Lonely Occupiers Of FAIRville

Mrs. Dalai and I have just returned from what I call our Midwest Odyssey, having spent two weeks on the road visiting children, old friends, old haunts, and one of several "Redneck Paradises" that can be found in the Deep South. We put about 3,000 miles on the gas-guzzling SUV, and had a great time in the process.

Perhaps the most wonderful invention in the automotive realm since the automatic transmission is satellite radio. No longer must we fiddle with the dial, looking for the next station as we meander about the country. Since both of us came of age, music-wise, anyway, in the 1970's, we generally keep the radio tuned to XM 7, which is the 70's channel. On occasion, I switch over to Fox News, channel 114 if you needed to know. More on that later.

One of my favorite Oldies programs is the rebroadcast of Casey Kasem's American Top 40, which is plucked from the same week of some random year in 1970's.

As we were passing through some rural parts of Ohio, "Lonely Boy" by Andrew Gold came up on Casey's playlist. As I listened, it occurred to me that this melancholy ballad might just be the theme song for some of those to the Left of Center.

Check out the lyrics, and then we'll return to the discussion...

He was born on a summer day, 1951
And with a slap of a hand, he had landed as an only son
His mother and father said what a lovely boy
We'll teach him what we learned, ah yes just what we learned
We'll dress him up warmly and we'll send him to school
It'll teach him how to fight to be nobody's fool

Oh, what a lonely boy
Oh, what a lonely boy
Oh, what a lonely boy

In the summer of '53 his mother brought him a sister
And she told him we must attend to her needs
She's so much younger than you
Well he ran down the hall and he cried
Oh how could his parents have lied
When they said he was an only son
He thought he was the only one

Oh, what a lonely boy
Oh, what a lonely boy
Oh, what a lonely boy

Goodbye mama, goodbye to you
Goodbye papa, I'm pushing on through

He left home on a winter day 1969
And he hoped to find all the love
He had lost in that earlier time
Well his sister grew up and she married a man
He gave her a son, ah yes a lovely son
They dressed him up warmly, they sent him to school
It taught him how to fight to be nobody's fool

Oh, what a lonely boy
Oh, what a lonely boy
Oh, what a lonely boy

Mr. Gold's proxy was quite content when his Mommy and Daddy could devote ALL of their attention to him. The selfish little turd shit brat fellow becomes angry and hysterical when he finds out he isn't the "only one" in the world that is worthy of stuff, and he leaves home at the first opportunity, looking for someone else to coddle him as he thinks he deserves. Good luck, pal. Apparently the nephew is going to go through a similar crisis should Mr. Gold's sister and brother-in-law be such horrid parents as to have another child beyond their own second-coming.

The Lonely Brat exhibits an infantile approach to life, one which we see today among many of our friends to the Left of center. Providing a new "Mommy" to curb childish fears and wants seems to be the goal of the Liberal. Daren Jonescu, writing for American Thinker, notes:

One who falls short of even this baseline confidence in the face of life's vicissitudes displays the cowardice of a man who simply never grew up. It is to respond to adult challenges in the manner of the four year old who loses sight of his mother in the market: "I can't face this strange world alone!"

A free society, as the great political thinkers and statesmen have always contended, depends on the virtue of its citizens. Nowhere is this more urgently true and evident than in the once-freest of societies, the United States. Life in a free republic demands that minimum basic confidence -- the individualist's self-reliance -- as a prerequisite for maintaining social order and civility. The so-called "rugged individualism," which has fallen into disrepute and parody thanks to generations of collectivist education, is nothing more than the simple willingness to face life's obstacles, trials, and genuine hardships like a grown-up, relying on one's own resources, and on what can be earned through one's own effort and voluntary interaction.

