Capitalism – ILANA MERCER

Burn-The-Wealth Bernie Sanders And His Partial Enslavement System

Ilana Mercer — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 19:18:23 +0000

The top one-tenth of one percent in this country own almost 90 percent … as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent,” roared the independent senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, at the first Democratic primary debate of 2015, in Las Vegas.

Standing for president, Sanders implies, somehow, that there exists in nature a delimited income pie from which a disproportionate amount of wealth is handed over to, or seized, by a class of evil doers: “the rich.”

Clueless Sanders omits the process by which that wealth magically materializes.

Wealth doesn’t exist pristine in nature, until individuals—deserving as much, if not more, of the pope’s love as the poor—apply their smarts, labor and savings to transform raw materials into marketable things that satisfy human desire and need.

But not if one listens to the socialist from Vermont as, sadly, too many Americans did.

You ask, why was it not just as discouraging when even more Americans tuned in to watch the first and second Republican Primary Debates, 24 and 23 million respectively?

For this reason: While Republicans are never to be equated with freedom, smaller government, or anything remotely libertarian; the voting public equates a vote for a Republican with a vote for less government and more freedom from the state. Therefore, an interest in and a support for a Democrat is often a reliable proxy for the measure of statism in the land.

Over fifteen million viewers tuned in to watch two washed-out, walking clichés of the hard left (Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders) join two other political phantoms no one had heard of before (Martin O’Malley and Lincoln Chafee), to malign and bring down their betters: the “highly productive and provident one percent that provides the standard of living of a largely ignorant and ungrateful ninety-nine percent,” in the words of professor George Reisman, author of the seminal “Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.”

Countering Sanders’ pie-in-the-sky economics, Reisman notes that, “The wealth of the 1 percent is the overwhelming source of the supply of goods that people buy and of the demand for labor that people sell.” The wealth of the rich is not to be found in a huge pile of goods from which only capitalists benefit, but in the means of production that benefit us all.

When Hillary Clinton “cogitates” about capitalism, she “thinks,” by her own admission at the same forum, “about small businesses.”

How does this cunning—never clever—woman imagine big, “bad” business began? In a free market, small and “medium-sized businesses” grow to become bigger and bigger through the only pure, fair democracy in existence: the consumer’s vote of confidence; his hard-earned dollar.

By logical extension, self-made rich people were once less rich, even poor. Why make them the object of derision once they get wealthier, create more enterprises, employ more people, and provide a good life for their own families and workers—a standard of living these parties were without until Evil Rich Man In-The-Making arrived on the scene?

Here’s why: Since left-liberals struggle to think logically, they treat “The Rich” as a reified, rigid state-of-being.

Liberals, the true evildoers, are unable to understand that “rich” is a process, a work in progress. Wealth creation is a righteous process, at that, provided it is achieved in voluntary cooperation: by offering people consumer goods they want, buildings to live in, resorts to visit, all sanssubsidies or special grants of government privilege.

Jews like Sanders have forgotten that riches are a reward for work well done. In the Jewish faith’s infinite wisdom, wealth justly acquired is a sign of God’s blessing.

Democratic socialism, under which we already labor today in the USA, turns on Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Sanders’ idea, shared by others on stage, is the unnatural notion that the government is entitled to seize a portion of your income; that it has a lien on your life and on what you acquire in the course of sustaining that life.

Be it Hillary or burn-the-wealth Bernie—both agree that it is up to them, the all-knowing central planners, to determine how much of your life ought to be theirs to squander.

Capitalism, conversely, is not a system! It is the uniquely human actions that flow from a moral right to make a living freely and peacefully, absent coercion; by relying on the sanctity of private property upheld by the rule of law.

The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. Its logic is based on the sanctity of private property rights, beginning with the individual’s title in his or her own body. Capitalism’s starting point is with the most important liberty of all:

Individual self-ownership.

The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time, courtesy of the political class—is really a spontaneously synchronized order, comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts performed by individuals to sustain life.

So which is the philosophy of a free people? Capitalism, “the unknown ideal” (for nowhere is it practiced), or democratic socialism, that partial enslavement of a “system” espoused by Sanders and Clinton?

Tell me, too, how is it that Bernie Sanders is not laughed off the podium in 21st century America? Why are he and the harridan Hillary able to porcelainize and romanticize an ideology, democratic socialism, that’ll lead to further nationalization of a good deal of the means of production? How is it that, as a Gallup poll revealed, only “half the country would not put a socialist in the White House”?

