End the Folly of Benevolence – Help Neil Reynolds of the Globe and Mail Keep his Alarm System

In his August 14, 2011 column, Neil Reynolds, the latest clapped-out right-wing hack to be hired by the Glib and Stale to prop up its riddled right-wing standard now that the Blatch has gone, observes that government assistance (surprise) impoverishes everyone.  The immediate purpose of the column is to hail his new icon, Australian pseudo-academic David Stove.  Like a good high-school paper journalist, Reynolds cleverly hides the source of his “inspiration” until the very end of his column—‘lo, he saw a re-edition of a book by the dead and discredited Stove, and that really got Neil’s juices flowing.  Would that Reynolds would graduate to undergraduate.  Stove’s thesis is that, the more the government helps people, the poorer they get—and boy have Stove and Reynolds got some stats for you.  To wit, in England, by

1800, the number of poor, sick and elderly people who qualified for the dole had increased several fold, rising to one person in seven (which, coincidentally, matches the proportion of Americans who qualify for food stamps). (A13)

Ah yes, 1800.  Well do I recall it.  Cakes and ale all around.  Several fold!  But, still ‘tis true, I can’t get over the border now without taking part in those great spontaneous food-stamp feasts they have down there—scarcely one house out of seven not but offering a good fat goose to the weary traveller.  Such fare, and if only the GOVERNMENT wouldn’t stop us from such feasts!

It reflects very sadly on the Globe and Mail that it would publish words that even the cartoonish Tea Party would find hard to digest.  But such is the sway of ideology, and the money that ideologues can accrue and that distort their relationships to reality, not to say morality.

At a first level, the most regrettable aspects of Mr. Reynolds’s childish anti-tax, anti-government (the government is not people but corporations are) rants indicate that he demeans and debases himself to get money.  We all need money, but we can’t all of us go to such craven extents.

Mr. Reynolds, it is evident, has very little experience of the world.  Had he had some experience of the world, he would have travelled to many countries, and saw what obtained there.  He would have seen successful countries and troubled and destitute ones.  He could have (the ­Globe could have sent him there, on their vaunted private cash) visited countries such as the Scandinavian or Nordic democracies; he could have gone to Germany or Switzerland or any number of western European nations and revivifying Central and Eastern European nations.  The absolute hallmark of all of these societies and nations is that they agree to pay taxes and that they agree to work together towards common goals.  They do not childishly delude themselves that the simple evasion of taxes will somehow bring about paradisiacal heaven on earth. 

I’ve been to many countries on this earth, and I’ve spent time in those in which there is no or corrupt taxation.  Having done so, I can only conclude that Mr. Reynolds is stunningly ignorant, a liar, a desperate hack grasping for cash from his ideological paper, or just a gutless loser willing to write from Canada about chimera problems that have never touched him.  My frank suspicion is that he’s basically gutless.  But I’ll leave it there. One can girdle that earth, and go north and south, and up into Europe, and find all kinds of countries that subscribe eagerly to Mr. Reynolds’ theses.  Some of the things they lack are (eagerly for Mr. Reynolds) government, sanitation, health, infrastructure, an economy, education, law, --oh, government, again—and so on. Somehow, though, I just don’t think that Mr. Reynolds would have the guts to live there.  He’s a liar, and he knows it, and it makes him money, and he hopes he never, ever has to live in a place such as one he advocates.  It’s a poor, poor excuse for a man, that he has to live his life out arguing against his fellow human beings, but this is the one Neil Reynolds has chosen for himself to enrich himself.  His mother looks on, and may the good Lord give him his just reward.

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