Victor Davis Hanson: Gilded class warriors

Today’s leftists like the high life as much as their demonized conservative rivals. The more they damn the bad “millionaires and billionaires,” apparently the less guilt they feel about living it up in Palm Beach or Aspen, paying no taxes, offshoring their profits or wearing Rolex watches.


An aide takes several golf bags up the stairs of Air Force One as President Barack Obama prepared to depart from Palm Beach International Airport, Monday, Feb. 18, 2013 in West Palm Beach, Fla. Obama spent the long Presidents Day weekend playing golf.

In his first term President Obama was criticized for trash-talking the one-percenters while enjoying the aristocracy of Martha’s Vineyard and the nation’s most exclusive golf courses.

Obama never quite squared his accusations that “millionaires and billionaires” had not paid their fair share with his own obvious enjoyment of the perks of “corporate jet owners,” “fat cat bankers” and Las Vegas junketeers.

Now, that paradox has continued right off the bat in the second term. In the State of the Union, Obama once more went after “the few,” and “the wealthiest and the most powerful,” whom he blasted as the “well-off and the well-connected” and the “billionaires with high-powered accountants.”

Like clockwork, the president then jetted to West Palm Beach for yet another golfing vacation at one of the nation’s priciest courses, replete with lessons from a $1,000-a-hour golf pro to improve the presidential putting.

The rest of the first family jetted off on their own skiing vacation to elite Aspen, Colo., where nobody accepts that at some point they’ve already “made enough money.” Meanwhile, below the stratosphere, unemployment rose to 7.9 percent for January – the 49th consecutive month it has been 7.8 percent or higher. The economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012, gas is back to almost $4 a gallon, and the government continues to borrow almost $4 billion a day.

Today, lots of liberal grandees attack the rich and yet do their best to act and live just like them.

[…]

Complete text linked here.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *