The last mayor of New York City may have been a fool who took it upon himself to outlaw diet sodas above a certain quantity.
But the new mayor of New York City is a class warrior.
Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, put it this way:
“[Mr. de Blasio] is on the side of the poor and the marginalized, which is good, but he took every opportunity to jab [in his inaugural address] at those who are not poor and don’t live on the margins.”
Actually, Noonan contradicts herself. She says that being “on the side” of the poor and marginalized is a “good thing.” But why is it a “good thing” to be on either “side” if you reject the idea of class warfare, as Republicans such as Noonan claim to do?
This is why it’s impossible to fight socialism in America. It’s not that socialism is right, good or true. It’s because the most prominent and articulate opponents of socialism that we have, such as Noonan, aren’t even defending freedom, capitalism and individual rights. And they probably think they are.
Psychologically, what gives politicians like de Blasio (and Obama) power is the smallest and worst within human nature: pettiness and ignorance.
A petty or ignorant person who has less will look at a person who has more and think, “That person has more than I do. That makes this person bad.”
No thought is given as to whether the person honestly earned this greater wealth, or not. No thought is given to how this person having more is somehow an attack on you personally.
Psychotherapeutically, a rational response to this pettiness is, “How does this person having more harm me? How am I worse off because this person has more? Why is any of this even my business?”
These are precisely the kinds of questions a Barack Obama, a Mayor de Blasio or any of the other class warriors who dominate our government never want anyone to consider. Their careers rise or fall on whether large numbers of people fester in bitterness, anger and a sense of revenge fueled by a desire to destroy any remnants of a free market, private-property based capitalist system.
The great irony of class warfare is that people who engage in it think they’re helping themselves. They think that by morally condemning “the rich” they’re somehow helping themselves. “I just voted for Obama. I showed them,” is what they feel. But does anything change? No, not unless you count more government bureaucracy, economic stagnation and disasters like Obamacare as positive change.
But what such voters really suffer from is pathological envy. Their elected leaders, for their own reasons, foster and stoke that envy and pettiness.
If there’s such a thing as psychological sickness, this is it.
If you resent people who have a lot of money, then class warfare is the last thing you should support. If money is what you want, then you had better support an economy where private property and totally free enterprise are permitted. Without such an economy, there will be no wealth creation. You’re at the mercy of government monopolies and political favors, rather than a profit-driven marketplace where companies, product manufacturers and service providers are at your beck and call, competing for your dollars every day of your life.
If those who don’t have are to declare war on those who do have, where will this leave us?
How does someone else’s’ success—or even good fortune—harm you? How does harming another for being well off add to, or advance, your own life in any way?
Good luck with Mayor de Blasio, New York City.
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