January 05, 2004
IF ONLY THE ENLIGHTENMENT WOULD TAKE HOLD...:
Life, Literature and the stupid left (Suzanne Fields, January 5, 2004, Townhall)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a Russian and a man of the 19th century, but he has the American and European intellectuals of the 21st century down well and proper."Oh, tell, me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests?" he asked 140 years ago. "And that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interest, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else. . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure innocent child." [...]
[T]he Chutzpah Award for the year that just died must go to Polly Toynbee of London's daily Guardian for an enlightened rationalization and demonization that boiled over like volcanic lava. Toynbee fell for the infamous Nigerian scam and had to find somebody to be mad at, and it couldn't be herself.
She received a letter purporting to be from a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who needed money to pay to complete her education. Toynbee was touched. She sent the child a check for 200 pounds ($356) and immediately felt warm and fuzzy for her act of charity.
Warm and fuzzy soon evaporated. A perfect copy of her signature was soon attached to a form asking her bank to transfer a thousand pounds ($1,783) to an account in a bank in Japan. A suspicious clerk at her bank stopped the transfer just in time. The Nigerian bank scam is familiar to millions, and many of the greedy and gullible have been taken in by the familiar gross e-mails that clog computer terminals with offers of breast enhancement, penis enlargement and videos promising pornographic pleasure.
Toynbee's brush with financial disaster taught her a lesson that has eluded everyone else. She learned that the villain in the fraud is not a Nigerian scammer, but ... George W. Bush. "We reap from the Third World what we sow," she told her readers. "If some Nigerians learned lessons in capitalism from global oil companies that helped corrupt and despoil that land, it is hardly surprising they absorbed some of the Texan oil values that now rule the White House."
The amazing thing is that she'd eeven admit falling for the scam--truly, the sense of shame is dead. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 5, 2004 08:37 AM
She probably figured it was less embarassing than admitting she also bought those bust enlargement pills over the Internet...
Posted by: John at January 5, 2004 09:27 AMIndeed, OJ, it *boggles* the mind. You're onto something big here, man, regarding post-modern/nihilist Libs. The sense of shame is dead, but perhaps it is a victim of the utter loss of propriety, moral perspective, what "goes" and doesn't. What, as my mother used to say, "it looks like."
It reminds me of the time I visited a friend, who told me how he, against my advice, the previous evening had confessed an affair he'd no intention of continuing to his wife (to clear his conscience). She gets drunk and starts throwing lamps (literally). He, good Liberal, threatens to call the police "if she didn't calm down." She throws another lamp. He calls police. Cops leave him alone, cuff her, drag her off and fling her into a cell full of prostitutes. Her hand is smashed as they slam the cell door.
It's not that I couldn't believe how spineless he was in not being able to subdue his own wife (if only to make sure she didn't hurt herself).
What I couldn't believe he told his friends what had gone down.
Posted by: Joe Keith at January 5, 2004 11:25 AMUmm, I believe he was sharing his pain.
(Sounds better with a slight drawl, true. Still...)
Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 5, 2004 12:27 PMDoes anybody know if she is related to Arnold?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 5, 2004 01:21 PMMr. Keith:
The cops should have held him while she beat him with the lamp.
Posted by: oj at January 5, 2004 02:00 PMMr. Keith:
The cops should have held him while she beat him with the lamp.
Posted by: oj at January 5, 2004 02:23 PMSince the Nigerian scams pre-date Bush's Presidency, why doesn't she think that it was Clinton's reflexive lying that brought the Nigerians low ?
Posted by: THX 1138 at January 6, 2004 01:25 PM