Hypocrisy Update: Robbery v. Theft

Fox News always tries to characterize the national debt as money that we, or more likely “they,” are robbing from our children. Using the word “robbery” as opposed to the milder “theft” is a conscious semantic choice, and one of the two good questions here. The other question is, who are “they?”

Robbery is a much more serious crime than theft (aka larceny, or just stealing). Robbery is “theft by force or fear.” Having your car stolen quietly in the middle of the night while you are safely sleeping (grand theft auto) is a much more comfortable experience than having your car stolen from you at gunpoint while you are stopped at a red light (armed robbery).

Considering the difference, the money that will someday go to re-paying the national debt is perhaps being stolen, but it is not being robbed.

About the second question, just who is the “they” who are doing all of this stealing? Fox makes it sound like it is the work of President Obama, alone, no one else is mentioned or blamed. Simple research will show that any list of main offenders must include former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, at least. George Herbert Walker Bush was a piker compared to those two, and Bill Clinton actually held the line pretty well.

(Note the difference between the national debt and the deficit. The national debt is the total owed; the deficit is the shortfall in the budget this year. Clinton actually controlled the deficit.)

The list of offenders must also include the several congresses that allowed all of this to happen, including members of both parties. Those two presidents were the worst offenders though, it was their policies that led to the huge current total for the debt and caused the collapse of the economy in 2008. Go ahead, try blaming that on President Obama. (Clinton? Maybe a little, the collapse anyway.)

Those two Republican presidents, and the congresses that licked their boots, have put us in a mess, it’s true. They spent several fortunes on defense, and senseless, counterproductive wars, with most of the money going to their friends in the defense, oil, and banking industries. Congress authorized it all, and threw in several additional fortunes for their own friends, and their states, through earmarks. President Obama? Most of his addition to the debt has been in attempts to avoid a complete collapse, attempts that have largely succeeded.

There is great hypocrisy in these attacks by Fox News on President Obama, which comes as a surprise to no one. Fox, though, prefers to reserve the term “hypocrite” for Al Gore, aka “the radical left-wing hypocrite.”