Dear Shredder, you're a liberal comrade 

You and your modern liberal comrades’ excitement over Bernie Sanders is disturbing, to say the least (“Vive la révolution!” July 23). If you dig deep into history, yes deeper than Wikipedia, and follow the trail of money and relational cronyism, beginning with the mercantilism and the populists of the late 1800s, who then mutated into the progressive socialists, you will find that all the progressives, whether on the right or left, who promote egalitarianism through a centralized power, such as Bernie Sanders, are precisely the major contributors to corporatism in America that we are sick, sick, sick of!

You ask, “Haven’t the rich learned anything? French revolution anyone?” Do you not know that massive debt, public works projects, and the inflation of the assignats are major factors that helped give rise to Napoleon? Yes, I agree with you, “vive la révolution!” Back to laissez-fair please. I’m all for overthrowing the rotating dictator of bureaucracies we have now, and restoring the executive branch to its intended limited role. It’s not going to happen by electing a progressive Republican, and it sure as hell isn’t going to happen by electing a self-described nationalist socialist. Oops, I mean democratic socialist. I always get those mixed up.

Side note—my employer, a longtime auto shop owner in San Luis, says he not only would not, but financially could not hire an inexperienced person wanting to enter the automotive field, say, as a lube tech, for $13 an hour. It’s math people, not greed. Unless of course customers want to pay $80 for a basic oil change to cover all the bullshit overhead from the city, state, fed, and the newbie’s “living” wage.

Demagoguery and the promoting of the victimization mentality is primal. I get it. I guess that will always be the difference between me and you modern liberals. You want to control other people’s money and property in the name of the collective, and all we want is to keep ours to spend as we see fit. Which, I might add, diminishes market distortions. “A sound heart gives life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.”

-- Greg Larson - San Luis Obispo

-- Greg Larson - San Luis Obispo