This puzzle was explained succinctly and profoundly by another great economist. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Milton Friedman put his finger on the backdrop to the growth of collectivism:

“The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

Marxism, socialism and its offshoot democratic socialism engage the gut, or the uterus, in the case of Hillary Clinton.

Free-market capitalism engages the rational mind.

To his brilliantly stated aphorism, Dr. Friedman forgot to add this:

Individualism and the economy of freedom is also the philosophy of justice.

©ILANA Mercer
WND, Quarterly Review, Praag.org,
The Libertarian Alliance, The Unz Review
October 16, 2015

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Crazy Like A Fox

Ilana Mercer — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

From Cleveland, Ohio, Obama issued forth this week with renewed vigor. Media plaudits notwithstanding, the president’s words were either inane or simply insane.

An instance of “insane” was Obama’s professed fealty to a “lean and efficient government.” The trillion-dollar deficit man declared: “I believe government should leave people free to make the choices they think are best for themselves and their families, so long as those choices don’t hurt others.”

On the sly side was the president’s confession that he was propelled to run for president Evidently, Oprah’s backing and naked ambition had nothing to do with Barack Obama’s selfless ride to the nation’s rescue; it was the philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism, RIP. Not for nothing did Ayn Rand call capitalism “the unknown ideal.” This ideal has not been practiced in the US for a very long time; it is a fable that George W. Bush was an unfettered capitalist.

“Laissez-faire capitalism,” explains economist George Reisman, “has a definite meaning, which is totally ignored, contradicted, and downright defiled” by the likes of the president and his predecessor.

It “ is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual’s rights against the initiation of physical force. This protection applies to the initiation of physical force by other private individuals, by foreign governments, and, most importantly, by the individual’s own government. This last is accomplished by such means as a written constitution, a system of division of powers and checks and balances, an explicit bill of rights, and eternal vigilance on the part of a citizenry with the right to keep and bear arms. Under laissez-faire capitalism, the state consists essentially just of a police force, law courts, and a national defense establishment, which deter and combat those who initiate the use of physical force. And nothing more.”

Under laissez-faire capitalism, the government plays an extremely limited role. The individual is free to dispose of this own income as he wishes ─ all of it. Laissez-faire capitalism brooks no “corporate and individual income taxes, inheritance and capital gains taxes, nor social security and Medicare taxes.” A revenue tariff is all that is required to support this limited authority.

“There are presently fifteen federal cabinet departments,” reminds Prof. Reisman, “nine of which exist for the very purpose of respectively interfering with housing, transportation, healthcare, education, energy, mining, agriculture, labor, and commerce, and virtually all of which nowadays routinely ride roughshod over one or more important aspects of the economic freedom of the individual.” Were these departments not extant during the Bush years? What about the alphabet soup of federal agencies and commissions, “the most well-known of which include, besides the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the FBI and CIA, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA”? Were the unelected mandarins who man these massive bureaucracies remiss in managing our lives during the Bush era? With the exception of a compact FBI, none of these departments would persist under laissez-faire capitalism.

“And, of course, to all of this must be added the further massive apparatus of laws, departments, agencies, and regulations at the state and local level. Under laissez-faire capitalism, these too for the most part would be completely abolished and what remained would reflect the same kind of radical reductions in the size and scope of government activity as those carried out on the federal level.”

Obama’s people have added 2000 pages to the Federal Register. But during the years of Bush’s alleged buccaneering capitalism, there were still a “respectable” seventy-three thousand pages of government regulations. “Under laissez-faire capitalism,” writes Prof. Reisman, “there would be no Federal Register. The activities of the remaining government departments and their subdivisions would be controlled exclusively by duly enacted legislation, not the rule-making of unelected government officials.”

The president can claim superiority of spending in as much as his rule has gobbled up almost 64 of every 100 dollars of output, compared to Bush’s meager 40 out-of-100 dollars. But Bush branched out ─ growing government by embarking on globe-girdling wars, and fostering the million-man, submerged, secretive, security state apparatus. All told, confirms the Cato Institute, Bush’s spending rate was even higher than Lyndon Johnson’s.

