Abortion Isn't a Religious Issue.

Abortion Isn't a Religious Issue

Evangelicals are adamant, but religion really has nothing to say about the issue.

By Garry Wills
November 4, 2007, LA Times

What makes opposition to abortion the issue it is for each of the GOP presidential candidates is the fact that it is the ultimate "wedge issue" -- it is nonnegotiable. The right-to-life people hold that it is as strong a point of religion as any can be. It is religious because the Sixth Commandment (or the Fifth by Catholic count) says, "Thou shalt not kill." For evangelical Christians, in general, abortion is murder. That is why what others think, what polls say, what looks practical does not matter for them. One must oppose murder, however much rancor or controversy may ensue.

But is abortion murder? Most people think not. Evangelicals may argue that most people in Germany thought it was all right to kill Jews. But the parallel is not valid. Killing Jews was killing persons. It is not demonstrable that killing fetuses is killing persons. Not even evangelicals act as if it were. If so, a woman seeking an abortion would be the most culpable person. She is killing her own child. But the evangelical community does not call for her execution.

About 10% of evangelicals, according to polls, allow for abortion in the case of rape or incest. But the circumstances of conception should not change the nature of the thing conceived. If it is a human person, killing it is punishing it for something it had nothing to do with. We do not kill people because they had a criminal parent.

Nor did the Catholic Church treat abortion as murder in the past. If it had, late-term abortions and miscarriages would have called for treatment of the well-formed fetus as a person, which would require baptism and a Christian burial. That was never the practice. And no wonder. The subject of abortion is not scriptural. For those who make it so central to religion, this seems an odd omission. Abortion is not treated in the Ten Commandments -- or anywhere in Jewish Scripture. It is not treated in the Sermon on the Mount -- or anywhere in the New Testament. It is not treated in the early creeds. It is not treated in the early ecumenical councils.

Lacking scriptural guidance, St. Thomas Aquinas worked from Aristotle's view of the different kinds of animation -- the nutritive (vegetable) soul, the sensing (animal) soul and the intellectual soul. Some people used Aristotle to say that humans therefore have three souls. Others said that the intellectual soul is created by human semen.

Aquinas denied both positions. He said that a material cause (semen) cannot cause a spiritual product. The intellectual soul (personhood) is directly created by God "at the end of human generation." This intellectual soul supplants what had preceded it (nutritive and sensory animation). So Aquinas denied that personhood arose at fertilization by the semen. God directly infuses the soul at the completion of human formation.

Much of the debate over abortion is based on a misconception -- that it is a religious issue, that the pro-life advocates are acting out of religious conviction. It is not a theological matter at all. There is no theological basis for defending or condemning abortion. Even popes have said that the question of abortion is a matter of natural law, to be decided by natural reason. Well, the pope is not the arbiter of natural law. Natural reason is.

John Henry Newman, a 19th century Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, once wrote that "the pope, who comes of revelation, has no jurisdiction over nature." The matter must be decided by individual conscience, not by religious fiat. As Newman said: "I shall drink to the pope, if you please -- still, to conscience first, and to the pope afterward."

If we are to decide the matter of abortion by natural law, that means we must turn to reason and science, the realm of Enlightened religion. But that is just what evangelicals want to avoid. Who are the relevant experts here? They are philosophers, neurobiologists, embryologists. Evangelicals want to exclude them because most give answers they do not want to hear. The experts have only secular expertise, not religious conviction. They, admittedly, do not give one answer -- they differ among themselves, they are tentative, they qualify. They do not have the certitude that the religious right accepts as the sign of truth.

So evangelicals take shortcuts. They pin everything on being pro-life. But one cannot be indiscriminately pro-life.

If one claimed, in the manner of Albert Schweitzer, that all life deserved moral respect, then plants have rights, and it might turn out that we would have little if anything to eat. And if one were consistently pro-life, one would have to show moral respect for paramecia, insects, tissue excised during a medical operation, cancer cells, asparagus and so on. Harvesting carrots, on a consistent pro-life hypothesis, would constitute something of a massacre.

