The New Liberal Aristocracy ... Victor Davis Hanson

NRO ^ | 8 Jan 2013 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Rummyfan]

...Modern elitists are past masters at preaching one thing and practicing another. ...

Limousine liberal” is an old American term used against those who inherited lots of money and then became “traitors to their class” by embracing populist politics.

The Roosevelts and Kennedys enjoyed the high life quite apart from the multitude that they championed. And they were exempt, by virtue of their inherited riches and armies of accountants and attorneys, from the higher taxes they advocated for others. Few worried about how their original fortunes were made long ago, or that as lifelong government officials they had their needs met by the state. Most were relieved instead that as very rich people they wanted less rich people to pay their fair share to help the poor.

But the new liberal aristocracy is far less discreet than the old. Most are self-made multimillionaires who acquired their money through government service, finance, law, investment, or marriage. If the old-money liberals lived it up tastefully within their walled family compounds, the new liberal aristocrats are unashamed about living openly in a manner quite at odds with their professed populist ideology.

[Rummyfan]

Take former vice president Al Gore. He has made a fortune of nearly a billion dollars warning against global warming — supposedly shrinking glaciers, declining polar-bear populations, and the like — while simultaneously offering timely remedies from his own green corporations, all reminiscent of the methodology of Roman millionaire Marcus Licinius Crassus, who profited from fires and putting them out. Now Nobel laureate Gore has sold his interest in a failing cable-television station for about $100 million — and to the anti-American Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the fossil-fuel-rich royal family of Qatar. Gore rushed to close the deal before the first of the year to avoid the very capital-gains tax hikes that he has advocated for others less well off. That’s a liberal trifecta: enhancing a fossil-fuel consortium, attempting to beat tax hikes, and empowering an anti-American and anti-Semitic media conglomerate run by an authoritarian despot — all from a former vice president of the United States who crusades for ending our reliance on fossil fuels and for raising taxes on the wealthy.

[MestaMachine]

When did sharks grow ears? Or is this a recent mutation because of gorebull warming?

[kingu]

As the only standard liberals embrace are double standards, there’s nothing outlandish about this at all. Al Gore’s family money came from oil, which he championed against, travelling the world, creating a massive ‘carbon footprint’, a concept he championed. He built a network, and then subsequently ran it into the ground through poor management practices and equally poor programming choices.

And now he’s taken that network and sold it to anti-homosexual religious extremists oil dealers who believe that women are still property. Who still have debtor prisons, and who lock up illegal immigrants and hold them for ransom. And who advocate higher taxes while intending on paying none of them themselves.

All hail the double standard. I’m sure Al Gore will use all that money to continue the fight to put more money into his pocket and prevent others from attaining all the riches he enjoys in life. Because on this farm, all animals are equal. Just some animals are more equal than others...

[livius]

Are the elite architects of high taxes and big government the self-interested and conniving who found the path to the good life through cynically embracing such ideas (ask Franklin Raines or Al Gore), or were they so rich to begin with as to be unaffected by the ramifications of their ideology — or both?

I think there's three levels of wealthy grifters: the government insiders (Gore, Raines, Gorelick, etc.), completely unqualified for any position but holding high and influential ones, who are good at one thing only, that being self promotion; the mega rich who have a strategy that uses government to actually increase or protect their wealth; and the wealthy media twits who flack for them.

The first make their silly public penance statements about polar bears and other irrelevancies mainly as a way of diverting the public from what they are really doing, while the second group quietly works behind the scenes to manipulate things to their advantage, and the third group, mostly brain dead movie stars who feel guilty about suddenly being so rich, jump up and down not only as a public display of virtue but also to curry favor with the first two groups.

[SueRae]

The rules we make are for the “Little people”, not for us.

Typical, preachifying hypocrites.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

"No tax please, we're progressives."

He didn't mention one of their most admired icons, the Queen of Mean "Only the little people pay taxes" Leona Helmsley the New York City hotel magnate.