Says Bruce Bartlett, author of Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy: “Right from the beginning George W. Bush made it clear that he was not a conservative in the Reagan mold. In a speech in Indianapolis on July 22, 1999, he called the idea that our problems would be better solved if government would just get out of the way a ‘destructive mindset.’ Government is ‘wasteful and grasping,’ Bush said, but ‘we must correct it, not disdain it.’”

Obama is delusional ─ although no more so than the authors of the many books whose principal point is to establish the president as America’s sole destroyer-in-chief. Bush was Barack’s Republican soulmate.

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Energy Independence Idiocy

Ilana Mercer — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

McCain has declared energy independence by 2025. Obama claims the same, when what he really wants is a “move away from an oil-based economy.” Since oil is the second most efficient, cheapest source of energy, Obama’s wish is your and my demise.

For ordinary folks, the biomass-based economy means life without the basics.

The charmed lives of Babs (Streisand) and Barack will not be disrupted. When the affluent relinquish their earthly possessions to return to nature, it is usually with the aid of sophisticated technology, and the option to be air-lifted to a hospital if the need arises. (Nor do the affluent dispose of their effluent with the aid of the earth-friendly Mother’s Compost Commode.”)

McCain and Obama, mind you, were of one mind, before the former got religion on drilling. Both men now bellyache incessantly about energy independence—a fantasy that has only grown more fantastic since the down-with-drilling House Democrats pushed through a worse than worthless energy bill.

According to Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the Bill will “block exploration of the Outer Continental Shelf, Alaska’s North Slope and the Inter-Mountain West; contains no nuclear energy or clean coal-to-liquids technology; … prevents the building of new refineries and includes $19 billion in energy tax hikes on American consumers, manufacturers and small businesses.”

There is something unenterprising and developmentally backward about a country that, as a matter of principle and policy, refuses to assuage its people’s needs by utilizing elements that lie inert in nature.

Most “resources” in nature are useless lumps of nothing. If not for man’s ingenuity, iron, aluminum, coal and oil would lie purposeless and pristine in the wildernesses; the matter and energy abundant on earth would come to naught. This unwillingness to harness a much-needed resource is contemptible. The ability to discover and transform natural resources into usable goods, and develop “resource-enhancing and sustaining technologies,” is, after all, unique to man.

At least to some men. Americans used to be the best at reaching for the sky; now one must look to China or Dubai’s skyline for the most impressive skyscrapers. And to Saudi Arabia for the best oil installations. The Saudis are good at—and have no qualms about—getting oil out of the ground. Their facilities showcase state-of-the-art equipment.

It’s not that America doesn’t have impressive companies primed for exploration. It does. Take Anadarko Petroleum; it employs some of the finest geologists and engineers. On one of the company’s many deep water rigs drilling goes on six miles down. Anadarko invests hundred of thousands of dollars daily launching remotely operated vehicles to explore the sea floor. By CNN’s telling, it has “global positioning systems and thrusters underneath the ship to keep it in place over the wellhead.” And “computerized lifts that pull pipe 270 feet at a time with nothing more than the flick of a wrist.”

America’s vilified oil companies are quite capable of taking care of business. All the same, the likes of Anadarko Petroleum can’t do what they do best because of overweening politicians, whose weenie constituents have empowered them (let’s be honest about it) to adopt the Green Brigades’ Red gospel.

America is loosing its edge thanks to the environmental ideologues—citizens and civil servants alike—that run and overrun it. Until the U.S. catches up, officials had better quit the idle, anti-trade talk.

The idea of trade is that everyone does what he is best and most efficient at, and indirectly exchanges (through money) the products of that labor for stuff others do better and cheaper. To aim for self-sufficiency is to aim for bankruptcy.

In addition to the highly specialized work he does, my time-deprived spouse changes the oil in his motorcar. Granted, the man is more than capable of doing this—and most things around the home. However, how viable is that? The time devoted to the oil change is time better spent doing more lucrative or creative work. (Like playing the guitar,” also the second greatest love of his life. Or so we hope)

The division of labor is the hallmark of efficiency and the condition for prosperity.

As our friend Bob Murphy puts it in the Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism: “It would be silly if experienced tailors insisted on growing their own food while farmers insisted on sewing their own clothes to ‘create employment opportunities’ for themselves.”

Trade, not democracy, is also the best antidote to war. The more economically intertwined countries are, the less likely they are to go to war. Boycott Iran less and barter with it more and it’s bound to tone down its belligerence.

