I have been writing about how the Progressive Movement is really about Neo-Feudalism for many years now. Their polices are turning America into a caste system. People who go to Ivy League schools get positions of power. They use class warfare for political benefits, yet they are very wealthy. It’s a hypocritical system that Victor Davis Hanson calls out.
Limousine liberal” is an old American term used against those who inherited lots of money and then became “traitors to their class” by embracing populist politics.
The Roosevelts and Kennedys enjoyed the high life quite apart from the multitude that they championed. And they were exempt, by virtue of their inherited riches and armies of accountants and attorneys, from the higher taxes they advocated for others. Few worried about how their original fortunes were made long ago, or that as lifelong government officials they had their needs met by the state. Most were relieved instead that as very rich people they wanted less rich people to pay their fair share to help the poor.
But the new liberal aristocracy is far less discreet than the old. Most are self-made multimillionaires who acquired their money through government service, finance, law, investment, or marriage. If the old-money liberals lived it up tastefully within their walled family compounds, the new liberal aristocrats are unashamed about living openly in a manner quite at odds with their professed populist ideology.
[….]
During the 2008 financial meltdown, Goldman Sachs was a recipient of federal cash bailouts. Recently its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, wrote an op-ed in which he said, “I believe that tax increases, especially for the wealthiest, are appropriate.” Why, then, would Goldman Sachs rush to pay out $65 million in restricted stock bonuses to its own corporate elite in time to beat the new higher tax rates that began on January 1, 2013?
[….]
To be cool is now not just to be rich, but to appear caring. Hollywood still seeks hundreds of millions in tax breaks unavailable to small businesses without shame because it is so manifestly compassionate. Occupy Wall Street does not camp out in Beverly Hills or Malibu, although the likes of Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio make more per year than do most Wall Street fat cats. The public wonders why Hollywood is so liberal — is it the Bohemian culture surrounding the arts? The natural creative temperament of actors? The Lotus-land surf and sun of the southern-California beach milieu? Perhaps. But penance plays a role as well. For the overpaid and pampered Hollywood movie star, calling for raising taxes, banning guns, ending global warming, and legalizing gay marriage means never having to feel too bad about living on the beach and making, under our capitalist system, more money in a month than do many Americans in a lifetime.
I, for the life of me, do not understand why the Republicans do not turn class warfare back at the Democrats. It’s a winning issue they can exploit to divide Democrat voters. The GOP should position itself as the party of the middle class, small susinesses and main street. They should tailor their economic policies to benefit their constituents and destroy the Neo-Feudal system. But the GOP has no imagination and is stubborn.
America is rapidly becoming a caste based feudal state. The Progressive Global Elites live good, while the rest of us struggle to get by. The economic Golden Era of America, 1945-2000, is rapidly becoming a memory. The opening is there for the Republicans to take advantage of Progressive hypocrisy. If they do not, then eventually a New Center-Right Party will emerge.
Tags: Neo-Feudalism, Victor Davis Hanson
