(Excerpt from here)
I have never known envy in my life. Somehow the sight of greater wealth on the part of others has never lead me to desire to exchange their lives for mine. Nor, especially, have I ever felt ill will toward those who are rich. On the contrary, I have been very pleased at the existence of the rich. And there are some good reasons for my pleasure with them, even if I can hardly even think myself in their shoes.
For one, the rich remind me that if I wanted to aspire to be one of them, I would have a decent chance at it. I know some rich people and some of these started nearly as low on the economic ladder as I did. But they wanted to be well off and found a way to do this while also gaining satisfaction from their work. I know some people who are millionaires, a few who probably have a billion or so, and in each case I know that the way movies or sitcoms or best sitcoms pulp novels depict them is hopelessly inaccurate. None of these folks is mean or greedy or amoral, quite the opposite. I know that if I had wanted to concentrate my energies on securing wealth and great prosperity-e.g., by means of expertise in finance or corporate management-I could have given that a decent shot, with not too bad a chance at success.
Another reason I welcome the existence of the rich in our society-near enough to the lives of my family and friends to witness what their lives are like-is that without them we and millions of others would scarcely have a chance for occasional luxury, a taste of the finer aspects of nourishment, entertainment, decoration, art and culture in general.
Who but the rich sustain good restaurants? Who but the rich make fine porcelain or jazz clubs or beautiful rugs or fancy furniture, not to mention stunning architecture and enthralling theater possible? I cannot afford to support artists, musicians, actors, great chefs, and the other people who create and produce some of the marvelous features of our culture, nor can my equally middle level and poor income earning friends. But once in a blue moon we all manage to go to a great French restaurant, an art gallery, a neighborhood where fashionable estates are located, or a shopping center that features exquisite merchandise.
I find it disgusting how the envious among us would rather destroy the rich than witness the difference between poverty, modest wealth, and the great wealth of the rich. I find it especially loathsome how so many American politicians, who ought to know better- and some of whom are indeed among the richest people in the country- gladly capitalize on this envy and persist on using the rich as a scapegoat of their own unwillingness to do the right thing.
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ELSEWHERE
Great to hear that Christianity guides Blair: "British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he believes God will judge him on his decision to go to war with Iraq. In an interview with chat show host Michael Parkinson to be broadcast on Britain's ITV1 television, Mr Blair says he made policy decisions according to his conscience, which is guided by his Christian faith. Asked about joining the US-led invasion in March 2003, he said: "That decision has to be taken and has to be lived with, and in the end there is a judgment that - well, I think if you have faith about these things then you realise that judgment is made by other people". Pushed to clarify what he meant, Mr Blair, a devout Christian, replied: "If you believe in God, it's made by God as well".
A surprising article from the elite Smith College of Massachusetts: "This week, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, issued a series of controversial statements regarding the state of the United Nations. He said that the organization is riddled with "bad management, by sex and corruption and by a growing lack of confidence in its ability to carry out missions." He could not be more correct.... It is common for liberals to unquestioningly recognize the causes of the United Nations as being good, simply because this is an organization founded upon principles of basic human rights and peace, two cornerstones of idealized liberalism. However, the United Nations is more than deserving of skepticism, particularly given its track record for the past several years. The actions of the United Nations have become increasingly ineffective and often corrupt in recent years, and Bolton has been progressively more vocal on these points."
"Doing" the dog: "I have long said, that if we change the meaning of marriage, it will be the beginning of an unstoppable landslide as the Left continues to push for more and more sickening lifestyles to be ratified as normal..... In the state of Massachusetts, where the leftists have already altered the meaning of marriage to include people of the same sex, they are considering legislation (HB19) that will make it legal to have sex with animals".
Young Muslim Americans becoming a threat: "In an article published in the London Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Dr. Muhriz Al-Husseini, director of the Center for Dialogue and Research and editor of the U.S.-published newspaper Al-Minassa Al-'Arabiya, warns that religious extremism and ignorance are spreading among the young generation of Muslims in the U.S."
A bit amusing but highly commendable!: "Cricket is not a sport one normally associates with China, but the world's most populous nation has embarked on an ambitious plan to change that. China's sporting mandarins have dubbed it "the noble game", and with communist single-mindedness have plotted a five-year plan to become a cricketing nation. The Asian Cricket Council's media officer, Shahriar Khan, said China's interest in cricket was simple. It realised that the biggest game in Asia is cricket - a game that China's major rival in the region, India, happens to be rather good at. With China increasingly making its presence felt in the region, learning to play cricket makes good sense. "China very much wants to engage with Asia via this game""
There are some good pictures here of New York's recent "Support Denmark" rally.
In "The end of Fukuyama" Christopher Hitchens gives the rather idiotic Francis Fukuyama a good blast. One excerpt about the Islamists: "In the face of this global threat and its recent and alarmingly rapid projection onto European and American soil, Fukuyama proposes beefing up "the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like." You might expect a citation from a Pew poll at about this point, and, don't worry, he doesn't leave that out, either. But I have to admire that vague and lazy closing phrase "and the like." Hegel meets Karen Hughes! Perhaps some genius at the CIA is even now preparing to subsidize a new version of Encounter magazine to be circulated among the intellectuals of Kashmir or Kabul or Kazakhstan? Not such a bad idea in itself, perhaps, but no substitute for having a battle-hardened army that has actually learned from fighting in the terrible conditions of rogue-state/failed-state combat. Is anyone so blind as to suppose that we shall not be needing this hard-bought experience in the future?"
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).
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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
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