Opponents of abortion will say that they are defending only human life. It is certainly true that the fetus is human life. But so is the semen before it fertilizes; so is the ovum before it is fertilized. They are both human products, and both are living things. But not even evangelicals say that the destruction of one or the other would be murder.

Defenders of the fetus say that life begins only after the semen fertilizes the egg, producing an embryo. But, in fact, two-thirds of the embryos produced this way fail to live on because they do not embed in the womb wall. Nature is like fertilization clinics -- it produces more embryos than are actually used. Are all the millions of embryos that fail to be embedded human persons?

The universal mandate to preserve "human life" makes no sense. My hair is human life -- it is not canine hair, and it is living. It grows. When it grows too long, I have it cut. Is that aborting human life? The same with my growing human fingernails. An evangelical might respond that my hair does not have the potential to become a person. True. But semen has the potential to become a person, and we do not preserve every bit of semen that is ejaculated but never fertilizes an egg.

The question is not whether the fetus is human life but whether it is a human person, and when it becomes one. Is it when it is capable of thought, of speech, of recognizing itself as a person, or of assuming the responsibilities of a person? Is it when it has a functioning brain? Aquinas said that the fetus did not become a person until God infused the intellectual soul. A functioning brain is not present in the fetus until the end of the sixth month at the earliest.

Not surprisingly, that is the earliest point of viability, the time when a fetus can successfully survive outside the womb.

Whether through serendipity or through some sort of causal connection, it now seems that the onset of a functioning central nervous system with a functioning cerebral cortex and the onset of viability occur around the same time -- the end of the second trimester, a time by which 99% of all abortions have already occurred.

Opponents of abortion like to show sonograms of the fetus reacting to stimuli. But all living cells have electric and automatic reactions. These are like the reactions of Terri Schiavo when she was in a permanent vegetative state. Aquinas, following Aristotle, called the early stage of fetal development vegetative life. The fetus has a face long before it has a brain. It has animation before it has a command center to be aware of its movements or to experience any reaction as pain.

These are difficult matters, on which qualified people differ. It is not enough to say that whatever the woman wants should go. She has a responsibility to consider whether and when she may have a child inside her, not just a fetus. Certainly by the late stages of her pregnancy, a child is ready to respond with miraculous celerity to all the personal interchanges with the mother that show a brain in great working order.

Given these uncertainties, who is to make the individual decision to have an abortion? Religious leaders? They have no special authority in the matter, which is not subject to theological norms or guidance. The state? Its authority is given by the people it represents, and the people are divided on this. Doctors? They too differ. The woman is the one closest to the decision. Under Roe vs. Wade, no woman is forced to have an abortion. But those who have decided to have one are able to.

Some objected to Karl Rove's use of abortion to cement his ecumenical coalition, on the grounds that this was injecting religion into politics. The supreme irony is that, properly understood, abortion is not even a religious issue. But that did not matter to Rove. All he cared about was that it worked. For a while.

Garry Wills is the author of numerous books, most recently "Head and Heart: American Christianities," from which this article is adapted.

US Tax Code --- Root of All Evil

Tax Code Is Big Reason For Weak Dollar

By ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN AND GARY A. ROBBINS
November 05, 2007

The inherent strength of the peculiarly American version of free enterprise is shown by how long and how well the U.S. economy has been able to withstand the constant battering by wrong-headed government policies — but the bulwarks are starting to weaken.

Once upon a time the "greenback" was the world's premier currency. Now the dollar is cheaper in value than both the Euro and the British pound.

In recent months, it has twice hit record lows. Every time our currency cheapens, the dollar price of oil and everything we import goes up.

With less purchasing power in the global marketplace, we Americans are poorer than we were before. We lose confidence in ourselves and stature in the eyes of others.

Currencies rise and fall against one another in international exchange markets on an almost daily basis and for a variety of reasons — including the recent expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.

