The Destructive Politics of Envy

Most religions are an effort to control our baser instincts.  Let’s face it Human are not very nice animals.  Humans lie, cheat, steal, and kill.  Our ancestors understood that life would be better if people would just be a whole lot less human, so most religions develop some sort of moral code.  With Christians it takes the form of the ten commandments.  For Millennia it was a guide by which Christians tried to live by.  And then along came Karl Marx.  Marx had a real problem with the tenth and final commandment.

10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

(Exodus 20:17)

According to Marx you have a right to your neighbor’s stuff but oddly your neighbor does not have a right to his own property.  Karl Marx was a horrible human being.  He never worked a day in his life, neglected his family, and lived like a leach off his benefactors (primarily Friedrich Engels).  In short Karl Marx was the first modern politician.

For thousands of years envy was a sin.  Marx made it a virtue.  Unfortunately, the idea that it is a sin to keep what you worked for and a virtue to take what you did not earn didn’t stay confined to Marxism.  It has leaked over to mainstream politics.  We sanitize it though.  We don’t call it Marxism we call it paying your fair share.  Taking someone else’s property is now ok if enough people are willing to do it.

“The politics of envy is the politics of this commandment: ‘Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.’ It is the politics of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”

Gary North

It isn’t hard to get the majority to want things that do not belong to them.  The hard part is convincing them to look after themselves after years of dependency.  It is the kind of thing that destroys empires.

Four decades later, the dictator Sulla attempted to end grain distribution by repealing the law, but this experiment backfired and the system had to be restored.

The Romans had successfully created a dependent class who lived off state handouts. Rome discovered that the system had a life of its own and was irreversible without risking mass insurrection.

That is the problem with “free” stuff from government.  It is not free and quickly gets viewed as a right.  The more a government gives the more they become expected to give.

Citing the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and their National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada report, Gibson invented a new right to housing and stated the government must provide it.

“Adequate alternative housing, with all necessary amenities, must be provided to all residents prior to any eviction,” he wrote.

“In my view, the time has come that homelessness should be recognized as an analogous ground for the purposes of Sec. 15 of the Charter,” Gibson writes.

This liberal lunatic, who should have never become a judge because he believes his opinions should be law, is referring to this clause in the Canadian charter of rights.

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

So, we can’t be equal until everyone has a house.  But how does being given a house make you equal to the person who must provide you with that house?  Having a right to the labor of others used to be called slavery.  In Canada it is now a human right.  Which works well for everyone except the people who are now slaves.

Envy is a very slippery slope.  It is a destructive genie that once released will consume everything.  I am not terribly religious, but I do think we should pay the 10^th commandment more heed.  We really need to make envy, and the sloth underpinning it, sins again.