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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; wealth redistribution</title>
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		<title>Liberal Activist Collecting Signatures for Obamacare Steals $37 from Purse</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/liberal-activist-collecting-signatures-for-obamacare-steals-37-from-womans-purse/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=liberal-activist-collecting-signatures-for-obamacare-steals-37-from-womans-purse</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/liberal-activist-collecting-signatures-for-obamacare-steals-37-from-womans-purse/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 Jan 2014 02:07:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Maine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wealth redistribution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216597</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Community organizers are all about the wealth redistribution]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/steal_purse_4c31fdf2846fa.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216598" alt="steal_purse_4c31fdf2846fa" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/steal_purse_4c31fdf2846fa-233x350.jpg" width="233" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>They say it&#8217;s so cold in Maine now that liberals have their hands in their own pockets. But don&#8217;t believe them. Liberals always find other people&#8217;s pockets and purses warmer than their own.</p>
<p>Brianna Stein went collecting signatures for the Maine People&#8217;s Alliance petition to expand Medicaid for ObamaCare. And then she decided to <a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2014/01/13/news/hancock/maine-peoples-alliance-staffer-charged-after-allegedly-stealing-37-while-going-door-to-door-in-ellsworth/">do a little wealth redistribution</a> on her own<a href="http://www.themainewire.com/2014/01/liberal-activist-charged-allegedly-stealing-elderly-woman/"> like the good little community organizer</a> that she was.</p>
<blockquote><p>A paid activist working on behalf of the liberal Maine People’s Alliance has been charged after she allegedly stole money from a woman’s purse while collecting signatures.</p>
<p>Stein was at the woman’s Water Street apartment on Friday evening when the alleged theft occurred. She is accused of taking $37 from the woman’s purse while the woman’s attention was directed elsewhere, Ellsworth police Lt. Harold Page said Monday.</p>
<p>In September 2012, Stein was arrested on a charge of receiving stolen property after her husband, Maxwell Stein, allegedly stole more than $50,000 worth of merchandise from his Holden landlord. The following month, she was arrested in connection with an incident in Bangor in which she and her husband were accused of making off with pills that another man had in his possession.</p>
<p>Stein, who has previously been implicated in property theft crimes, somehow managed to retain employment with the MPA, which subsequently sent her to homes across the Bangor area without conducting a criminal background check.</p>
<p>The Maine People’s Alliance is a well-known liberal influence group. Although it is aligned with Maine’s labor unions and Democratic politicians, including U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, it is funded by anonymous donors. S. Donald Sussman, majority owner of the Portland Press Herald, is known to financially support the dark money group.</p>
<p>This is not the first time an activist’s behavior has reflected poorly on the organization. In September, The Maine Wire uncovered video of a <a href="http://www.themainewire.com/2013/09/maine-peoples-alliance-worker-photobombed-lepage-event-history-ridiculing-threatening-workers/">high-profile MPA activist ridiculing</a> and threatening a Grey Hound bus employee.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Maine&#8217;s People Alliance has since let Brianna go because they prefer to do their purse snatchings through the system like good liberals.</p>
<p>But as her boss Barry used to say, &#8220;What&#8217;s wrong with a little wealth redistribution anyway?&#8221; Brianna was just demonstrating to the privileged entitled woman that she didn&#8217;t build that.</p>
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		<title>UN Proposes &#8220;Food Redistribution&#8221; from US and Europe through &#8220;Swift and Collective Action&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/un-proposes-food-redistribution-from-us-and-europe-through-swift-and-collective-action/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=un-proposes-food-redistribution-from-us-and-europe-through-swift-and-collective-action</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 23:30:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[global redistribution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wealth redistribution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178721</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time to crack down on those fat American Kulaks stuffing themselves at Burger King. Time to make them move and then make them starve. Redistribute their food to the Third World.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/?attachment_id=178722" rel="attachment wp-att-178722"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-178722" title="hamburglar" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/hamburglar.jpg" alt="" width="283" height="269" /></a></p>
<p>If you loved wealth redistribution, remember that money is <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-uns-food-police.html">just the tip of the redistribution</a> iceberg. In the USSR, wealth redistribution gave way to food redistribution. And <a href="http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/02/19/the-uns-food-police/">the UNSSR is moving along that same road</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) – has issued a new report called Our Nutrient World: The challenge to produce more food and energy with less pollution.</p>
