From Mere Rhetoric

This video was first posted by Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch in 2007.

It has lost none of its relevance or bite.

We have a proposal to make that is sure to be greeted with universal approbation.

We start from the principle – not quite universally conceded – that the state should not be an agent for the redistribution of wealth. Which is to say, government should not be the provider of welfare.

But, we acknowledge, there will always be some people who cannot provide for themselves and have no one else willing and able to provide for them.

Then we ask: is there some institution other than the state that could manage their support?

We propose that the churches be charged with the responsibility. It would be splendidly consistent with their declared principles. They could collect money from the tens of millions of people who believe they have a duty to care for their less fortunate neighbors and compatriots.

As giving voluntarily is truer to the social consciences and religious precepts of these good people than having it extracted from them by government, with what delight they’ll seize the opportunity!

With the ample funds that will pour in from liberals, progressives, socialists and Christians, the churches will establish shelters for the homeless and clinics for the sick; feed, clothe and equip the helplessly dependent. They’ll be able to do it lavishly. Material want will be abolished.

They’ll take great pride and pleasure in doing it. Have they not been preaching charity for millennia? There they are, well established, thousands of them; organized, tax-exempted, self-dedicated to moral ends. This is clearly the use they must be put to. They’re a perfect fit for it.

Once the churches have permanently taken over all welfare provision, government can shrink, taxes come down, the defense budget be enlarged, and everyone will be happy.

We don’t usually write about silly books and movies, but we have an excuse for taking notice of Eat, Pray, Love. The thorough slating the film gets in the review we are about to quote endorses our contempt for women – as opposed to adults of both sexes (see our post Of adults and women, September 4, 2010).

The English film critic Lindy West writes:

Eat, Pray, Love opened almost a month ago over here, but I avoided seeing it until yesterday, even though seeing it is literally my job. Denial is powerful. I’m just so bored of ladies and their emotions doing stuff – and, worse, the assumption that those three elements alone (ladies, emotions, stuff) are enough to constitute entertainment for other ladies. But my desire to never, ever watch Julia Roberts slurp erotic spaghetti and chant peacefully in Sanskrit was overruled by my desire to not get fired. FINE. To the cinema I went.

Here is what Eat, Pray, Love is about: Julia Roberts … is a successful travel writer with a house, a million bucks, and a handsome husband. Naturally, she is also paralysed by abject sorrow: “I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life. So why didn’t I see myself in any of it?” She dumps the spouse and embarks on a year-long tripartite journey to find her stupid privileged self.

First up is “eat,” which takes place in Rome. …

The second stop is “pray,” in which Julia Roberts travels to très-exotic India to live at an Ashram and complain a bunch. … She ultimately concludes that she needs to “forgive herself”– for what I have no idea. She has literally done nothing but go on vacation and eat spaghetti. I cannot figure out what is so wrong with this woman’s life.

The third and final chapter is “love,” which brings Julia Roberts to the EVEN EXOTICKER shores of Bali. In Bali, she becomes best friends with a wacky toothless medicine man, meditates some more, gets a bladder infection, and meets her dream man – a fitting finale to a movie all about how you don’t need a husband to be happy as long as you have spaghetti. (Pro tip: It turns out you do!!!) At one point, Javier Bardem runs her over with his car. That part was okay. …

The unexamined privilege, the idealisation/exotification of all places east, the canned spirituality, the sensual goddamn spaghetti – it’s all so focus-group-tested and Oprah-approved and self-perpetuating and embarrassing that I just want to go and hide in an Ashram somewhere and suck on figs forever.

We hope she doesn’t do that. She’s an adult, and the world needs all the adults it can get.

Caveat: It seems Lindy West may have an attitude towards “privilege”  – which is to say wealth – which we don’t share. She seems to think it should be “examined” as if it were in itself morally questionable. We are glad people can get rich by means of work, luck, and brains in a free society, so on that point we would differ. But we still like her review.

RedState reports this, and ludicrous as it is, it seems to be true:

Alvin Greene, the current Democrat candidate for Senator in South Carolina … recently announced in an interview with The Guardian his plan to bring jobs to …  South Carolina. His candidacy itself is schadenfreude-licious, but he somehow managed to make it even more so, with his grand job creation idea, as follows:

Said Greene: “Another thing we can do for jobs is make toys of me, especially for the holidays. Little dolls. Me. Like maybe little action dolls. Me in an army uniform, air force uniform, and me in my suit. They can make toys of me and my vehicle, especially for the holidays and Christmas for the kids. That’s something that would create jobs. So you see I think out of the box like that. It’s not something a typical person would bring up. That’s something that could happen, that makes sense. It’s not a joke.”

Apparently Alvin Greene is facing felony charges, so perhaps by “thinking out of the box” he means thinking outside of prison.

We’ve always known that narcissism is the main unclean energy source of Democrats, but it’s nice to come across so candid an admission of it.

Alvin Greene, Democratic candidate for the Senate