“America now uses nearly 21 million barrels of oil a day,” 60 percent of which it must import. Energy independence is a foolish fetish on a good day—all the more so considering domestic oil production has been falling for 35 consecutive years.

So drill AND trade, baby, trade.

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Free TV

Ilana Mercer — Mon, 23 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Some time ago, a friend asked whether I’d like to organize a regular get-together devoted to political discussion, guests and all. Imagine this lovely lady’s surprise at my reply; I don’t quite think she was prepared for the intensity with which a political writer disavowed politics, but I can’t imagine doing anything worse with my spare time.

In fact, I seldom socialize because friends, bless them, insist on discussing politics with me. I’ve contemplated arriving at a social event with a list of URLs. Want to know what I think of the Iraq enterprise? Here’s a URL. You glow with schadenfreude at Martha Stewart’s misfortune. Here’s a URL. You think the praise-worthy principle of federalism gives a state court license to kill an imperfect, harmless human being? Here’s a URL. And so on.

Unless one strikes the proverbial Faustian deal and is paid to shill for one or the other gang in the duopoly, politics is nothing but a source of wretchedness. Dramatic perhaps, but I told my friend to equate politics with death; and the small sphere outside of it (good and bad) with life. I apply whatever energies and abilities I have to politics because I love life—it’s imperative to beat back a life-sapping force. The impetus behind “rolling back the modern Leviathan State and reclaiming civil society” is the rational individual’s quest to delay death and prolong life.

Preoccupation with death, however, is a bad thing. Which is why time with friends and family is best spent dwelling on life. And why time in front of the telly is best spent watching HGTV. Speaking of dramatic! I’ve lurched from life and death to Design on a Dime! Some segue into a shout-out for HGTV, my favorite TV channel!

Indeed, the themes woven into most TV programs with Howard Stern-like subtlety are assorted lies and irrationalities, and hence not life affirming.

Junk Science (Take your pick. The choices are many, from the multiple personality disorder falsehood, to the root-causes-of-terrorism rot.)
Gender junk (Woman is brawny, brainy, and beautiful; man is a buffoon. An 80-pound waif manages to wallop a 200-pound gangster with no punctures to the silicone sacks.)
Good Government must temper bad business
The canonization of kids and critters
Grotesque sex talk (Rescue Me alludes to some exotic practices with which I became familiar as an AIDS counselor in South Africa—or was it after Laura Bush’s comedy shtick? Not sure.)
General affirmation of slut and celebrity

I’ve never watched the West Wing (it elevates to sainthood the Soviets that violate my life—and yours). Most other TV series showcase the shift from acting to posing (modern American women, especially, can’t act, and are not required to), and the bankruptcy of scriptwriting. I watch CSI. It has a storyline. I particularly like the Miami offshoot for that rarity among TV’s harem of Hos: a Southern Belle. This collagen-lips apparition is a no-no.

I know I’ve likened Canadians to “the somnambulant, morbid, long-suffering zombies of Ingmar Bergman’s films” (remember: I spent “seven lean years” there). But they produce some good TV. Compare the acting (and the absence of bimbos) in Da Vinci’s Inquest with any American series and you’ll see what I mean.

Considering the options, I prefer to kick back with HGTV, where creative professionals make beautiful things for their clients. There’s no bureaucratic blackmail—bar the regulators behind the scenes, but even those can’t cramp capitalism’s style—only voluntary exchanges between willing participants.

Oh, the happy couples who find their ideal home on Suzanne Whang’s House Hunters. It goes without saying that Michael Payne does more for peace than any politician (also true of your average house dust mite). A decorating wizard with a devilish sense of humor and a way with the English language is Candice Olson of Divine Design. How soothing yet sensuous are words like, “Sumptuous,” “sleek,” “plush,” and “palette.” And how they contrast with the crassness of, “Spread freedom” “sacrifice” “serve” and “your money or your life.” Jane Lockhart, whose specialty is color theory and design, helps her clients “Get Color!” by assembling as inspiration “colorful spices from the orient, brilliant floral displays,” and food. Fabulous and … truly sensuous. Implicitly, HGTV affirms family and community.

