The orthodoxy in benighted Europe that’s holding people down.

The UK journal The Business reports on the success of the US government’s effort to cut taxes which has the obvious effect of stimulating a rise in economic activity, and thus raising real tax revenue:

This cuts straight to the paradox of Mr. Brown. While intelligent and well-read, he operates in a faith-based environment (unlike the Americans, Australians and Irish who operate in a reality-based environment): as a liberal-left collectivist, he is tethered to a misplaced concept of fairness that demands high marginal tax rates, regardless of their impact; and, despite all Mr. Browns hullabaloo about helping low-income families, the poorest 10% are today worse off now than they were in 2001 while the richest are 5% richer.

What Gordon Brown and his Indy reading ilk are sure to take as an apostasy is of course the very last phrase in the quote above. The British left’s habit of harboring envy of the successful (unless they’re in sports, entertainment, or engaging in fake subversion of the “the system”) has grown to include an envy by the wealthy of a leftish bent toward the successful and resourceful themselves.

This deadly paradigm makes a famous victim more socially valuable than a successful doner, or anyone else who allows for the self-sufficiency of people from dependence on the state.

In short, if you can show me anyone who works for a poor man, you are likely to find around them the trappings of the third world: failure, misery, short life expectancy, and a past which included self destructive class warfare.

- with many thanks to Charlie in the UK for calling my attention to the column.

The fuse is lit!