The radio message came at 22:01:44.9 Martian time: “The Community-Organizer-in-Chief has left the Washington DC Bureau of Breadlines and has fled to his Martha’s Vineyard compound.”
It was to be expected. The People’s Economy had turned on him. Unfed jobless (and tattooed) masses were walking the streets looting, robbing and killing for food. Washington, the center for The People’s Economy was no longer safe. But, we felt safe in our star-ship Gorforit. That is, Friedrich and I felt safe. My name is Milton.
You should know that there were many Capitalists in The People’s America when the Hope and Change Desolation began ten years ago. But, since that time, there is now only a small remnant left.
Back then we were called the “Free-Market-eers.” As such, we were constantly booed and jeered by The People’s Media. Flash mobs of union workers, guided by The People’s Media, attacked us. And though we were peace-keeping people, many of us were battered and some lost their lives. At one point it became so bad that corporate jet owners were being hung openly on the Mall, right in front of Lincoln Memorial.
How did this all begin? A Progressive candidate (The Candidate) won the presidential election in 2008. This newly elected president began to stir up class warfare among the people. He incited people to turn against each other, neighbor against neighbor, because of money. The People’s Media joined in.
In 2011 a “Lean Forward” campaign was launched by the People’s Media. Soon, the slothful, the dimwitted and the envious began to call themselves “The Forward Thinkers” or the “Lean-Forward Thinkers” – commonly known as the “LFT”. Their numbers, mostly union workers and unemployed college graduates with useless degrees, grew rapidly.
The People’s Media which had once campaigned for The Candidate in 2008, now campaigned for the Lean-Forward group. The campaign encouraged these marauders to take from the rich (those who had a job and some income) and to give to the “under-privileged” – those who saw what others had and wanted the same things.
From the Oval office the president, via regular People’s Media broadcasts, told the citizens that government was the best mechanism to handle society’s problems. So, with the help ‘elected’ representatives he began to take away the people’s money through taxation. People were no longer able to donate to charities or to directly help their neighbor. Every dollar was excised from the people for the people in The People’s Economy.
The People’s Media, rousing the animal passions of the LFT members, encouraged demonstrations to take place against Free-Marketeer businesses. Soon, though, the demonstrations were replaced with random looting and pillaging of stores. Strife increased between merchant and customer, neighbors and friends.
Our nations’ economy, once strong and vibrant because of free-market exchange, was now subject to the whims of recalcitrant, angry mobs and inept tyrannical leadership. It quickly deteriorated until our present time.
So, a plan was decided at our last Capitalist conclave held in a secret hiding place near Mount Rushmore. Two of us would go to Mars and begin a free market economy on a new planet. Both Friedrich and I volunteered to go. We were the oldest in the group. If something happened we were both prepared to die.
We had the star-ship Goforit but not the fuel. The People’s Economy rationed both fuel and food. So, we had to put our heads together to find a solution. Now, we had done similar things like this before so we were not overly concerned but time was running out.
There was no IPO for this venture, no influx of cash. The US dollar had folded. Instead, we had to learn to create fuel out of gold bullion. And, as it turned out, a small amount of this fuel would take us all the way to Mars. Once there we could also use it to barter with the Martians. They have no gold on Mars but they do have good underground living quarters for the two of us. We could set up shop very quickly. In fact, it was the Martians who had offered to help us. They would benefit from us. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship, something no longer found in The People’s America.
We all believed, the Free-Market-eers, that is, that there would be defectors from the People’s Economy but we didn’t know when. Things were getting nasty in The People’s America. So we decided to plan ahead and get ready for the influx of homeless and hungry. We had to start somewhere new. Somewhere that wouldn’t be affected by The People’s Media.
It seemed to us that Mars was the best option since there was a significant time delay for any radio signal to reach that planet. And better yet, The People’s Media Broadcasts would easily get lost within the noise of space radiation and our own Sun’s solar flares. “Bingo,” I said when I heard this.
*****
“Milton”, Friedrich spoke glancing out Goforit’s small window at the silent Martian orb, “soon you and I will be able to start our booming life again, but this time, on the Red Planet!”
Milton replied, “A laissez-faire world at last. To Mars or bust, my friend, to Mars or bust.”
© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved
Cindy Wity 
Coat Check
October 10, 2011 Leave a comment
Social justice. The very words conjure up radical emotions towards the inequality of means. The response by those guided by such vacuous and subjective words is almost always “We have to do something to make things right, to make things fair.” So off they go in the direction of collectivism and socialism seeking fairness. To them these sociopolitical ideologies offer fairness and a fairness which must be won at any cost. But as the bumper sticker says, “Social Justice is neither.” And, it certainly is not fair. If it is anything it is manifested envy, pure and simple.
The story of Fairness and his brothers Envy, Ungrateful and Solipsism is four thousand years old. It is the story of Joseph being given a coat.
Recapping the Old Testament story from Genesis: Jacob and Rachel had a son named Joseph. Joseph was the youngest of Jacob’s eleven sons born in the service of Laban. The twelfth son, Benjamin, was born later in Canaan. Joseph’s father Jacob favored Joseph and gave him a special coat as a gift; as a result, he was envied by his brothers, who saw the special coat as an indication that Joseph would assume family leadership. His brothers’ suspicion grew when Joseph told them of his two dreams (Genesis 37:11) in which all the brothers bowed down to him. The envy of the brothers may also have stemmed from the fact that Joseph was the son of Rachel, Jacob’s first love.
The narrative tells that his brothers plotted against Joseph when he was 17, and would have killed him had not the eldest brother Reuben, who, even though had the most to lose if Joseph ascended to a family leadership role, interposed. He persuaded them instead to throw Joseph into a pit and secretly planned to rescue him later. However, while Reuben was absent, the others planned to sell him to a company of Ismaelite merchants. When the passing Midianites arrived, the brothers dragged Joseph up and sold him to the merchants for 20 pieces of silver. The brothers then dipped Joseph’s coat in goat blood and showed it to their father, saying that Joseph had been torn apart by wild beasts…
Popular social psychology suggests that a father figure should give a fair share to his children in order to not hurt the child’s id or ego or self-esteem, what have you. The same thinking would blame the parent for discriminating with his favor. This thinking would continue to say that Jacob was unfair to Joseph’s brothers and that the family was dysfunctional at best. Popular psychology would not hold Joseph’s brothers accountable for their actions. Popular psychology would blame the father and the dysfunction around the brothers.
The brother’s, of course, looked at what they didn’t get from their father and became obsessed with Joseph’s position of favor in their father’s eyes. And though each of them knew the largesse of their father for many more years than the youngest sibling Joseph they didn’t regard this of any value. Instead they collectively chose to obsess about what they viewed as Joseph’s privileged life. Well, you know where that led – to the slavery of Joseph, the loss of fellowship with their brother and the father’s loss of a son – all for the bottom line of greed and envy, the progenitors of social justice and fairness. Their “self-righteous” ends justified their means. This is moral relativism.
The Bible clearly records the brother’s envy and doesn’t paint it over with popular psychology. Sadly, populist social envy or class warfare with its “picking winners and losers” rhetoric (e.g., in terms of wealth, hedge fund manager-bad, Oprah Winfrey-good) has even infiltrated the church with its social gospel sermons.
What should have happened: Joseph’s brothers should have rejoiced with their brother over his recent gift. They should have been happy for him and congratulated him. Instead, they saw what they didn’t have and became ‘coated’ with envy green. This brings me full circle back to the terms “social justice” and “fairness”. Both of these terms are full of themselves and nothing else except to be further defined as “a loss to someone else”. “Fairness” in the hands of the envious is a deadly business. And, wolfish human nature doesn’t change under the sheepskin cloak of wishful altruism.
BTW: The Hebrew origin of the name Joseph means “God will add” or “May Yahweh add”.
*****
Joseph was later able to feed and house his brothers during a seven-year famine. You will have to read the rest of the story (basically the second half of the book of Genesis) to find out how God used Joseph in spite of the social engineers who sought to rid their lives of unfairness and a brother with it.
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Filed under Christianity, Conservatism, conservative, Culture, Economics, essay, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary Tagged with COLLECTIVISM, fairness, politics, social gospel, social justice, socialism