<p>People in the rich world should become &#8220;demitarians&#8221; – eating half as much meat as usual, while stopping short of giving it up – in order to avoid severe environmental damage, scientists have urged.</p>
<p>Sutton was speaking about the rich west, the US and Europe in particular. He wants the change in diet to be pioneered in Europe, as the US will be a tougher nut to crack.</p>
<p>The UN scientists said people in poor countries should be allowed to increase their consumption of animal protein, which billions of people are lacking. But if that is so as not to cause environmental harm, the move to meat in the developing world must be balanced with a reduction in the amount consumed in developed countries.</p></blockquote>
<p>Mark Sutton is apparently an environmental physicist which qualifies him to propose a new Marxist diet.</p>
<blockquote><p>In the foreword to this report, Achim Steiner, the head of UNEP, says that “swift and collective action” is necessary and that “our daily decisions” matter.</p>
<p>A more sophisticated set of aspirations must therefore emphasize how the lives of all can be enhanced by allowing the poorest to increase their food and other nutrient consumption, while the richest realise for themselves that it is not in their own interests to over-consume.</p></blockquote>
<p>Time to crack down on those fat American Kulaks stuffing themselves at Burger King. Time to make them move and then make them starve. Redistribute their food to the Third World.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s for the environment and the red planet.</p>
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		<slash:comments>34</slash:comments>
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		<title>Should Liberals Be Charged More for the Same Products?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/should-liberals-be-charged-more-for-the-same-products/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=should-liberals-be-charged-more-for-the-same-products</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/should-liberals-be-charged-more-for-the-same-products/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:36:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Class warfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wealth redistribution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173594</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We can either have a society where people work and earn, and are treated equally. Or we can have a society whose whole purpose is to redistribute wealth. And considering that liberals are among the wealthiest Americans, they might not find such a society to their liking.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/should-liberals-be-charged-more-for-the-same-products/no_guns_allowed_4-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-173598"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-173598" title="no_guns_allowed_4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/no_guns_allowed_41-450x300.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>By conventional free market principles, no. But by wealth redistribution logic, there is a case to be made for a liberal tax.</p>
<p>Over at the &#8220;<a href="http://www.ilovedrilling.com/">I Love Drilling Juice &amp; Smoothie Bar</a>&#8220;, owner George Burnett in Vernal, Utah,<a href="http://www.ksl.com/?sid=23737239&amp;nid=148"> has made headlines for applying </a>a special tax of a dollar to liberal customers.</p>
<p>Liberals have played the wealth redistribution game, transforming the economy into a shell game for taking money from some and giving it to others based on income. A progressive smoothie tax follows that same logic.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html">liberals on average earn more</a> than conservatives. (It helps to be in a line of work where it&#8217;s nearly impossible to be fired, such as a university or certain unions.) And paying more for a smoothie, just means that they are paying their &#8220;fair share&#8221;.</p>
<p>Obama has been a big believer in wealth redistribution. So what&#8217;s wrong with a little wealth redistribution at the smoothie level anyway?</p>
<p>We can either have a society where people work and earn, and are treated equally. Or we can have a society whose whole purpose is to redistribute wealth. And considering that liberals are among the wealthiest Americans, they might not find such a society to their liking.</p>
<blockquote><p>Democrats now control the majority of the nation&#8217;s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats.</p>
<p>This new political demography holds true in the House of Representatives, where the leadership of each party hails from different worlds. Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, represents one of America&#8217;s wealthiest regions. Her San Francisco district has more than 43,700 high-end households. Fewer than 7,000 households in the western Ohio district of House Republican leader John Boehner enjoy this level of affluence.</p></blockquote>
<p>If the left really wants a class war, it might just begin in a smoothie hut.</p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s a Winner &#8212; In Europe at Least</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/obamas-a-winner-in-europe-at-least/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-a-winner-in-europe-at-least</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/obamas-a-winner-in-europe-at-least/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:42:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[campaign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Denmark]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Socialism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wealth redistribution]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=163870</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president gets campaign help from socialist Scandinavia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/obamas-a-winner-in-europe-at-least/20110521_obama-europe_33/" rel="attachment wp-att-163888"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163888" title="20110521_obama-europe_33" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/20110521_obama-europe_33.gif" alt="" width="315" height="234" /></a>Chris Matthews isn&#8217;t alone.  Gunvor Holm Vibroe, a Danish woman who traveled all the way from her homeland to the state of Ohio to campaign for President Obama, &#8220;trembled in her pants&#8221; when she met the great man in person, she <a href="http://politiken.dk/udland/ECE1801175/dansker-moeder-obama-i-ohio-han-havde-varme-haender/">confided</a> to the Danish newspaper <em>Politiken</em>. &#8220;I&#8217;m still trembling a little in my pants,&#8221; she confessed.</p>
