President Bush and GOP Policies

Re Guy Molyneux’s “How Perversity Propelled GOP Into Power,” Opinion, July 12:

Molyneux employs a tactic quite popular with the liberal set these days. He attempts to discredit the conservative philosophy by briefly discussing the gross inadequacies of George Bush. Bush is no conservative. In his four years as President, he has raised taxes, allowed regulations against businesses to mount and has overseen the most massive increase in government spending in the history of the Republican Party. If Molyneux would come out of his think tank for only a minute he would hear the true conservatives crying in anguish as Bush destroys the rules of the marketplace, established during the early ‘80s, which allowed for the most rapid period of expansion this country has seen since WWII.

As for his claim that income distribution became less equal during the ‘80s, he should consult his blessed government’s own green book. The fact, as people with more than a passing interest in this topic know, is that income and capital were more “mobile” in the ‘80s than in recent history.

Why Molyneux wants an “equal distribution of income” is in itself a good question. When people are allowed to be free and to strive to be their best, their rewards and successes will never be equal.

Perhaps more important, Molyneux either hides from the truth or knowingly lies to promote his fantasy world in which people suddenly become different upon entering the “public sector.” Of course this is false. People operate under the same motivations in the public sector as they do in the private sector.

Need evidence? Consider this: Only the U.S. government would allow the excessive amount of overbilling and other fraud characteristic of any government industry--the U.S. military, with its $200 hammers, is the most obvious example. Then there are the check-writing scams, the kickbacks, the postal service abuses, et cetera. And this is where Guy Molyneux expects us to place our faith, not to mention an ever-increasing chunk of our income and our property.

LANCE VITANZA

Montecito