now, eric cantor sets my teeth on edge. his whole demeanor seems to scream 'scumbucket.' he's my mother's congressman, and possibly her least favorite person ever; i'm kind of surprised that the look that crosses her face whenever eric cantor's name is mentioned doesn't itself seek him out wherever he may be and crush him like a grape. not only that, but it is ridiculous to publish op-ed pieces by politicians. it is to be presumed that they did not write the stuff that appears under their by-line, and in any case they are not sincerely expressing their actual opinions, but engaging in manipulation. nevertheless it is hard to quibble with this: "Why does the president insist on higher taxes? Behind the rhetoric lies a desire to permanently increase the size of government." really, for the left, an ever-growing state is self-evidently desirable in itself, because it is a way we are all unified into a single being. as cantor points out, public opinion seems to have swung the other way.
for the left (as, i should say, for extreme nationalists and other rightists of various stripes), the state is the collective agent: it is our unity, and our transcendence of our isolation. or it is (as in hegel, e.g.) really our human essence or nature, because we are together a single thing or agency. if you actually spent a minute looking at the fact that the whole thing rests on coercion - every day in every way - you would understand that your own data refutes your theory. it's as if you claimed that the nature of every human being was to be rational, and then put an army into the field to force people to be observe modus ponens. maybe that would be groovy, maybe not. it would certainly show that you actually did not believe what you were saying about human nature.