A free society cannot survive the death of such self-reliance.As this basic, quotidian form of courage wanes, the petulant, self-congratulatory nouveau cowards who have been raised to take over society's reins fall into doing what the excessively fearful always do. They overcompensate in the direction of "security." They refuse to face even adult humanity's most unavoidable challenges -- supporting yourself, planning for potential misfortunes, taking care of your own -- without a "safety net" purchased at the price of their freedom. They sell their liberty -- and their neighbors' -- for a child's idea of security: that is, security provided by someone else, by a mother surrogate, by "society," i.e., by government...

This coward's quest for a safety net that can only be achieved through coercion is the antithesis of good citizenship. It means, in principle, that everyone is seeking to sacrifice everyone else to himself. The mutual respect of the citizens of a free society evaporates into mutual envy and resentment; in short, into an entitlement society...

Today's ever-expanding "entitlement mentality" is literally shamelessness elevated to the status of a moral code. Progressivism has created an entire euphemistic vocabulary to justify the unabashed demand that others sacrifice their liberty to save me from my childish fear of facing life as an adult. "Positive rights," "social justice," "redistributive justice," "creative individuality," and so on, are all part of the leftist lexicon of cowardice.

You need something? Don't be afraid, mother government will make someone give it to you.

You're unable to get something? Don't be afraid, mother government will find someone who has too much of it, and force him to share it with you.

Not all Liberals want their Mommies. Some want to play at BEING Mommies to these big babies, and use everyone else's resources to accomplish this. From my favorite psychiatrist, Dr. Sanity:

Everyone is, of course, familiar with the "selfish narcissist"--this is the type of narcissism we all know and don't love much. Indeed, selfishness and a preoccupation with one's own needs and desires at the expense of everyone else's is what is classically associated with the concept of narcissism.

But there is in society today a disguised type of narcissism that masks itself in a selfless, compassionate concern for others, yet is really all about fueling the need to feel superior and to exert control and power over others.

This second type of narcissism is more subtle, but equally (if not more so in human history) destructive and dysfunctional as the first. It derives from an aggressive idealism/utopianism which is pursued despite the misery it causes in other people's lives; and despite the dead bodies it leaves behind. This malignant narcissism is always justified because it is "for your own good"; or, "for the common good"; or, "to make the world and people better."

Along with the selfish narcissist (whose overt preoccupation is "ME, ME, ME!" and using others for their own aggrandizement and reward), the selfless narcissist ("LOOK AT HOW WONDERFUL I AM FOR MAKING YOU BETTER!") does not see other people as distinct individuals with needs and desires of their own, but only as fodder for the expression of aome IDEAL; or as pawns to achieve the utopian fantasies of their own ideology. And because they think they are the "superior" ones who know what is best for all, if they happen to benefit financially, socially and culturally--all the better! They deserve it for their extraordinary compassion and good works.

But, but, but...shouldn't we help people who need help? Yes, of course we should. This is charity, and it is a commandment for most religions to participate. But as I have quoted in my last ethical opus, Ethically Right, the great philosopher, physician, and scholar Moses Maimonides says that:

The greatest level, above which there is no greater, is to support a fellow Jew by endowing him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or finding employment for him, in order to strengthen his hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others...

(Keep in mind, this was written when there were too few Jews to help the rest of the world, let alone all of the poor among the Jews!) This is a restatement of the same old Chinese proverb about teaching a man to fish so he will eat for the rest of his life, rather than giving him a fish that will sustain him for only a day or so.

But how did the Left get from charity to wealth-redistribution? The answer is ENVY. Dr. Sanity again:

People who specialize in ENVY usually don't really want the good things the other person has as much as they want to insure that the other person doesn't have them or that they don't get to keep them.

If they do desire someone else's possessions, that desire comes in a distant second to the desire to destroy the good that others have.

ENVY is the underlying emotion behind the Marxist trope, "from each according to his ability; to each according to his need". The "enlightened" and morally bankrupt among us have always believed that economic self-interest means simply voting yourself a share of the money earned by others.

Such individuals wouldn't know how to create wealth if their lives depended on it; that's why they seek power over others--they see it as the only way they can survive in the real world. Since they cannot admit that painful truth to themselves, they will seize other people's wealth with one hand, while signing the political bills that make it impossible to create the wealth on which they themselves depend.

The truth is that they deeply hate those who create the wealth they want to steal, and seek to destroy them--even though at some level, they understand they cannot survive without them.

This applies both to those who would take from us directly, and those who would redistribute what is ours to others, the latter indulging in selfless narcissism as Dr. Sanity explains. As often as not, the petulant children/Mommies attempt to hide behind the meme of FAIRNESS. Lonely Brat thought it UNFAIR that his baby sister took his parent's attention away from him. The Left's (including a certain Leader of the Free World) bleating about taxation is little more than a plaintive, infantile wail..."It's not FAIR that the "wealthy" don't pay their FAIR SHARE!"  In other words, "It's not FAIR that you have more than others, and we won't rest until we take it away!" And to do so, the Left employs taxation.

A Fox News discussion I chanced upon while motoring through Indiana put it in perspective. Sadly, I can't find the transcript online, but the FAIR and balanced piece included pundits from both sides. The Liberal talking head kept badgering on and on and on about "the wealthy" not paying their "FAIR share" because their overall rates were lower. The conservative correspondent tried to make her understand that the discrepancy was because many "wealthy" people are receiving income from dividends and such, earned from monies upon which they have ALREADY paid tax. This went right over her head, and she continued to bleat about FAIRNESS. Sadly, the fellow to the Right of Center didn't sandbag her with her own argument...if taxation is to be FAIR, then everyone should be paying the SAME percentage of income, either with a FAIR Tax (sales tax, which I think highly of, by the way) or a flat tax. But I'll guarantee that if this had been mentioned, it would have been shot down in a blaze of fury. You see, FAIRNESS really isn't what the Left wants at all. Look at how taxation is distributed today:

"You got the top 2 percent paying almost half of all income taxes. Is that fair?" Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Kyl was referring to official figures showing how much various income levels earn of the nation's total income compared to how much they pay of the nation's total income taxes.

IRS figures show the top 1 percent of earners take home 16.9 percent of the nation's total income, but pay 36.7 percent of the nation's income taxes.

The top 5 percent take home a little more than 31 percent of total income but pay almost 59 percent of all income taxes.

And the top 10 percent earn just over 43 percent of the total income but pay more than 70 percent of all income taxes.

"How are you going to make it fairer? If they pay 75 percent?," asks Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute. "If they pay 90 percent? If they pay all of it? Will that finally be fair?"

As it now stands, 90 percent of all Americans pay only 30 percent of all income taxes.

Yes, indeed, that sure sounds FAIR, doesn't it? Right. Oh, and for what it's worth, the proverbial One Percenter's lost a lot of ground income-wise between 2007 and 2009, while the lowest earners actually gained, as reported on (of all places) CNBC.com:

I wouldn't think that's FAIR at all. FAIR would be if everyone's income rose. Capitalism is not a zero-sum game, as the Left would like to portray it. It's far more FAIR than that. Everyone has the opportunity to work to their potential and possibly hit it big, joining the ranks of the wealthy, or at least bettering their position, and knowing they have done so through their own efforts, and not from the confiscated charity of others.

The FAIRNESS scam is just that. It temporarily satisfies the pangs of the infantile and the selfless narcissist, at a very high cost. Leftists/Liberals/Democrats (overlapping populations) may pay lip service to FAIRNESS, but what they are really after is power. Destructive, Totalitarian power over everyone and everything. Work with them and you will get your FAIR SHARE. As long as you are useful, anyway.

Lonely Brat was born on a Summer day, 1951. He would therefore be 61 years old now. Let's hope he reconciled with his parents and got a job. Although I have no doubt he is anxiously awaiting his chance to collect Social Security and sign up with Medicare. Sigh.