Posted on 12/05/2008 7:32:18 AM PST by milwguy
The Roman moralist Plutarch wrote a number of parallel lives of illustrious Greek and Roman notables to offer his Greek-reading audience ethical lessons about character, virtue, and culture. He was trying to teach his fellow Roman citizens the importance of ethics, and to remind them that their own ancestors were often as illustrious as the great Greeks of the past.
Let us try to use his example to learn something about modern morality from the contrasts within a few matched pairs of contemporary notables, prominent in the recent news
FINANCE I know from media accounts that someone called Richard Fuld supposedly ran the once cash-laden and 158-year-old Lehman Brothers investment and banking house into the ground. Indeed, various newspapers and news shows convinced me I should dislike Fuld — given his apparent arrogance to his underlings, and insidious greed in harvesting an aggregate $300 million in salary and bonuses over eight years from his sick firm.
So I confess I was not particularly bothered to hear that someone in the company gym supposedly punched Fuld in the face after his brazen and shameless congressional testimony.
But why have we not heard commensurate censure of former whiz kid Robert Rubin at Citigroup? The stock of that mega-lending institution has descended from blue-chip status to being now nearly worthless. I was recently talking to a teller in Fresno at a small branch office of Citibank, who sighed, “Who’d have thought I may lose my job because we knew more about running a tiny branch office than those guys in New York who ran us?”
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
The sad part is the citizens of our land have become sheep, and are force fed the garbage that passes for news by the MSM.
Eric Holder, Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangel, all are perfect examples of the political elite doing whatever they want, and because of their political party, they pay no consequnces. You could add Barney Frank, Harry reid, Nancy Pelosi into the mix as well.
What Hanson is saying is that Democrats are allowed to steal as long as it is done politically correct.
So here we are with a full page of crooks in and out of government and some soon to be named to high positions in our government - what can we do? It appears, nothing.
Our Constitution has been tossed aside not only regarding Obama but Clinton’s appointment as SecState and our government is taking equity positions in private companies - that is not permitted under our Constitution.
Goldman’s stock is not nearly worthless. It is $66 a share! LOL. Ooops!
We live in a culture with a dangerous new social meme:
innocent until proven Republican
We need to awaken to the gravity of the ideological perversions that are taking hold in our society. Justice is being corrupted into an ideological litmus test.
The wealthy have learned the new lesson and now the super rich are increasingly “liberal” because they know it insulates them from prosecution in all abuses.
exalted ends at times necessarily entail regrettable means
That’s putting it mildly.
The goal of the ‘progressives’ is to destroy the opposition with their own values.
Unfortunately, 52% of the electorate gets its views from the likes of Jon Stewart and David Letterman, not from the likes of Plutarch.
While they keep buying the meme that the Republican party is for the “rich” and Wall Street, it is the Democrats who get are getting money from the rich and Wall street. Most folks have it exactly backwards. Fuld: gave to Dems. Rubin: IS a Dem. Citibank, Lehman, Freddie/Fannie, etc. Follow the money. Those getting bailed out gave the most to Dems. For this reason, bet on the Big 3 to get bailed out.
Rubin worked for CITI when he made the 115 Mil $, not GS.
What Hansen is saying is that there is a double standard.
If DemoncRATs were held to the same standard as others in public office there would be a LOT more DemoncRATs in jail and a lot less holding public office.
The MSM watchdog went to sleep when THEIR infractions were committed.
That seems too innocent. They had to be wide awake and actively averting their eyes and covering their ears.
The politics at the top in Washington are very nearly like those of Imperial Rome, during the years of Julius Caesar, who was a Roman military and political leader.
It was a time of transformation from the Roman Republic to the Imperium. The Senate was supposed to be the highest authority, but they gave over their governing power to an unofficial triumvirate led by Julius Caesar, with Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, which dominated Roman politics for several years. The Senate tried to overthrow this usurpation of their leadership position, but eventually, Caesar ruled alone, after the resolution of a civil war in 49 BC. Once having consolidated his power, Caesar declared himself “Dictator in Perpetuity”, until he had the most unfortunate meeting with Brutus, who along with a group of other Senators, assassinated the dictator on the Ides of March (March 15) in 44 BC.
In an example of excessive remorse, Caesar was declared a diety, and the form of imperial government became the standard for Rome, and most of the civilized world for the next couple of thousand years.
Republican Rome was never re-established. It was to be ruled by Caesars until its eventual collapse and the rise of numerous minor kingdoms, some of which had their own local empires, but nothing ever as grand or dominant as Rome, until the rise of the Spanish and British Empires some ten or twelve centuries later. And they never dominated their immediate neighbors, at least not for extended periods of time.
Someone ought to remind them that the US is STILL a two party system.
Unfortunately, it has become a one party media.
BTT
“In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.”
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold onto that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center. With the feeling that he was … setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:
“’Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’”
George Orwell, 1984
bump & a ping
Corruption in a democracy is a cancer. We have a completely corrupt Party and its lapdog media.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Bump for later reading.
You could also add Obama, #2 recipient of Fannie funds. Why this wasn’t shouted from the rooftops after the financial meltdown, I will never understand.
Goldman’s stock was not mentioned in the article. It was Citigroup, which is <$10.
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