Posted on 02/14/2017 5:19:37 AM PST by RoosterRedux
The spark that ignites populist movements is not so much disparities in wealth and status (they are not always French Revolution or Bolshevik-like class-driven attempts to grab power) as rank hypocrisies: Elites condescendingly prescribe nostrums to hoi polloi, but always on the dual premise that those who are dictating will be immune from the ramifications of their own sometimes burdensome edicts, and those who are dictated to are supposedly too dense to know what is good for them. (Think Steven Chu, the former energy secretary, who either did not commute by car or had a short drive to work, while he hoped that gas prices for the nation’s clueless drivers might climb to European levels of $9–$10 a gallon.)
We’ve already seen Trump’s anti-doctrinaire approach to jobs, trade, and the economy: his notion that the free-market in reality can often became a rhetorical construct, not a two-way street when it comes to trading blocs. Free-market purists might see the outsourcing of jobs and unbridled importation of foreign subsidized products as a way to toughen up the competitiveness of American companies and trim off their fat; but people who take this view are usually the ones who benefit from globalism and who are in little danger of having their own job downsized, eliminated, or shipped overseas. Few of us often ask whether full professors are very productive, whether op-ed writers are industrious and cogent, whether Hollywood actors are worth millions per picture, whether politicians are improving the nation’s lot, or whether journalists are disinterested and competent. Instead, we assume that because they all have well-compensated jobs, they are qualified, essential, and invaluable to the economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
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Perhaps the greatest understatement of the year!
Throughout history, those who have achieved wealth, “status” and “power” are often psychologically insecure. They fear a great reckoning when they will be held accountable for their own personal shortcomings or in many instances the immoral, illegal actions that made fortunes and lofty positions possible. Public posturing and displays of “concern” and “kind acts” are simply measures that the elites use to placate their fears and hopefully avoid that terrible reckoning.
All that said, these periodic uprisings in consensual societies are needed to disabuse an insular governing class of its sense of entitlement and privilege.
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(Note: Trump’s biggest obstacle in deporting illegal aliens who have violated the law will be the Left’s pushback that driving under the influence, assuming fake identities, filing false Social Security numbers, and lying on government affidavits about social-service eligibility are serious crimes only for citizens, but not necessarily for illegal immigrants, or at least not serious enough to warrant their deportation.)
I don’t think there is an answer to that question. The Democrats have been systematically devaluing the citizenship which is our birthright.Democrats like to claim that the US is a European invasion of America; well, if so the experience of the indigenous tribes certainly tells us what not to let anyone else do to us.
Excellent article. The full article has very good points.
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