Posted on 08/31/2021 6:07:40 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Demagogues appeal to envy because they believe that promising to destroy the advantages enjoyed by others will win votes and inspire loyalty. Sometimes it does. As the envy-driven horrors of Rwanda and Nazi Germany demonstrate, pledging to disrupt the envied lives of a despised “other” can be a ticket to victory for a political candidate savvy enough to convince voters that he has their best interests at heart.
More than 25 years ago, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, pronounced in his book The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology that we “live in an age of envy.” Pointing out that “people don’t so much want more money for themselves as they want to take it away from those with more,” Bandow suggested that although “greed is bad enough, eating away at a person’s soul, envy is far worse because it destroys not only individuals, but also communities, poisoning relations.” A Christian libertarian, Bandow wrote that
those who are greedy may ruin their own lives, but those who are envious contaminate the larger community by letting their covetousness interfere with their relations with others.
One can satisfy greed in innocuous, even positive ways—by being brighter, working harder, seeing new opportunities, or meeting the demands of others, for instance.
In contrast, envy today is rarely satisfied without the use of the coercive power of the state: “The only way to take what is someone else’s is to enlist one or more public officials to seize land, impose taxes, regulate activities, conscript labor, and so on. Statism has become the basic theology for those committed to using government to coercively create their preferred version of the virtuous society.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at theohiostar.com ...
Reminds me of what Congressman Dornan (one of the all-time greats) called “PEG.” Politics of Envy and Greed. I would throw Hatred in there, but it ruins the acronym. Ultimately, the Left is motivated by pure hatred, the logical result of their rebellion against God.
Where are the judges in all this?
Let's be honest - Trump's celebrity "Trumped" the envy politics of Hillary & Co. for a single election. But without such a celebrity at the top, beating Envy, Inc. is not going to be easy for the GOP.
The communism is based on the envy. It does not matter if I have nothing, as long as my neighbor does not have anything either.
Communist joke:
Joe is granted that proverbial one wish.
He thinks about it.
“My neighbor has a pig. “
“So you want a pig too?”
Oh, no, I wish that his dies!”
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