Blaming the Left?

“Socialism,” my dad said, laying heavy on the first syllable. By tone alone, he could have been saying “hemorrhoids” or “foot fungus.”

I don’t know why exactly the financial services sector bailout failed in the House. I suspect, however, that we are reaping Buckley, Jr.’s idea harvest. I am hesitant to invoke the imagery of food cultivation because you can’t eat mere words, no matter how frothy and bitter they may be. Yet, nonetheless, there are Americans with jobs who have drunk this smoothie.

Socialism. Liberalism. Contrasted of course with: Freedom, Liberty.

It shocks me that a man can walk through life oblivious to the fact that each person operates as a component of a society. This readily ascertained fact does nothing to impinge on liberty, except insofar as it extends the laws of physics (laws of nature?) into the social realm.

The freedom to swing my arm ends where your nose begins.

No one’s liberty is of greater value than anyone else’s.

For better or for worse, our duly elected representatives in two branches of government abdicated their duties to the people of America by retrenching the oversight of the mortgage industry and the investment houses. You can blame Cox at the SEC for sleeping at the wheel, but we have to blame ourselves, too, for reelecting a regime hellbent on destroying America and Iraq at the same time.

Maybe the House had it right, but for all the wrong reasons. Maybe we shouldn’t be bailing out the fat cats – but because we deserve the punishment for failing to do so.