<p>When she told Obama that she was Danish and had traveled to Ohio to help out with his re-election campaign, he was impressed.  “You came all the way from Denmark to work for me?  Wow!” he said.</p>
<p>“He was very moved by that,” Gunvor said.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been widely reported that while the ecstatic European enthusiasm that Obama enjoyed early in his term has long since subsided, he would still receive the overwhelming majority of votes on Tuesday if it were up to European citizens to choose between him and Governor Mitt Romney.  “A survey of seven European nations, including longtime U.S. allies Britain and France, has found that Obama would win more than 90% of the vote if the respondents could cast ballots in Tuesday’s race,” <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/11/obama-winner-europe.html">reported</a> the <em>Los Angeles Times </em>last Thursday.  “The poll, which covered Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, found that Romney failed to garner more than 10% support in any of those countries. In Sweden and Denmark, the former Massachusetts governor fared even worse: Only 1 in 20 people named him as their choice.”</p>
<p>Apparently by way of explaining President Obama&#8217;s popularity in Europe relative to Romney, the <em>Times </em>sugested that, despite many disappointments with his record, such as his failure to close Guantánamo, “Obama is still seen as an inspirational figure.” But surely a major part of the reason why he&#8217;s the big favorite among Europeans is that his political views are far more aligned than Romney&#8217;s with those of your average European statist.  Europeans take Obamacare as a sign of the President&#8217;s acknowledgment that they&#8217;ve got health care right and we&#8217;ve got it wrong.  His eagerness to appease Islam, and to gut the First Amendment in order to do so, brings him closer than any previous occupant of the White House to the thinking of European leaders on the subject.  And so on.</p>
<p>European anti-Americanism has a long history, dating all the way back to colonial times.  Over the generations, it&#8217;s risen and fallen for various reasons.  During the last days of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan&#8217;s strong language about the Berlin Wall antagonized plenty of people in Western Europe who thought that the wall was there to stay, that the best approach to the situation was to make nice with the Russians, and that Reagan&#8217;s rhetoric was crude, sentimental cowboy nonsense that could only antagonize the Kremlin and make matters worse.</p>
<p>Europeans have always preferred American presidents who projected weakness and apologized for the U.S. to those who unapologetically asserted American strength, preached American values, and reminded Europeans, in one way or another, of their own dependence on American military defense.  Europeans don&#8217;t like U.S. presidents who go on about freedom; they prefer those who criticize capitalism and who seek to redistribute the wealth.  Above all, they&#8217;re attracted to a U.S. head of state who projects an air of not really, entirely, completely being American himself – whose own upbringing (in part) in another country sets him apart from his Oval Office predecessors and who delicately intimates, between the lines of his speeches, that he thinks of himself as a citizen of the world.</p>
<p>Europeans are also accustomed to, and most comfortable with, the idea of heads of government who have spent their lives in politics.  Obama&#8217;s rise from Chicago community organizer to Illinois congressman to senator to president of the Republic is something they understand.  By contrast, Romney&#8217;s background in business is, for them, not a reason to hope that he stands a better chance than the incumbent of rescuing the U.S. (and the world) from the economic mess it&#8217;s in but, rather, a cause for serious discomfort.  In their view, after all, one of the most important roles of government is to protect the people from the excesses of private enterprise – to keep corporations in line.  For Europeans, big business, not big government, is the enemy.  They don&#8217;t worry, as many Americans do, about entrepreneurs being overtaxed or bureaucratized to death by the state; they worry about the state being unduly influenced by evil capitalists.</p>
<p>Naturally they prefer Obama.</p>
<p>And naturally Obama’s re-election campaign, according to some sources, has <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/08/claim-obama-campaign-illegally-solicited-foreign-donors-via-social-media-website/">solicited</a> and <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/bam_blind_eye_to_illegal_donors_8SWotytr1RvbhyDCRyyrEL">accepted</a> good-sized donations from Europeans who are eager to play a small part in his securing another four years in office – a practice which is, ahem, not quite legal.</p>
<p>Our friend Gunvor&#8217;s decision to make her way to Ohio and work for the Obama campaign came suddenly and at the last minute – specifically, Saturday before last.  On the spur of the moment, she decided to book a ticket to the Buckeye State, found somebody to stay with, and got herself a volunteer job at a campaign office, where her job is to phone registered voters or to go door-to-door singing the praises of the Commander- in-Chief.  It was while she was sitting there one day at the campaign office making her phone calls that Obama dropped in.  Gunvor, whose regular job is with <a href="http://www.danchurchaid.org/">DanChurchAid,</a> a charitable organization connected with the Danish National Evangelical Lutheran Church, told <em>Politiken</em> “that the president had warm hands, that he pressed her hand, and asked if she was enjoying the work.  He concluded the forty-five-second-long conversation with &#8216;Keep up the good work!&#8217;”</p>
