Liberalism for dummies

William Voegeli seems to understand modern left-liberalism from the inside. In Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State (2010, foreword by Steve Hayward), Voegeli explains why contemporary liberals can never tell you when you have paid your “fair share” of taxes. It’s a mystery that had always troubled me. Well, they want it all.

I wrote about the book in “An old argument revisited” and elsewhere. Bill’s preface to the paperback edition of the book appears online as “Never enough.” Bill’s most recent book, also invaluable, is The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.

In the video below for Prager University (about five minutes), Bill condenses the observations and warnings of Never Enough into a five-minute lesson in liberalism. He packs a lot of learning into the allotted time.

Taxes are of course an important battleground on which the issues taken up here are fought. Bill’s 2012 City Journal essay on the subject is “Not a penny more.” It ought to be something like a manifesto.

Quotable quote: “When was the last time you heard a liberal politician say, ‘Yeah, we solved that social ill?'”

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