Working Poor Unready to Revolt - Page 3

Article comments

Subscribe to comment RSS

• 1 - Dave Nalle

  Aug 05, 2008 at 6:33 pm

  Joel, I know you keep a copy of Das Kapital by your bedside. So is it really necessary to reiterate one of the few things Marx got right, that "religion is the opiate of the masses"?
  
  That said, I apreciate that you've compiled all of this data for us. Pity you missed the actual significance of it. What you seem not to see here is that the 'working poor' are smarter than you or the rest of the socialist left think they are. They are optimistic specifically because they know that they can't count on a government handout and that they have the opportunity to get a second job or work more hours or look for better work and advance themselves without depending on government, and that makes them feel responsible and in control and capable of achieving the Amnerican dream FOR THEMSELVES.
  
  They don't want a handout or the false hope that socialism offers. It is being responsible for their own welfare and having the opportunities which a free labor market offers them which GIVES them the hope that they have. When will this get through to you socialists?
  
  Dave

• 2 - Dan Miller

  Aug 05, 2008 at 8:21 pm

  While doing intensive academic research at an esteemed University, I happened upon the Original Declaration of Independence. It is quoted in part below:

  We hold these truths to be more or less self-evident, that all people are created sort of equal, that they are endowed by their Government with ambiguously Defined and Easily Revoked Privileges, that among these are Life, some degree of inoffensive Liberty and the pursuit of such Happiness as may be authorized.--That to create and to secure these Revocable Privileges, Governments are instituted among People, deriving their immense powers from the indifferent consent of the governed as shaped by the Media, bloggers, Church Groups and other Interest Groups --That whenever any Government becomes injurious of these ends, it is the Nature of the People to complain, and to vote into power another group of fungible politicians, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to such Politicians shall seem most likely to meet with the approbation of their peers and unlikely to require excessive thought, effort or sacrifice. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, except when it seems cool to do so; and accordingly at least some experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to gripe, while evils are inconvenient, than to right themselves by changing the Party in Power. But when a long train of unaccountable bureaucrats and similarly unaccountable elected officials, pursuing invariably divergent and inconsistent but amorphous Objects, and the Media hypnotizes them to do so, it is their Privilege, it is their Pleasure, to seek an omniscient Messiah from whom to seek Miracles. Such has been the naive impatient endurance of these People; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to change the party in Power. Maybe. Sort of. Or, then again, Maybe not.

  
  
  Dan
  

• 3 - Clavos

  Aug 05, 2008 at 8:27 pm

  LOL!
  
  Very funny (and dead on), Dan.

• 4 - bliffle

  Aug 06, 2008 at 12:22 am

  It appears that the majority of US citizens have been dissuaded from active participation in political matters. Perhaps they are too busy defending what they have to struggle for more. Perhaps they would rather watch Paris Hilton on TV in hopes of spying some cleavage, if only to fume at such scandals.
  
  It's not for lack of opinions. they all seem to have opinions. For those few of us who have actually marched around the neighborhood with a clipboard and petition and pen for signatures, we always get stopped by long diatribes from homeowners as they unburden themselves of bottled up resentments. But the ones who talk the most usually sign the least, so you have to be skilled at getting out. Also, if you hope to make a sale you have to figure out a ploy. I like to use money: "if they build that new $3million subdivision across the street EVERYONEs property taxes will go up. Pretty soon that little 500k house of yours and mine will be afflicted by the same tax scale as for the Mcmansion. And the damn things will blight your sightlines and clog the roads for good measure!"
  
  But there's a difference these days. People are too cynical or discouraged to seek improvement through political activism. A right not exercised is a right soon lost. Maybe, maybe not. Seems like inevitably the Powers That Be overplay their hand and there's an outraged uprising. We can only hope.
  

• 5 - Clavos

  Aug 06, 2008 at 12:30 am

  God (or whomever) bless the starry-eyed idealists; the Seekers of Truth, the Believers in the Inherent Goodness of Man, The Meaning of Life, the Benevolence of the State.
  
  Without them, what would we do for amusement?

• 6 - suppose

  Aug 06, 2008 at 1:58 pm

  Mr. Hirschorn:
  
  Karl Marx would be most proud of you.