Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Burning a Hole in Your Pocket

When I was younger, and had managed to finagle a few bucks into my pocket by selling quarts of wild raspberrys I had picked myself, or by shoveling peoples walks and driveways in the winter, my Dad would ask me, when I wanted to spend that money, if it was burning a hole in my pocket.  Of course, the money was never burning a hole in my pocket, but the money was mine, I had earned it myself, and no one was taking it away from me for the “common good.”

godless, at Gene Expression, has read Matthew Iglesias’s comments regarding Sullivan and Healy’s responses to Hillary’s confession and call for government organized stealing.  The post ends this way.

"The question is this: would you rather give $100 to the government to (hopefully) spend on your behalf...or would you rather spend it *yourself*?

But even this frame is too generous, because it makes the act of giving $100 out to be a sacrifice. The empirical fact, though, is that liberals don’t really believe in sacrifice. They believe in robbery. If liberals REALLY believed in sacrifice, they’d have staged a unilateral repeal of the Bush tax cut. There’s a box on the federal income tax form that you can check to send the money back to the government. [1]

Did you check that box, Matt?

(crickets...)

Right. Didn’t think so. What passes for altruism is really the desire to spend *other people’s money* in the way you see fit. In order to appeal to people’s worst sentiments, you call those other people “the rich” and imply that they don’t deserve their money and/or they’ve looted it from “the poor” (= favored leftist group). Bottom line: class warfare is 50% envy, 50% avarice...and 0% altruism."

The post is titled “The leftist mask slips… “

Posted by John Venlet on 06/30 at 02:54 AM
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