A new-monied 'Liberal Aristocracy' has risen to replace the old-monied 'Limousine Liberal', writes Victor Davis Hanson in an insightful piece.
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.
Hanson makes a damning case of arrogant hypocrisy against Al Gore, Barack Obama, Warren Buffett, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, John Kerry, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, George Soros, the Hollywood crowd, and the Fannie Mae operators, Franklin Raines, James Johnson, and Jamie Gorelick:
The problem is not just that none of the three did anything to ensure
Fannie Mae’s viability, or at least to justify the millions that they
took out, but also that none of them had a reputable record of banking
expertise to justify their being hired in the first place. In short,
there is just too much big money — and temptation — for even the most
liberal class warrior not to cash in on his ample government contacts
and influence.
All these paradoxes pose existential questions: Are the elite architects
of high taxes and big government the self-interested and conniving who
found the path to the good life through cynically embracing such ideas
(ask Franklin Raines or Al Gore), or were they so rich to begin with as
to be unaffected by the ramifications of their ideology — or both?
Read his full article, "
The New Liberal Aristocracy."
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