(Being an item from the “drafts” pile that never got finished and posted. It was topical at the time.)

Stacy McCain goes postal on the class warriors:

Contrary to all the class-warfare demagoguery pouring forth from Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself), conservatives do not oppose tax increases because we are beholden to the rich. Rather, the question is whether wealth does more good when it is invested in the private sector, to create jobs and economic growth, or surrendered to the federal government as taxes to support the metastatic growth of a pestiferous bureaucracy.

There’s a problem with that. See the bolded part? Leftoids don’t believe a word of it — it’s practically the definition of a Leftist, most especially including Democrats.

Leftoids don’t believe in production. Wealth simply is — it exists out there somewhere, put there by forces beyond the ken of mortals. “The Rich” are people who have discovered some, purely by chance, and are fiendishly refusing to share with the rest of the tribe. One of the posters at Chicago Boyz first introduced me to the term “the seekrit stash”, the pile of wealth that’s out there somewhere, jealously guarded by its discoverers to keep it away from the People. Kurt Vonnegut called it the Money River, an endless supply of cash flowing freely through obscure faraway canyons, to which The Rich lead their offspring and a few selected friends that they may slurp.

Leftoids don’t even believe in production when they’re doing it. Spend any time at all with a UAW member, and it will finally dawn on you that he doesn’t seriously believe he’s making cars. He’s getting a paycheck, and all that nonsense with tools and bolts and hunks of metal that they have to do on the shop floor is just meaningless hoops the nasty, tightwad rich bastards in Teh Management make them negotiate before they’ll hand out the money. That’s also why they don’t, in general, give a damn whether or not they build good cars. “Building cars” is just an excuse used by Teh Rich to force Teh Workers into an awkward, demeaning, inferior position before coughing up the dough, and it ain’t faaaaair.

It follows that there’s no such thing as “the means of production”. The only reality a factory or farm has for leftoids is that it’s a huge pile of wealth which is guarded by people who make lame excuses for holding on to what rightfully belongs to Teh People, and which must be immediately seized and distributed to Teh Poor and Unfortunate (after modest deductions for the living expenses of those doing the seizing and distributing, natch.) They are then astonished — perplexed! — when (unexpectedly!) the products are no longer available and the jobs no longer exist, or when somebody elsewhere sets up production and wants to be paid for the output. What rotten luck! Whatever shall we Feed the Children?

“Populists” are little if any better. It’s just way unfaaaaair that the Greedy Corporations have the audacity to charge for their products and (gasp, choke, waaaaaah!) keep some of the money. Punish them! Tax ’em ’til they scream! Take away their corporate jets! When you discover that attitude on what is supposedly “the Right”, you should immediately realize why it is that the leftoids are so (otherwise unaccountably) successful. It’s hard to win when you keep handing your head to the enemy.