How did you like it?
Like the problem with socialism populism ceases to work when you run out of other people's money and the entire speech by Elizabeth Warren can be seen as a search for more of other people's money. Our problem is that she is nowhere close to exhausting the sources of other people's money in America, there is so much more good she can do. The problem, as well, is that a lot of people are buying what she is selling. She is inciting a mob which she defines as much more than 90% of the populace against a minority which she describes as being 1/10 of one percent. If Elizabeth Warren had been nominated instead of Hillary Clinton, we would be in full retreat mode.
Elizabeth Warren's populism is not different in kind from Bernie Sanders socialism or Hillary Clinton's opportunism; it matters not what label you put on it, it matters whether there is a standard against which it can be held accountable, a standard which forces a halt to the insatiable search for other people's money.
Warren, Sanders, Clinton all have varying emphasis but they are at the end of the day all free ranging confiscators of other people's property, free ranging because the limits on their ability to confiscate exist only at the place where they exhaust popular support. So long as they have the mob, they have the power. If you want to know where the limits of mob tyranny are, examine the history of Venezuela.
Populism is a path toward tyranny of the majority. Constitutionalism is our only salvation. Our Framers who seem to be out-of-favor even in this forum with neo-populists certainly knew that, the French Revolution confirmed that, we forget it at our peril.
