September 25, 2006
Society for the Prevention of Annoyances to the Rich...
Debra Saunders: Limousine liberals, move over. You've been out-glammed by Lear Jet liberals who burn beaucoup fossil fuels in the sky as they soar across the globe fighting global warming.Last week, they flew to their Mecca, the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York. For the left-leaning and loaded, this is the meet that has it all -- the mega-rich paying to be seen caring about poor people and the environment, while posing for photos with former President Clinton....
But you know, this stuff really isn't new. I've been reading a most charming book, Belloc's Path To Rome, about a pilgrimage he made somewhere around the year 1900, on foot, from France, over the Alps and down Italy to Rome. I noted this line with great pleasure...
...I went with him to the Society for the Prevention of Annoyances to the Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the cruelty of Spaniards to their mules... (p. 154)Doesn't that just capture most of the lefty causes and Bike-Path Liberals that burden the world today?
(Sketch by Zach Brissett)
Explain please the perverse paradox of the very rich also being very liberal?
One would think that the explanation is that, being stupendously rich, they are virtually immune to the tax depredations of the kinds of government they apparently champion. Besides, by having a government that makes it more difficult for others to also become rich -- or at least prosperous -- it eliminates competition to their wealthy status and influence. You know, like the nobility in the Middle Ages. How "progressive!"
I actually ran across this attitude from a couple I once knew. They were self-employed and prosperous (and should have therefore been Libertarians), and owned not only an upper middle class home in a tony neighborhood, but also a 44 ft. boat docked at a fine marina. When in the course of a conversation on the economy I suggested how very American it was for people to strive for "prosperity," they actually wrinkled their noses at that word! "So," asked I, "if not 'prosperity,' then what word would you use?" "Adequacy" said the husband, "yes, Americans should strive for adequacy."
Adequacy?
This jerk owned a great house and a 44 ft. "almost-a-yacht," and he wants other Americans to strive for "adequacy"? Arrogant, insolent idiot. I never forgot that conversation, and also never again had anything to do with those fools.
Posted by: Roderick Reilly at September 27, 2006 03:02 PM
