Some days ago, Morgan had a post that suggested that beneath the rhetoric of justice, much of the Left’s praxis is actually a politics of resentment. In the ensuing discussion, a post I wrote some time back resurfaced, and has in turn been linked by several other folks (Thank you, by the way.)
Well, apparently the subject is on more minds than Morgan’s or mine on the eve of the election. This leads us to Jonah Goldberg’s weekly newsletter, The Goldberg File, and to today’s installment in particular. He takes the old saw about “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” as his text, and observes that this approach (already flawed — why is comfort a bad thing, worthy of affliction?) becomes absolutely repugnant when joined with the power of government, as the politics of envy. (And of course, one of the ugliest things about envy is how easily hatred of someone’s good and masquerade as righteous outrage about a good the envious claims as “undeserved.” The 1%, anyone?)
And he essentially concludes his discussion with the QotD:
The politics of envy can never be truly conquered because envy is a sin, and a sin that can never be eradicated, only held at bay.
[…] The progressive fallacy that with the right expertise, the right data, the right people with maximum power, we can make this an infinitely just society is of course a manifestation of the desire to immanentize the eschaton. But more practically, it’s a smugness. A smugness that comes from a priestly class that has endowed itself with the right and privilege to adjudicate who deserves his success and who does not. I say to hell with the smug and the politics of envy they exploit. To hell with them all.
So, please: Go forth and afflict the comfortable — the comfortably smug.
Sounds good to me.
Professor Mondo 