Brain Fertilizer

Interesting item in yesterday's Best of the Web.

Mr. Taranto talks about Lakoff and his recent re-invention of the wheel in regards to repackaging old Democrat messages.

He makes the good point of:

It's not as if the Dems don't already do what Lakoff is recommending. Indeed, the supposedly groundbreaking insight this professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences is offering is nothing more than a commonplace of political rhetoric: Generally, it is good to describe things you're for in favorable-sounding terms and things you're against in unfavorable-sounding ones.

But the point I'd really like to highlight is this:

By contrast, what do you think of when you hear the phrase "baby tax"? It's hard to imagine an infant writing a check to the IRS, so a "baby tax" would more likely be a levy on new parents, or perhaps a consumption tax on diapers, baby food, cribs and other items for newborns.

The national debt isn't even a tax. A tax brings money into the government, while debt obliges the government to make expenditures in the future. Calling the debt a tax makes as much sense as calling a mortgage a salary. Taxpayers provide the funds to service the debt, of course, but babies generally do not become taxpayers until long after they stop being babies.

The emphasis is mine, and my point is this really reveals a basic truth about Democrats, doesn't it?

The reason Lakoff considers it a the tax cut and resulting deficit to be a tax at all is because it takes money away from the "rightful owner". Yes, it's because he considers the money to actually belong to the government, not you. Okay, that's been pointed out before many times by better writers than me. The reason I consider this admission so significant is I'm surprised at such a blatant lapse of a Democrat revealing his basic assumptions so clearly.