Rhetorical hyperbole? Perhaps. Yet,
when I view the historic sweep of political philosophy, it is not
difficult to come up with this transitive equation.
Why People Hate the French
Revolution
When
I first ran across this, I could not understand. Did they not throw
off the yoke of bondage and become a free people? Then I knew: the
French people exchanged one type of tyranny (monarchy, which was
relatively benign) for another one (tyranny of the mob, which was
much more deadly, to the tune of 40,000 lives). Worse, their
principle was:
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
The problem was the middle word:
“equality”, which was meant literally. So, if one gentleman had 2
suits of good clothing and his neighbor had none, it was his duty to
give him one.
And Then Came Marx
It was his idea to take this one step
further: take the economic continuity of society, chop it up into
small pieces, and set them against each other in political (class)
struggle. All these are examples: bourgeoisie and the proletariat;
rich and poor; factory owners and workers; haves and haves not; petty bourgeoisie;
middle class. It still influences contemporary politics: economic
quintiles; the 1% and the people.
Jonathan Gruber, MIT
Being one of the architects of
Obamacare, we find his interesting justification of same on the Real
Clear Politics website:
The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who've been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return.
In isolation, this is an astonishing
viewpoint, but not when viewed in light of the previous 2 paragraphs.
Transitive Property
(Google it)
So,
here you go:
Robespierre
= Marx = Obama.
OK,
deep breath.
Barkeep,
another Lite Beer if you please.
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