DougJ at Balloon Juice:
...I’m not willing to play along with the delusion what we live in an awesome meritocracy where all success is earned. And I’m even less comfortable with the obvious corollary that the poor and unemployed deserve to be poor and unemployed.
I think this goes to the heart of the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to believe that our system is imperfect, that the rich aren’t so deserving that we shouldn’t tax them, that the poor aren’t so undeserving that we shouldn’t give them a decent safety net, and that a fancy position may be the result of nepotism, system-gaming, or luck. Conservatives tend to believe either that our system is fair and societal status equals virtue or that our system used to be fair before the soshulists broke it (depending, of course, on whether Republicans or Democrats control the federal government at the time). Intellectual conservatives may not believe this but believe that it’s important the masses do believe it, in order to maintain traditional societal values.
I am Frank Chow and I approved this message
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