Posted on 12/17/2002 12:02:32 AM PST by JohnHuang2
There's a dark little corner of the Internet where a gruesome assortment of leftists and socialists gather to post what passes for their "thoughts" on political issues. The site is called DemocraticUnderground.com, and it's certainly worth a quick stop the next time you go cruising. Several of my listeners keep a constant watch on this site and alert me to particularly interesting discussion threads.
I catch a lot of flak for my constant references to the Democratic Party as the Democratic Socialist Party. Maybe I can quell some of the dissension by telling you some of the postings I have read on Democratic Underground recently.
Last Thursday, a comment appeared with the title, "It's official, I'm a socialist at heart." This writer had visited a neighborhood of "multi-million dollars homes" that for the most part have only "two people (rich, old white couples) living in them." She wrote, "I really cannot stand rich, selfish people. I do believe in redistribution of wealth. Rich people do not get that way by themselves, they do it on the backs of others." Other Democratic Underground members chimed in with their responses. Among them:
That, my friends, is scary stuff, but it's nothing I haven't heard in 33 years of hosting talk-radio shows. There is burning envy – an envy that borders on outright hatred of the rich in this country. This envy is intense enough to consume the hearts and minds of many who call themselves "Democrats."
Where does this hatred come from? Why is it so important to so many people to believe that the evil rich got their money through anything but hard work?
To understand this, you need to imagine yourself struggling to make ends meet. You're renting an apartment and driving every day to a dead-end job that 's going nowhere. You work your 40-hour week, and have nothing to show for it but rent receipts and credit card bills. You hear about all of these people getting sick on cruise ships, and grouse that you don't have enough money to even get on the ship, let alone throw up on the poop deck.
So, just why aren't you rich? Why don't you have a fancy car? Why aren't you tossing your lunch on Caribbean cruises? Why do you make rent payments instead of mortgage payments?
The last thing you want to do is to admit that this all may be your fault. Your poverty couldn't possibly have anything to do with your decision to forego college for that great job at the mall. You're also convinced that your decision to hang out with your friends at night instead of getting some more education at the local community college was the right one. Hey! You work hard and deserve your fun, right?
And just why should you have to work more than 40 hours a week? That's what you're supposed to work, right? Forty hours, no more. After all, you're not a slave, are you? What about your huge car payments? Sure, you could be putting that money into an investment account, but you need that fancy car, right? And the rims? Hey! A guy's gotta be cool, you know what I'm saying?
So ? those rich people? Did they get that way doing the things you won't do? Working the 60-hour week, continuing with their education, buying cheap cars with ordinary wheels and investing the rest? Do they have the nice homes and the fancy cars because they make good choices and aren't afraid of taking a risk now and then?
No way! If a person could really get rich that way you would have done it already, right? No, that's now how they got their money. These people are rich because they exploited people. They got their money by climbing on the backs of working people like you! They were lucky! They inherited it! They didn't earn it. If it could be earned, you would have done it, right?
You have to protect yourself here, don't you? If you accept that the vast majority of those you call "rich" got there through hard work, then don't you have to ask yourself why you're not one of them? It's just so much easier to cast them as callous, selfish monsters and evil exploiters of the working class while preserving the mantle of goodness and righteousness for yourself. Hey, you may be poor, but at least you're a nice person, right?
No, my poverty has to do with the fact that I DID go to college and earn an engineering degree when I should have taken that job at the mall. There's really no great demand in post-modern America for people who know how to design and build things any more...
Boorz is a pilot, too, or used to be.
Today we live in the Age of Envy."Envy" is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.
Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves....That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.
This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good with which one does not agree....Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one's own (conscious or subconscious) judgement. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable.
If a child wants to get good grades in school, but is unable or unwilling to achieve them and begins to hate the children who do, that is hatred of the good. If a man regards intelligence as a value, but is troubled by self-doubt and begins to hate the men he judges to be intelligent, that is hatred of the good.
The nature of the particular values a man chooses to hold is not the primary factor in this issue (although irrational values may contribute a great deal to the formation of that emotion). The primary factor and distinguishing characteristic is an emotional mechanism set in reverse: a response of hatred, not toward human vices, but toward human virtues.
To be exact, the emotional mechanism is not set in reverse, but is set one way: its exponents do not experience love for evil men; their emotional range is limited to hatred or indifference. It is impossible to experience love, which is a response to values, when one's automatized response to values is hatred.
--Ayn Rand, The Age of Envy, 1971
- They do not want to win your fortune, they want you to lose it
- They do not want to succeed, they want you to fail
- They do not want to live, they want you to die
"They desire nothing, they hate existence, they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself....They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they're after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.
--Ayn Rand, "Galt's Speech" from Atlas Shrugged, 1957
The Clintons loved the wealthy, they love the Hollywood type wealthy. There seems to be a lot of love between Castro and those types also. Socialists seem to hate the middle class more than anything but they also hate the self-made wealthy.
With their do-gooder causes firmly in mind, socialists ALWAYS know how to spend your money better than you do.
I never said anything about "everyone here," but if the shoe fits, wear it. I responded to different people. Some were morons, and some were bright. You remind me of some guys who ride really loud motorcycles, as if they sought to emphasize, that they are not among the brightest lights.
When given rock solid proof supporting the opposing position you simply state "My beef is not with you". Shouldn’t we expect much more of someone who touts them self as a college instructor?
The person you refer to was not debating me, and did not even try to offer "rock solid proof" in support of the morons I was arguing with, just as he is of no help to you. Hence, I had no beef with the writer, nor he with me, and we continue to get along just fine, thank you.
I’ve found that the people who rage at the misuse of Shakespeare are the ones who tend to overuse his prose. They also tend to believe that no one who disagrees with them are mentally qualified to even think about Shakespeare much less write it down. Oh, that we could have endowed Shakespeare with eternal life. The wonderful tragic plays he could have written on the subject of socialism.
Show where I have "abused Shakespeare." (While we're at it, I didn't rage at the semi-literates who misused Shakespeare.) Oh, I get it -- you just make it up, as you go.
What this all boils down to is that your mind is not capable of the higher thought process that is mandatory to understand where boortz is headed with his article. Therefore you wrap your mind around much smaller pre-packaged theories like socialism. Don’t feel bad though, your economic/social belief structure also substitutes as a religion. You see, you get two for the low price of one.
Please disprove the following comment.
Socialism does not create wealth, it consumes it.
My proof of the above statement can be seen through history and current conditions. (ex. Sweden or country in Europe)
Your post has nothing to do with me. You project your rage and inadequacies onto me. Get a life, or some Prozac, or a lover. In any event, "higher thought processes" are not an option for you.
You managed to drop Neal Boortz's and Shakespeare's names into the same post; hopefully, that will get you through the night. Your entire post is the equivalent of yelling, "Yo mama!" There's no "there" there.
Well, you have a keyboard and an Internet hookup, but they are all you have.
One night, I decided to shout back at some drunken louts. I do that about once a year. Were I to make a habit of it, I too would be a moron. So, you may flame away, if you like, but I will ignore you. Because I have a life, and a lover, and don't need Prozac.
Excellent. My version of that? SOCIALISM ALWAYS FAILS.
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