But the long-term weakness of the dollar is fundamentally the result of two failings.

First, we Americans do not save enough to meet the economy's requirements for capital investments.

We must, therefore, each year acquire from other countries about $700 billion of capital to fill the hole left by our profligacy. Second, and corollary to our lack of saving and investment, we consume more than we produce.

We must, therefore, acquire from other countries not only large amounts of their savings but also large amounts of their goods and services.

Because our exports (dollars flowing in, goods flowing out) are much less than our imports (dollars flowing out, goods flowing in), there is an oversupply of dollars in the international market that drives down the price.

The federal government is strongly implicated in America's spendthrift status, its enormous trade deficit, the weak dollar and the fact that most Americans are less well-off than they should be.

More than a hundred years ago, Henry David Thoreau (hardly a right-wing ideologue) had already tumbled to the sad truth about government.

He wrote: "The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in the way."

Insofar as profligacy is concerned, the federal government leads by example. For 24 of the past 30 years, it has run a substantial budget deficit, having spent more than it takes in in revenue — and when it does so, it reduces national savings.

Federal budget deficits are dissaving by the government in the same way that individuals dissave when they spend more than they earn. Most Americans follow the government's example.

Those who rebel and who do save and invest are punished with extra taxes. The government has for decades deliberately taxed income that is saved and invested far more heavily than income that is immediately consumed.

Gross private savings has been less than gross private investment for 26 of the past 30 years.

Not only do taxes on savings and investment weaken the dollar, they slow the growth of the private economy — often costing Americans $3 billion in lost incomes and jobs for every $1 billion of revenue yield to the government. The total cost of tax-induced collateral damage to the economy is about $2.5 trillion per year.

Now the Democrats in control of Congress, led by New York Rep. Charles Rangel, are preparing to kick up the deadweight loss to the economy by another $2.9 trillion.

That's a $2,600 annual whack for every family in America for the next 10 years — and that's only for starters.

To make matters worse — especially insofar as concerns the trade deficit — the government heavily taxes the export of American-made goods, making it hard for companies to compete in the global markets from their home base in America.

But when American companies flee this country and operate abroad — because of the penalties on exports or for other reasons — they get a tax holiday from the U.S. government, provided they reinvest their foreign-source profits abroad to the benefit of some other country's economy.

Woe be unto them, however, if they bring the money home to reinvest in America. The government will tax them.

No wonder the annual U.S. trade deficit is about $0.7 trillion and is equal to nearly 6% of America's entire gross domestic product. And no wonder those in other countries are downgrading their view of the American economy and downgrading the dollar.

Christian, an attorney, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ford administration. Robbins, an economist, served at the Treasury Department in the Reagan administration. Both are adjunct scholars at the Heritage Foundation.

Clinton: Communist China's Candidate of Choice - 2

The Lady And The Nuclear Dragon

By INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY
October 29, 2007 4:20 PM PT

National Security: Beijing is aggressively targeting the United States with nukes and deploying spies to steal our security secrets. What would Commander in Chief Hillary Clinton do?

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IBD Series: To China With Love: The Clinton Legacy

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If a new policy paper she's published in Foreign Affairs is any clue, she would simply follow the lead of her husband, who enabled the communist Chinese at every turn.

Like Bill, Hillary would pursue a hippie "denuclearization" policy that ends testing of nuclear weapons in our stockpile, while slashing the budget for developing defense systems to protect the U.S. from incoming enemy ICBMs.

She slams the Bush administration for, among other things, "focusing obsessively on expensive and unproven missile defense technology."

But there's good reason for that obsession. The Pentagon recently warned that China's long-range missile force has grown substantially in the past few years, and now includes a mobile, land-based ICBM that could reach anywhere in America.

"China has at least 10 varieties of ballistic missiles deployed or in development and is qualitatively improving some of its older systems with improved range, mobility and accuracy," the sobering report said, adding that they're "capable of targeting the continental United States."

