In a recent editorial, “The Weekly Standard,” a "conservative" magazine founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1995, took supporters of the flat tax to task over fairness. The editors, apparently, were shocked, shocked to discover that under a flat tax many wealthy would pay less taxes than they do now. Horrified by this discovery, they strongly urged Republicans to drop the issue as quickly as possible lest they be attacked by Democrats for being "unfair."

If The Standard had been around in 1978, it would, no doubt, have advised Howard Jarvis to forget about Proposition 13, because the rich have bigger houses and would save more in property taxes. In 1980, I am sure that the editors would have been aghast at Ronald Reagan's plan to cut the top tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. And The Standard would surely have called the Tax Reform Act of 1986 a huge political loser for cutting the top rate to just 28 percent.

In 1993, The Standard would certainly have predicted political suicide for gubernatorial candidate (now governor) Christie Whitman of New Jersey, because her plan to cut the state's onerous tax rates by 30 percent would have disproportionately benefited the rich. The Standard must have overlooked the opportunity to tell governor-elect Jim Gilmore of Virginia that his plan to abolish the car tax would be viewed as unfair by the state's voters because the rich have more expensive cars.

Conversely, one presumes, The Standard would have cheered George Bush for his political astuteness in raising tax rates on the rich in 1990. Such an obviously fair plan would surely be endorsed by voters, The Standard would have to argue. And on what basis could The Standard have opposed Bill Clinton's huge tax increase in 1993? By soaking the rich, it necessarily was fair, wasn't it?

In short, the logic of The Standard's position would have led Republicans to oppose all of their most important -- and politically successful -- tax initiatives of the last 20 years. Over and over again, Democrats pummeled these initiatives as unfair for precisely the same reasons that The Standard now opposes the flat tax. Fortunately, the American people looked beyond the class warfare rhetoric and supported tax cuts even when they knew that the rich would benefit more than they would.

There are many reasons why average Americans support "unfair" tax cuts. For one thing, they know that the Democrats' view of who is rich always seems to include them. Years ago, Jimmy Carter even defined the rich as anyone making over the median income. In other words, 50 percent of all Americans are "rich." And over the summer, the Clinton Administration fought hard to take tax cuts away from middle class taxpayers in order to send refunds to people paying no income taxes to begin with.

The middle class also knows that tax increases on the rich have a nasty way of coming back to bite them. Inflation and real growth in the economy already put most of them into tax brackets once reserved only for the very wealthy. And tax increases on the rich are often preludes to further increases paid by all taxpayers. Thus a low top rate helps protect everyone from higher taxes in the future.

Of course Democrats are going to attack the flat tax as unfair. They have been saying so for years. Yet polls continue to show strong support for the flat tax, even among those with modest incomes. If Republicans are frightened away from the issue by fears of attacks by Democrats, they might as well abandon taxation as an issue altogether, because anything worth doing will always be viewed as unfair by them.