PrintApril 25, 2011
The Politics of Envy
During the next 18 months, we can look for liberals to pull out all the stops on their hate campaign. The target is "the rich."
To generate hate, liberals will use an old device: envy.
Those who have not been as successful will be urged to hate the people who have worked hard to get an education, get a job, and master the job skills that get them promotion and raises. They have saved their earnings and provided for their retirement.
It will be difficult to hate them individually, because they are not the same people from year to year. More than half of those in the "rich" category are not there the following year.
Nevertheless, liberals will portray their hard earned wealth as ill-gotten gains, taken from some mysterious pile of wealth that in a world where "economic justice" reigned would be divided equally among all Americans. (See: Communism, 1917-1989.)
Barack Obama expressed this to Joe the Plumber as "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
They will say there are no jobs only because the wealthy don't want to create jobs. (Sheep who follow this line will not ask, "Why wouldn't businessmen want to make profits?" The shepherds count on that lack of critical thinking, which has been drilled subliminally into the sheep in government schools.)
With government debt at record levels and climbing, the nation's credit being downgraded and the economy still moribund, liberals insist everything is fine.
Obama ignores the recommendations of his own commission, and trashes the conservative plan put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan to trim $6 trillion in government spending.
Liberals are holding rallies around the country at which obscenities are shouted, insults are thrown about, and property is destroyed. The lapdog media ignore them and allege misconduct at Tea Party rallies, without being able to document any.
This is a must-win presidential election for liberals. Only a lame-duck liberal president can do the kind of things they want to do in the next four years. The hatred will be palpable.
For example:
"Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I've taken from this country... I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me, and I have no real obligation to future generations to make investments so they have a better future." Obama said this recently, purporting to explain the Republican point of view.
What it actually explained was why he never should have been elected to lead the executive branch of this republic.
Obama clearly believes the only help for the "less fortunate" is the federal government. But until 1932, the federal government did not indulge in charity, and yet the truly less fortunate were better off than now because of families and private charities, both of which liberals have worked to destroy.
Federal make-work jobs and conflicting policies helped eliminate many charitable efforts. But the federal help did not go to the truly needy. For example, poor people in the South got less aid than those in the West. Why? Because Franklin D. Roosevelt needed votes in the Western states and had a lock on the South.
Americans are the most generous people in the world, despite the stinginess of wealthy liberals such as Al Gore and John Kerry, and always have taken care of the poor, without regard to who they voted for in the previous election.
It is the fiscal irresponsibility of Obama and the other socialists that is harming the poor and future generations. The hatred is merely an indicator of their desperation to hold onto power.
Lloyd Brown is a retired editorial page editor and blogger.