I’m from the Middle-East and South-Africa, so my tastes are a little exotic. The plush Persian rug isn’t a harmonizing element, but a bold statement in the living room—a piece of art that marries intricately detailed, strong, tribal designs with superb city craftsmanship. A large, equally bold painting by an Israeli adorns one wall. (Originally from Kazakhstan, I’ve rechristened the artist Borat, for Sacha Baron Cohen’s creation.) But difference is okay on Free TV. Unlike the coercive class, the natural elites of HGTV work with—not against—their clients to help them create a haven away from … politics.

Free-Market News Network

May 23

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KAZAA VS. THE COPYRIGHT CARTEL

Ilana Mercer — Wed, 23 Jul 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Like any good trade union, the Recording Industry Association of America is wielding its government-granted powers to terrorize. The RIAA has so far secured 871 subpoenas against individual computer users suspected of sharing music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved daily. Sixty million people are estimated to use online file-sharing services and, presumably, to be at risk of violating copyright. By the looks of it, the RIAA wants to put more people through the courts than the failed and immoral Drug War has.

Rising fascism and the ease with which the courts are willing to compel business to suspend privacy commitments to clients is working in the RIAA’s favor. The group is seeking to subpoena Internet service providers like Verizon for the names of their alleged copyright-infringing clients. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has approved the sweep, and has instructed service providers to hand over client lists.

Targeting individual computer users is a departure from the RIAA’s previous tactic, which was to hold providers of the file-swapping service responsible for alleged copyright violation. The change flows from recent legal rulings. These are making it hard for the organization to target the software makers.

Peer-to-peer swapping is now facilitated with the aid of software that allows individual users to connect to each other directly, without the need for “a central point of management.” A court in the Netherlands, followed by a U.S. District Court, thus found that makers of the software such as Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster weren’t in violation of the law because they don’t host any lists or files of copyrighted material on their sites and thus have no control over how the software is used.

In this, Kazaa and its peers depart from Napster, their predecessor, which did store lists of copyrighted items on the site. Kazaa succinctly explains the works:

Peter downloads Kazaa Media Desktop and installs it onto his computer. Mary also has KMD installed on her computer. Peter uses KMD to search for a file he is looking for. KMD finds the file on Mary’s computer. Peter can now download the file directly from Mary.

Peter and Mary, however, have caused the protection racket that is the RIAA to rise up on its hind legs. The kids are said to be cutting into profits the industry believes it is owed. Never mind that the market for multimedia such as music videos and DVDs is growing in value, “global sales of recorded music fell 7 percent in 2002,” reports the Wall Street Journal. For this, the RIAA blames Peter and Mary and wants them to pay for the “losses.”

The socialistic calculation the RIAA has in mind bears no resemblance to the profits earned in a free market. To illustrate this, as well as the egregious infringement of real rights that arises when legal force is used in the protection of ideas, imagine you are a garment designer. You hope to sell 100 original shirts. A client buys a shirt, and, being a skilled seamstress, she knocks off 99 shirts for her friends. Since you believe you have a property right in the design or the configuration of the garment, you sue her for infringing those ‘rights,’ and depriving you of your alleged profit on 99 unsold shirts. Your notion that you have a property right in this intangible thing has caused you to seek to violate the very real liberty and property of the seamstress, whose only “crime” is to use your idea to fashion her own fabric /property in a similar shape.

The logic at work in the RIAA’s claim against individual swappers is not much different. What is being traded online is the legitimate CD property of the traders. I buy a CD. If our legal system honored property rights, then this purchase would entitle me to use the CD, my tangible possession, in any way I wish. If I want to use my CD burner, which I have not swiped, to burn a copy for a friend, the CD is mine to so do. If I want to make my CD available to a larger group of Kazaa-mediated recipients in exchange for their offerings, it’s my right and theirs to so do, except that the RIAA and the people it represents imagine they have a property right in every tune. It ought not to, but this state-granted monopoly gives the artist a right to dictate to me how I am to use my corporeal CD property.

The same central-planner’s understanding of profit that made you think the enterprising seamstress owes you for the 99 shirts you didn’t sell is at play here. Just as there is no way of knowing that, had they not received 99 shirts gratis, the seamstress’ friends would have purchased an original blouse from you, there is no way of knowing if, deprived of their right to transact online, and at roughly $18.00 a pop for a new release, online music swappers would be purchasing the industry’s overpriced CDs.

