Martin Luther Norquist

Want to raise the top marginal income tax rate? Shame on you. Grover Norquist tells it on the mountain: [1]

In the 1950s it was considered by too many acceptable for the state to discriminate against gays and African Americans. Now it is not. Back in those bad old days it was considered politically acceptable to target "the rich" and treat them differently than others. We are slowly moving away from tolerating discrimination based on economics just as we now reject discrimination based on race or sexual orientation. The drive for a single-rate, flat-rate income tax is the moral equivalent of the 1960s civil rights movement which rejected different laws for whites and blacks. Everyone should be equal before the law. The state must treat us without discrimination....

George Wallace and Strom Thurmond recanted. Someday those who would promote hatred and discrimination based on income, wealth, or property ownership will do so also. We are making progress but it does discomfort those who were so used to their prejudices being recognized in law.

As the ownership society grows and deepens ... we are all Kulaks now.

The quote comes from a debate Norquist is having with Jonathan Chait, whose new book on the bamboozlements of conservative economic policy, a book which is marred only by a deficiency in the originality of the title [2] (just kidding: Jon and I both coincidentally came up with the "Big Con" name for our projects at around the same time), should be bought and read by everyone.

We shall overcome.