<p>“It means a lot to me – and also to my children&#8217;s future – who will run the U.S. during the coming years,” Gunvor told the newspaper, and added: “I&#8217;m still trembling a little in my pants.”</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Heather Mac Donald: A Crime Theory Demolished &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/heather-mac-donald-a-crime-theory-demolished-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=heather-mac-donald-a-crime-theory-demolished-wsj-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:38:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[american promise]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cause]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[columbia university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crime]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[criminal homicide]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Heather Mac Donald]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[level]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lloyd Ohlin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MANHATTAN]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minority youth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mobilization for youth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[notion]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[poverty]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[rational response]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Recession]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Cloward]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[root]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[social theories]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[understandable reaction]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44978</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice. As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the &#8220;root causes&#8221; theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. Over seven million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s. The consequences of this drop for how we think about social order are significant.</p>
<p>The notion that crime is an understandable reaction to poverty and racism took hold in the early 1960s. Sociologists Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin argued that juvenile delinquency was essentially a form of social criticism. Poor minority youth come to understand that the American promise of upward mobility is a sham, after a bigoted society denies them the opportunity to advance. These disillusioned teens then turn to crime out of thwarted expectations.</p>
<p>The theories put forward by Cloward, who spent his career at Columbia University, and Ohlin, who served presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Carter, provided an intellectual foundation for many Great Society-era programs. From the Mobilization for Youth on Manhattan&#8217;s Lower East Side in 1963 through the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and a host of welfare, counseling and job initiatives, their ideas were turned into policy.</p>
<p>If crime was a rational response to income inequality, the thinking went, government can best fight it through social services and wealth redistribution, not through arrests and incarceration. Even law enforcement officials came to embrace the root causes theory, which let them off the hook for rising lawlessness. Through the late 1980s, the FBI&#8217;s annual national crime report included the disclaimer that &#8220;criminal homicide is largely a societal problem which is beyond the control of the police.&#8221; Policing, it was understood, can only respond to crime after the fact; preventing it is the domain of government welfare programs.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904574638024055735590.html">Heather Mac Donald: A Crime Theory Demolished &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Religious Climate Rage &#8211; by Mark D. Tooley</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/mark-d-tooley/religious-climate-rage-by-mark-d-tooley/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=religious-climate-rage-by-mark-d-tooley</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:00:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The religious Left rues capitalism’s survival in Copenhagen. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42778" title="floating-head-of-canterbury" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/floating-head-of-canterbury.jpg" alt="floating-head-of-canterbury" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<p>The international Religious Left is grieving over the Copenhagen climate summit’s failure to mandate sweeping restrictions on capitalism and massive global redistribution of wealth.</p>
<p>&#8220;With a lack of transparency, the agreement reached this past week by some countries was negotiated without consensus but rather in secret among the powerful nations of the world,&#8221; bewailed the World Council of Churches&#8217;s climate change spokesman.  He further denounced the summit as a “strong strike against multilateralism and the democratic principles in the U.N. system.&#8221;</p>
<p>Hopes among the numerous religious activists in Copenhagen had been feverishly high.  Global Warming alarmism combines so many of the Religious Left’s favored fetishes, hopes and fears:  hostility to free markets and economic growth; cravings for wealth redistribution; Western guilt; veneration for the earth at the expense of humanity; and aspirations for global governance.</p>
