Progressives Love-Hate Relationship with Money

Though he doesn't use the word, and may not be clearly aware of the fact and all its implications, Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media does a nice riff on how Progressives have a love-hate relationship with money. He uses Obama and his ambiguous attitude toward it as an example. He also quotes, approvingly, the antidote.

Anthony Trollope’s observation, which he puts into the mouth of Plantagenet Palliser, in his novel Can You Forgive Her? Responding to a character who announces that he lacks “mercenary tendencies, Palliser says:

“There is no vulgar error so vulgar,–that is to say, common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. A desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray.”

Bra-vo, Mr. Trollope. Kudos, too, to Mr. Kimball who fills his article with all kinds of erudite and accurate observations about Rousseau and others.