In America, where food has been historically inexpensive and even people on Welfare have cable television and a car, the contrasts between rich and poor haven’t been great enough to satisfy many radicals.
Allen Levite, in his book Guilt, Blame and Politics, discusses political guilt in wealthy people, from Siddartha/Buddha to Plato, the son of wealth whose Republic rejected private property. One could also add Bernadine Dohrn’s Weathermen associate Diana Oughton, daughter of wealth who died in a bomb-making attempt in a Greenwich Village townhouse in New York.
Many wealthy young people, seeing the differences between their circumstances and the truly poor, have chosen to help – or actually embrace their situation, i.e., live as the poor. For many, this meant charity work and job creation for the poor. But for some, this has meant advocating an overthrow of societal differences — that is, advocating a Utopian society — generally of a socialist type where we would all be “equal” – theoretically.
In America, where food has been, until recently, fairly cheap and even people on Welfare have cable television and a car, the contrasts between rich and poor haven’t been great enough to satisfy many radicals.
For years, when the price of gas in the US was around $2 a gallon and $5 a gallon in Europe (significantly impacted by taxes), political environmentalists advocated $5 a gallon gas in America. Why? In part to conserve oil, but the obvious byproduct of further impoverishing many was not a major consideration for them. Once again, I ask “Why?”
With increased poverty, not only could the political environmentalists blame the capitalists/Republicans, but they could – with major help from the liberal media and such “educators” as William Ayers — induce guilt in American school children for having “too much” of the earth’s resources. Need I also mention Al Gore and his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, shown in so many schools, some requiring parental attendance at the screening?
In short, the poorer the poor are, the more the leftist environmentalists believe wealthy and middle class youth can be made to feel guilty about their “wasteful” American Way of Life. And they hope and believe that more of those youths can be radicalized against their parents’ way of life.
The English version of the Communist anthem, The Internationalle, begins with, “Arise you prisons of starvation.” Well, in order to want to make people arise in a revolt, it helps to get them to first starve. That’s the real hidden value for the Left of ethanol subsidies driving up the cost of food. It’s the New Age version of Pol Pot.
One of the best ways to induce an artificial sense of guilt and privilege is to keep young people in school, without a break, into their late twenties. Having never shouldered real responsibility other than a term paper, they instinctively know they are leading a charmed life that is missing something. This isn’t the universal experience of all college students, but it definitely is the cultural environment they live in. I want to mention a minor example or two from my college days, not as a personal claim to doing great hard work, but as an illustration I know well.
In college, I was in the federal Work-Study Program and was employed at various odd jobs between classes. I once put on hip boots and hosed down the floors of large dog cages for the Pharmacology Dept. I also was a photographer for the Physics Dept., mixing chemicals in a dark room and once climbing to the top of a room housing a cyclotron to take its picture. On returning to class the same day as these and other tasks, I often felt that I had crossed a divide from one world to another. And, mostly felt more challenged – and at times, more worthy – for the work I did.
Tags: al gore, American, byproduct, cable television, capitalists, charity work, contrasts, diana oughton, educator, environmentalists, gallon gas, greenwich village, job, job creation, levite, liberal media, movie an inconvenient truth, parental attendance, siddartha, societal differences, utopian society, weathermen, william ayers
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