<p>Most prominent among the religious prelates in Copenhagen were Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who solemnly told religious activists at a rally that an unidentified 300,000 people were “dying as a result of the poverty caused by all of the emissions coming from the rich countries.”  Lest anyone misunderstand his target, Tutu pleaded:   &#8220;Hello, rich people. Hello there, hello America.&#8221;  Tutu did not mention how many hundreds of millions of people are alive and living with greater health and wealth because of Western industry.</p>
<p>At a candle light vigil, Tutu almost incoherently squealed:</p>
<blockquote><p>“If you are responsible for most of the emissions, which are—look—look—look at the ozone layer. People are now suffering from all kinds of skin diseases, because we are thinning the ozone layer. Whoa! Whoa-ho!”</p></blockquote>
<p>Getting more straight to the point, Tutu importuned the wealthy West to fork it over:</p>
<blockquote><p>“For your own sakes, rich people, please, for your own sakes, for your children’s sakes, for the sake of our world, be nice. Be nice, and pay up. Pay up, please. Please, for your own sake.”</p></blockquote>
<p>At an ecumenical church service attended by Denmark’s queen that was somewhat more decorous than the street rallies, Rowan Williams intoned:   &#8220;We cannot show the right kind of love for our fellow humans unless we also work at keeping the Earth as a place that is a secure home for all people.”  The Lutheran cathedral was adorned with a massive banner demanding: &#8220;Time for Climate Justice.”</p>
<p>As my colleague Jeff Walton <a href="http://www.theird.org/Page.aspx?pid=1301">reported</a>, Williams apocalyptically sermonized against “a world of utterly chaotic and disruptive change, of devastation and desertification, of biological impoverishment and degradation.” He waned of a “downward spiral of the greedy, addictive, loveless behavior,” and worried that “we have not yet been able to embrace the cost of the decisions we know we must make. We are afraid because we don’t know how we can survive without the comforts of our existing lifestyle.”</p>
<p>Claiming that the Global South is poor because the West is rich is the constant refrain of the Religious Left, which rehashes the theme from the secular left and adorns it with sanctimonious guilt.   “How shall we build international institutions that make sure the resources get where they are needed – that, for example, ‘green taxes’ will deliver more security for the disadvantaged, that transitions in economic patterns will not weigh most heavily on those least equipped to cope?” Williams asked.  Naturally, the prospect of international “green taxes” excites the Religious Left almost to a quiver.</p>
<p>Much of the Religious Left inclines to at least a soft pantheism that venerates Mother Earth and bewails the traditional Christian and Jewish understanding that God created the world for the benefit of humanity.  &#8220;We have a bad habit, a belief in a theology of dominance that humans rule over the earth,” averred Canadian church official Joy Kennedy, a climate change activist with the World Council of Churches (WCC).  “Well, I have to tell you, sisters and brothers, it is past time that we confess that.&#8221;</p>
<p>Summoning sinners to the mourners’ bench, Kennedy continued her jeremiad.</p>
<blockquote><p>“And if we believe the planet is just a natural resource bank, there to be exploited, excavated, extracted, dumped on, then we will treat it that way.  But if we believe we are part of a sacred creation dependent on its gifts for our very survival and for life, then human activity requires responsibility and we will act differently because we love and serve and protect our home.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>She implored that &#8220;we need to find ways to replace greed with an economy of enough.&#8221;</p>
<p>Urging people of faith to deny themselves and live abstemiously would be laudable.  But the WCC and other Religious Left climate activists are not so much interested in voluntary Christian asceticism as they are mammoth and coercive international regulation that would forcibly repress economic growth in the West while transferring enormous wealth to Third World kleptocratic elites.  Meanwhile, the Third World’s poor would suffer further while forever deprived of Western style access to carbon-producing luxuries like electricity, lest they too become guilty of carbon sins and “dominance” over the Earth.</p>
<p>In a formal appeal to the Copenhagen summit, the WCC pleaded for “worldwide actions to save our planet from the catastrophic and suicidal consequences of climate change.”  The WCC pleaded for a “global agreement” on carbon emissions that would supposedly transform the world.  “Do not deceive us,” they warned.  “It will be a sign of hope for the future, and it will bring peace on earth to people of good will, today and for the years to come. We are all members of one family living together, breathing together, and dreaming together.”</p>
<p>So naturally, the WCC and other Religious Left activists in Copenhagen were devastated when the summit yawningly agreed to unspecified carbon reductions and not the shut-down of global capitalism for which the WCC had been praying.  Specifically, the WCC had wanted a draconian 40 percent reduction of carbon emissions by 2020.  “Copenhagen was a missed opportunity by the industrialized countries to lead by example” tut-tutted one WCC climate advocate.  “Most of the industrialized countries didn’t show the needed commitment to lead the whole world in an effective way to address the challenges of climate change.”</p>
<p>Another WCC official promised that the “struggle continues” even though the WCC and the “whole civil society” had been “betrayed” by Copenhagen’s failures.  “We need to build on the incredible mobilization by churches and the civil society over the next year, with prayers, bell ringing, and advocacy action, to reach a fair, ambitious and binding deal in Copenhagen which was not achieved because of the unwillingness of most of industrialized countries.”</p>
<p>The Religious Left can go on ringing the bells of its mostly empty churches.  But no amount of religious noise pollution is likely to persuade most of the world to shut down its industries and quietly accede to perpetual poverty while relinquishing humanity’s “dominance” over a liberated Earth.</p>
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