It's no accident that China suddenly gained the capacity to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes against us. It happened on President Clinton's watch, when he systematically dismantled security at Los Alamos and other defense labs as part of his naive "engagement policy" with Beijing.

Chinese spies infested the labs and stole technological know-how on five warheads and design codes to two others, including the Pentagon's crown jewel, the W-88 lightweight mini-warhead fired from nuclear subs.

In doing so, the Cox Commission found, the Chinese saved a tremendous amount of time and money and were able to improve their nuclear arsenal so it could more reliably threaten U.S. cities in a showdown over Taiwan.

Islamic terror is getting all the headlines these days, as it should. But absent 9/11, China's military buildup and foul play around the world would rank as the No. 1 national security threat.

Recent Chinese spy scandals at the CIA and FBI, as well as continued leaks at the labs, show we're losing the espionage war against Beijing. China also recently hacked into the Pentagon's computer, a brazen cyberattack that set off alarms throughout the intelligence community.

And there's real concern that Beijing — the worst proliferator of nuclear missile technology in the world — might share it with other countries, including terrorist states like Iran and Sudan.

Despite all these concerns, Hillary Clinton wants to re-establish her husband's "strategic partnership" with China, making it clear to us that she would be dangerously incapable of taming the nuclear dragon rising from the Pacific.

"There is much that the United States and China can and must accomplish together," she said in her Foreign Affairs piece, failing to mention the growing nuclear threat the communists pose.

"Although the United States must stand ready to challenge China when its conduct is at odds with U.S. vital interests," she added, "we should work for a cooperative future."

Recent history, however, shows that the Chinese are not going to be cooperative partners of the U.S. — unless we want a partner that's going to loot our technology and use it against us.

Clinton: Communist China's Candidate of Choice-1

The Chinese Re-Connection

By INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY
Friday, October 26, 2007

National Security: Bill Clinton was the best president the People's Republic of China ever had. His wife may be even better. Beijing, hungry for more technology transfers, is betting on it.

It's no coincidence that Sen. Hillary Clinton's autobiography, "Living History," is the most popular foreign political memoir in Chinese history. The state-owned publisher of the Chinese translation of her book has printed hundreds of thousands of copies (after censoring passing references to dissident Harry Wu) and stocked them in bookstore windows from Beijing to Shanghai.

It's also no coincidence that Chinese bagmen are lining up immigrants in Chinatowns from New York to San Francisco to donate cash to Hillary's campaign. Many have never voted. Some aren't citizens and couldn't vote if they wanted to. Most are dishwashers, waiters and garment workers who don't even have the means to give the thousands they're giving. And an alarming number say they've been pressured by shady Chinese "businessmen" to help fill Hillary's campaign war chest.

Command fundraisers are breaking out all over the Chinese community. It's plain that Sen. Clinton is China's candidate. It's time to ask why that is. What is the attraction? What does Beijing want? What has she promised?

Is Hillary, as some suspect, a Manchurian candidate loyal to foreign and unseen donors rather than American voters? Can she be trusted with U.S. security?

With polls showing Clinton bounding ahead of the Democratic field, while nosing out even top GOP hopefuls for the White House, voters must take these questions seriously. We plan to drill down on them in a series of editorials.

It's instructive to revisit the special relationship the Chinese had with the last Clinton administration, especially in view of how the former president plans to act as an "international emissary" for his wife.

Bill Clinton called it a "strategic partnership." He argued that cozying up to — or as he called it, "engaging" — the communist Chinese was in America's best interest. But while Clinton was engaging them, an engagement that included inviting them into our defense labs and dismantling export controls, Beijing:

• Managed to steal secrets to every nuclear warhead deployed in the U.S. arsenal.

• Deployed for the first time an entire force of CSS-4 ICBMs that target the continental U.S., from L.A. to New York and everything in between.

• Declared the U.S. enemy No. 1 in its military writings.