The billions of exchanges facilitated online originate with the property of the participants. Someone bought a CD, was given a CD, or burned a CD, and began the ball rolling on Kazaa, right? Had the people exchanging files online broken into a store and stolen the items they trade online, then there would be reason to apprehend them for theft.

To paraphrase libertarian writer James Ostrowski, the law, once again, has criminalized naturally lawful behavior by citizens while legalizing naturally criminal behavior by the state and its beneficiaries, to wit, the RIAA.

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MARTHA’S AS GOOD AS GOLD

Ilana Mercer — Wed, 16 Oct 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Writer Maralyn Lois Polak first caught my attention with her smarmy “Saint Martha, and the Whores in the Temple” column. Like many a media liberal, Ms. Polak proves incapable of advancing a substantive argument against Martha Stewart. Instead, she offers up a string of personal assaults, based on the peculiar symbolism Stewart has acquired in Ms. Polak’s mind. That she projects almost paranoid ideation on a woman she doesn’t know says everything about Polak and her ilk but very little about the victim of such riffs of outrage.

On the prowl for Martha, the liberal—and this includes neoconservatives, who howl for her head just as loudly—likes to set the scene by denouncing mammon. Ms. Polak self-righteously disavows money as “… more of an affliction, like genital herpes, something you worried would return uncontrollably, passed on to others through sweaty but dubious transactions you usually regretted later.” The problem is that Polak doesn’t understand the meaning and morality of money.

Money is first and foremost a medium of exchange. It arose naturally to replace a primitive barter economy. Once upon a time, Ms. Polak would have been forced to directly exchange her articles or books for anti-herpes medication. Finding someone who possessed herpes-calming meds, but at the same time wanted a dose of epistolary clap, may have proven tough.

As people went about making a living by exchanging things—for that is all the maligned free market is—they came to realize that if they didn’t facilitate indirect exchanges, many would starve. Money is simply a way of replacing a direct-barter economy with an ability to make indirect exchanges. That Martha has more money than Ms. Polak or myself simply means that many more people are willing to trade their cash for a Martha than for a Polak or an Ilana.

Like Hank Rearden in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Martha can say this: “I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own efforts, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with—the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.”

The morality of her abundance I don’t doubt, although I’m not entirely sure what Martha manufactures. Whatever it is, leave it to Ms. Polak to discover the inherently corrupting power of the product. Consumer sovereignty? Free will? “No such thing,” the grim socialist will bay. People aren’t rational beings who make decisions based on preferences. Rather, they are marionettes in the hands of Monster Marthas. Writes Polak: “Martha Stewart helps keep millions and millions of women down by giving them more and more meaningless, trivial busywork to preoccupy them from achieving real major changes in their already over-scheduled lives, let alone lasting accomplishments like … composing sonatas…”

An aside on sirens and sonatas is in order. Feminists have, admittedly, done an impressive job of jamming cyberspace with online catalogues of obscure women composers. I hate to break it to the faithful: Real history as opposed to “Herstory”—how I laughed when I first heard this feminist sobriquet—tells of a stark lack of aptitude for composition among women, which, incidentally, way preceded the appearance of The Martha.

No one cares how many ancient Greek poems Sister Sappho set to music. Good music always was—and remains—male. My daughter, far more forgiving than her mother is on matters musical, would take Bach or Bon Jovi anytime over what she calls the “Tuna Tour”: The simpering and untalented Sarah McLachlan or the Jewel-type bimbo with a bedroom whimper for a voice. (Relatively skilled women like Stevie Nicks or Alana Myles are a rarity.)

I got distracted (hmmm … Bon Jovi). Back to the lacunae in Polak’s thinking.

To Ms. Polak, Martha’s knack for giving people a touch of the patrician for prices the peasantry can afford is an oppressing plot, for which almost all women have fallen, except for, drum roll, please: Ms. Polak. But if the Marxist notion of Martha’s power to subjugate is valid, why is it, then, that Polak and her confreres have managed to see through and avoid the mesmerizing tug? Polak’s answer is in the mold of her previous reasoning: She is smart. Evidently, Ms. Polak has always possessed the smarts to see that Martha is a “manipulative business woman,” who preys on women’s need to be perfect. Other women are just not that astute.

At the root of this mindless meandering is the profound contempt the liberal has for the masses and their right to buy a tea cozy without being declared non compos mentis.

WorldNetDaily.com

October 16, 2002

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