Fit For A Padded Room?

In reference to my first post today: The writing is indeed on the wall. I've lost my mind.

How can it be that I have descended to such a low place? How can it be that I have actually written a piece about – – WalMart?

For the first time since the beginning of Contratimes, I have contemplated deleting a post. Honestly, you couldn't entice me with a magic Zamboni that coats the streets with gold to care one whit about WalMart. But, there it is, an essay proving that I do care, that I am a man of intense contradictions, estranged from my own being.

If there is a theme to the political essays posted at this site, it is this: I despise criticisms that are unjust, unfair, or motivated by some hidden (or even known) bias or predeliction. I despise criticisms of the President that are based on fabrications of fact and Straw Man fallacies; as I hate them when talking about war, abortion, art, literature or Michael Moore (even though Mr. Moore is perhaps the most unfair critic I've ever read). And since I am of the conviction that most of the media are dominated in the West by critics of all things Right, the Leftist critics generally receive my ire.

WalMart is no doubt flawed. Is there nothing that isn't? I am all too aware of those who boycott it and deride it at every turn: the leftists who abhor corporations and economic behemoths. I am sure a strong case can be made that WalMart cheats its employees with low wages; just as a strong case can be made that the marketplace sets the value of wages, and people are worth what they are willing to be paid (and others are willing to pay them). But my issues with critics of capitalist machines like WalMart is, as some of you know, rooted in the very fiber of Ayn Rand's incisive Atlas Shrugged. Critics of wealth are rarely generators of wealth; they, in fact, are not only wealth's beneficiaries, they are often subsidized as critics by the very wealth they loathe. But more importantly there is something else that even Ayn Rand ignores: critics of wealth are almost always motivated, not by justice, but by envy.

Lastly, let it be noted: To whom does everyone turn when there is a crisis, particularly a costly one? Does everyone turn to the poor? Or do they not turn to the rich? Why, because they are bad? What if there were no rich people? To whom would we turn then?

In the same vein, who did the left immediately blame for the Katrina crisis? Well, if you were paying attention, you know that the left blamed the rich: If the rich had not received their absurd tax cuts, there would have been money to protect New Orleans. And on it goes.

And so I begin a series on wealth. It begins tomorrow. I hope I can pull it off.

Contratimes