The battle of ideologies currently raging in America produces an attack from the left on everything that can be gathered and apprehended in a basket labelled with the catch-all term “Capitalism,” — catch-all because what it refers to in today’s America can hardly be identified as Capitalism.
Two weeks ago a slight majority of Americans voted for more stuff from the government. There may have been other drivers, but that is the main one. Below is a quote whose origin is disputed, but it is particularly apropos:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.
For months we’ve heard calls from Democrats for Mitt Romney to release his tax records. Last week Harry Reid even claimed he had it from “a number of people” had told him that Mitt Romney had not paid his taxes for a decade and demanded he release them.
One can’t but hear the almost daily drumbeat from the left about how unequal things are in the United States. There is an income disparity between the haves and the have-nots where Wall Street bankers take millions of dollars home to their Greenwich mansions while millions of others work for minimum wage and can’t afford their own home, never mind something resembling a mini-Versailles.
Rush Limbaugh caused a bit of a stir recently when he asked the question: “What do you think has fed more mouths, greed or charity?” The question seemed particularly untoward given that Christmas was right around the corner. Who besides Gordon Gekko might ask such a ludicrous question? Rush, obviously… and it turns out that it’s not such a ludicrous question after all.
Back in 2000 or 2001 I read a piece in Newsweek or TIME that discussed flyers whining that they didn’t have enough storage space in the overhead compartment bins on airplanes. I remember writing a letter to the editor saying that the only reason that people had the luxury of being able to whine about such things was that flying had become so safe that flyers could shift their focus to the more mundane. Then of course September 11th came along and people started focusing on the basic reason planes exist… to get them from point A to point B in one piece.
The Occupy Wall Streeters are just like the people whining about the overhead compartments. These are the people who enjoy the fruits of the capitalist system in which they live – iPhones, Starbucks, Facebook, Twitter, Twinkies, Nikes, ATMs, MSNBC, not to mention adequate food, shelter, and transportation, yet want to destroy that very system.
Tiffany Jewelry used to run these large print ads in the New York Times, circa 1980. Can Full Employment Be Accomplished by Government Action? Yes it can; How can government …
The Cap and Trade Global Warming Legislation before the Senate needs to die a swift and ugly death. Just for openers . . . This is the legislation that would …