• Bought Russian destroyers armed with missiles designed to kill U.S. carriers.

• Built up its missile batteries across the Taiwan Strait.

• Infiltrated the CIA and FBI with spies.

The Chinese espionage that occurred on Clinton's watch was unprecedented, and analysts still don't know how deep Chinese moles penetrated our security complex.

The FBI warned President Clinton that the People's Republic of China was running a massive intelligence operation against the U.S. government, which included a plan to influence the 1996 election.

Clinton looked the other way. In fact, there's evidence he facilitated it by throttling the prosecution of Chinese spy cases and covering up probes into Chinese funny money that poured into his campaign.

As soon as Clinton took office, he implemented a policy of "denuclearization." That included ending nuclear testing, kicking open the defense labs to Chinese and other foreign scientists, and declassifying hundreds of documents related to our nuclear program.

Clinton also deregulated export of sensitive dual-use technology such as supercomputers and rocket guidance systems. And Beijing gleefully took advantage of the dovish changes, sharpening the reliability of the missiles it has aimed at the U.S. and Taiwan.

Clinton's open-door "engagement policy" amounted to rank appeasement of a communist state with hegemonic military ambitions. Will Hillary carry on the tradition? Will she, too, hold a high-tech fire sale for the Chinese? One thing is for sure, Beijing and its bagmen are betting on it — big time.

Is It "Game Over" for the U.S.A.?

Sharia By The Inch

By INVESTOR' BUSINESS DAILY
Friday, October 12, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Islamofascism: In a monumental nod to political correctness, the Empire State Building is to be lit up green in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid. The separation of Islam from terror is officially complete.

Six years ago, Islamic terrorists screamed "Allah is Greatest!" as they slammed fuel-laden jumbo jets into two other New York skyscrapers. Six years ago, New Yorkers were worried about the Green Menace.

Now, for the first time, New York's remaining famous skyscraper will be aglow in green — the color of Islam — to mark the end of Ramadan, a month of intense Islamic renewal. Officials say it'll be an annual event, in the same tradition of the yearly skyscraper lighting for Christmas and Hanukkah.

Going green six years later.

What's next, Ground Zero festooned with crescent moons and stars?

Political correctness is running amok. Last week, the White House held a Ramadan dinner for Muslim leaders and activists, even though we are still waiting for them to condemn Islamic terror groups by name. (This is as outrageous as it is inexcusable!)

To their delight, President Bush praised, and even suggested we all worship Allah. "I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian or any other religion, prays to the same God," he said, adding "I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace."

A nice sentiment. But militant Muslims believe peace cannot be attained until Islam dominates the globe. And they make up much of the Muslim establishment in America. We know this by the words they've been caught on tape mouthing to Muslim audiences. We know this by their radical associations.

But more damning, investigators recently uncovered smoking-gun documents revealing that many founders of the major Muslim groups in the U.S. were involved in a secret plot to take over the U.S. by using our religious and political freedoms against us.

They call themselves Americans, but they view our system of government, our way of life, as an abomination to Allah. They've devised a scheme to sabotage our "miserable house" from within and dismantle it piece by piece, replacing it with "Dar al-Islam" — the House of Peace.

Then, and only then, will there be the kind of peace the president believes Islam represents today.

Ignorance and blind tolerance only make it easier for the Islamists to make inroads. (The mainstream media will never report on the ever-increasing Islamization of the U.S.) Inch by inch, sharia is creeping into our society. We see it:

• At airports, where authorities have agreed to Muslim taxi drivers' demands to build footbaths in public restrooms for Islamic washing and praying.

• On college campuses, where trustees have agreed to demands by the Saudi-tied Muslim Student Association to add Islamic holidays, prayer rooms and footbaths.

• In Congress, where officials have set aside a room for a growing number of Muslims to meet and pray inside the otherwise high-security Capitol building.

