Have you ever noticed how generous some progressives are---when it isn’t their money to give in the first place?
         I was reminded about this from some remarks from Roseanne Barr highlighted this week in the Drudge Report.
        She was interviewed by Russia Today. (The article in “Real Clear Politics” didn’t clarify if that meant the TV show of Russia Today. If that’s the case, then I have been a guest a couple times on their program, “The Alyona Show.”)
        Anyway, Roseanne, one time a very popular TV star, said “I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.”
        The guillotine?
        What are we back to the French Revolution?
        Who are the “guilty” according to Roseanne? Bankers who make more than $100 million.
        I suppose in the minds of some, including Roseanne, if someone makes a lot of money, it’s because someone else has lost that same amount of money.
        Money-making becomes a zero sum game, they think. If you’re rich, it’s because someone else is poor.
        Gambling works that way. Someone wins because someone else loses.
        But capitalism doesn’t have to work that way. Thomas Edison got rich inventing things, and we are all better off because of his contributions to humanity.
        Roseanne goes on to pontificate, “I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million.”
        I’m not sure how many people make more than $100 million. But she continues:  “And if they are unable to live on that amount, then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded.”
        Reeducation camps?
        What are we back to the Chinese Cultural Revolution?
        Beheaded? If you make too much money, off with your heads!
        Liberals are so generous---with other people’s money.
        They are limousine liberals. They are sofa socialists. They always seem willing to take the profits of someone else and spread the wealth around.
I remember seeing a TV segment once on the lifestyle of Fidel Castro and his inner circle. They lived high off the hog, while normal Cubans suffer under the Communism Castro has imposed.
        I can’t imagine anyone making as much as $100 million. But is such a person necessarily getting it through thievery? Perhaps millions are being enriched through his wealth.
        In any event, regardless of what we make, we will all give an account before God for what we get and how we spend it.
        I believe generosity is the best way---through private charity.
        What’s the difference between socialism and charity? Both involve a form of redistribution of wealth.
         The answer is force. Government at its basic level is force. Sheer power.
        No matter how much I make or how little, I wouldn’t want to have to give an account of it to the likes of Roseanne Barr. Nor the like-minded protesters now camping out at Wall Street.
        We’ve all heard of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I nominate Roseanne as a Daughter of the French Revolution.
         The French Revolution was the mother of all socialistic type revolutions, including the Russian and Chinese Revolutions of the 20th century, which killed tens of millions of human beings.
         I find it interesting that Roseanne’ remarks hearken back to the French Revolution. People seem to forget that that was a very anti-religious movement. Not only did they kill people, including many Church leaders, but they desecrated the churches. For example, they seized Notre Dame Cathedral, halted mass there, and placed a half-naked woman atop the altar and worshiped her, calling her “Reason.”
         Not only did the French Revolutionaries lop off the heads of thousands (in some cases, just for being rich), but they jettisoned themselves off from any Judeo-Christian influence. For example, they abolished the Christian calendar, by declaring 1791 year 1 (of the Republic). They cut themselves off from any Jewish-Christian Sabbath by even changing the week from seven days to ten days.
         Napoleon undid all these “reforms” about a decade later.
         The French Revolution was no picnic for anybody. Anti-religious types may cheer its secular spirit. But don’t forget that that revolution consumed its own.
         Meanwhile, Roseanne expressed her anti-religious feelings about fifteen years ago in a statement against pro-lifers, who are mostly Christians: “You know who else I can't stand is them [sic] people that are anti abortion. EXPLETIVE DELETED. I hate them... They're horrible, they're hideous people. They're ugly, old, geeky, hideous men...They just don't want nobody [sic] to have an abortion 'cause they want you to keep spitting out kids so they can EXPLETIVE molest them.”
        Usually, the proponents of socialism have a strong anti-religious streak. And why not? Essentially, their first commandment is: “Thou shalt not have any other gods beyond the State.”
        Everywhere it’s been tried, socialism has failed. But it always seems to rear its ugly head again and again, even sometimes from a fading TV star.