• At Quantico, where Marine brass have agreed to build an Islamic center at the request of a former Gitmo imam who previously insisted on Islamic meals, Qurans, prayer beads, oils and other amenities for the terrorists held there.

• At West Point, where Army officials have followed Quantico's lead and set up their own mosque for Muslim cadets.

• In Brooklyn, where school officials agreed to provide local Muslims and Arabs with their own publicly funded madrassa.

• In Detroit, where city planners have caved to demands to let mosques broadcast the call to prayer in Arabic five times a day, including the early-morning hours, noise ordinances be damned.

And on and on . . . until we, too, resemble Eurabia.

The Poor Are Getting Richer !

A Nation Of Have-Nots Blinded To Truth

By LARRY ELDER
Thursday, October 11, 2007

Thirty-four percent of Americans say they belong to the have-nots. Twenty years ago, only 17% defined themselves this way. What happened?

Apparently party affiliation, race and self-perception play a greater role than one's actual economic condition. The Pew Research Center, the organization conducting the poll, writes that one arrives at this belief, " . . . whether grounded in objective facts or not."

"Analysis of polling data over the years," writes Pew, "also strongly suggests that the growing perception of societal divide is driven as much by political factors as by economic ones."

Take a look at the lot of the have-nots. By virtually any criterion, Americans, even poor ones, live considerably better lives than they did even a decade or two ago.

In 1995, 66% of poor households had air conditioning. Just 10 years later, in 2005, 80% had it. In 1995, 70% of poor households owned a car, and 27% owned two or more. By 2005, almost 75% owned cars, and 31% owned two or more.

In 1995, about 25% of the poor owned an automatic dishwasher. In 2005, more than 33% have one. Microwave ownership jumped from 64% in 1995 to 89% by 2005.

The lowest-income one-fifth of households spend, per person, as much today as the median American household in the early '70s, after adjusting for inflation.

As the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector writes, "Most of America's 'poor' live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago."

What about the rest of America? According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), from 1991 to 2005, earnings for families with children increased for the poorest fifth by 78%, after inflation.

The second 20% saw a 23% increase. The middle 20% had an 18% increase, and the 20% above them saw a 22% increase. The richest 20% enjoyed a 54% increase, still less than the very poorest 20%.

The CBO's stats don't include government benefits, pensions and investment income. It focuses solely on wages and salaries, as opposed to total compensation, which also includes things like health care.

Economics professor Steven Landsburg writes: "By the 20th century, per capita real incomes — that is, incomes adjusted for inflation — were growing at 1.5% per year, on average, and for the past half century they've been growing at about 2.3%.

"If you're earning a modest middle-class income of $50,000 a year, and if you expect your children, 25 years from now, to occupy that same modest rung on the economic ladder, then with a 2.3% growth rate, they'll be earning the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $89,000 a year. Their children, another 25 years down the line, will earn $158,000 a year."

Yet despite this long-term, across-the-board upward economic mobility, the number of Americans who describe themselves as belonging to the have-nots has doubled in two decades. What does all this mean? It says that the offensive and divisive claims of an economic "societal divide" work. When Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards speaks of "two Americas," people buy into it.

The drumbeat that "race plays a part of everything in America" doubtlessly affects the vision of blacks. A 1995 poll found blacks earning $50,000 or more were less likely to say "everyone has the power to succeed" in America than low-income whites.

Edwards and his ilk yap about the gap between the rich and the poor. Yes, the rich get richer. But so do the poor. This is really about envy.

A professor who taught business students once told a story something like this. He asked his class which scenario they preferred.

In the first option a country, say, Japan, grows at approximately 7% a year, with the U.S. growing at 4%. Option two: Japan growing at 3%, and the U.S. growing at 3%.

Most students preferred option two, even though it meant America grew less rapidly! Students happily accepted being less well off, so long as nobody else out-gained them.

As for actual, persistent poverty, Edwards and other naysayers refuse to admit a couple of things. The failure to invest in oneself — to get at least a high school education — raises the chances of poverty.

Similarly, a child born to a poor unwed mother as opposed to a poor married couple faces a far greater chance of growing up poor. We call this behavior.

Government policies like food stamps, AFDC, day-care vouchers and health-care programs reward poor behavior.

This hurts, not helps, the poor.

But as economic demagogues like Edwards demonstrate, terms like "economic divide" and "two Americas" make great sound bites.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate, Inc

"It's the Taxes, Stupid!"

The single-most critical issue now and in the coming election is the Federal tax policy that is nothing more than a train wreck in motion. It is responsible for GDP stagnation, minimal employment growth, and off-shore job migration among many other sins. The current Federal tax policy is an immoral abomination that must be replaced by the “Fair Tax” if this country is to survive and compete in the future. (See the “Fair Tax” link on the lower right of this page for more information.)

What's Tax 'Fairness'?

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
October 09, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Fiscal Policy: We keep hearing on the campaign trail that the tax system needs reform to make it more "fair." That's true, but not for the reasons most people think.

Whether it's called "tax fairness," "economic populism" or whatever, politicians are eager to show they're in touch with the common man. So we've seen a plethora of tax plans that seek to make the "rich" pay their "fair share." This is nonsense of the highest sort — but popular all the same.

New data from the Tax Foundation and the IRS show just how nonsensical it is. In 2005, the latest full year for data, the top 1% of earners accounted for 21.2% of all income, but paid 39.4% of all federal taxes. The top 5% earned 35.8% of all income and paid 60% of the taxes. That's right: The top 5% paid more in income taxes than the remaining 95% combined.

Go back to 1980 — the dawn of the Reagan era — and the top 1% paid just 19% of all taxes and the top 5% just 37%. It is an irrefutable fact, therefore, that taxes are more progressive (rich pay more, in Democrat-speak) than ever. And it happened with Republican presidents holding office in 19 of 27 years, during a period when, paradoxically, tax rates on the highest incomes fell.

Yet just two years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston asserted, apparently with a straight face, that there was a "covert campaign to rig our tax system to benefit the super rich." Such nonfactual thinking, repeated over and over in the mainstream press, has become embedded in Americans' minds.

In our own IBD/TIPP Poll, we recently asked Americans if they'd support higher taxes on the rich and corporations in exchange for taking more middle-class Americans from the tax rolls entirely. To our surprise, 55% of Americans said yes. That includes 47% of all Republicans. They want the rich to pay even more.

This shows a shocking lack of knowledge among the public at large about who pays taxes. Many people have come to believe that, somehow, they get screwed by the tax code, while the rich walk away with paying little or nothing. But that's simply not true.

The bottom 50% in income in the U.S. — including, by definition, half of those who are middle class — paid just 3% of all income taxes in 2005. That's right: The top 50% in income paid 97%.

Those who say they want more tax cuts for the lower middle class and the poor miss a key point: Those groups don't pay much in taxes at all. How can you cut what you don't pay? Some 45 million people today have zero federal income-tax liability. An additional 15 million don't even have to file.

That said, millions of middle-class Americans will soon find out what it's like to be rich. They'll be forced to pay the alternative minimum tax, one of the tools in our tax code that ensures wealthy Americans pay more than their fair share.

As for the truly well-off, they'll be hit in 2010 by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. This will push the top income-tax rate to 39.6% from the current 35%. (Democrats also want to raise Social Security payroll taxes paid by the rich, another big hit.)

History, however, shows that tax hikes bring in far less revenues than expected. It's easy to see why: Raising taxes on those with lots of wealth shrinks the amount of capital available for investment, which means fewer new jobs, slower growth in incomes and lower overall productivity. Hardly a policy for prosperity.

This is envy, pure and simple, and a tax policy based on envy is the worst kind. It sets neighbor against neighbor and downplays the contributions of skill and entrepreneurial gusto that those we derisively call the rich bring to our economy. In economics, as in most religions, envy is among the deadliest of sins.