by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Nemesis is always hot on the trail of hubris, across time and space, and the goddess has been particularly busy in destroying the carefully crafted images of Bono, John Edwards, Timothy Geithner, Al Gore, Eliot Spitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Anthony Weiner, and a host of others. What do their tax hypocrisies, sexual indulgences, and aristocratic socialist lifestyles all have in common?<\/p>\n Collectively, they represent a self-appointed or elected global elite that oversees, lectures about \u2014 in sanctimonious fashion \u2014 the ethical responsibilities of the redistributive state. Bono and his ensemble may be the highest paid rock group in the world, the most eager to shake a finger at Western governments on their moral duties to help the less fortunate, a pop icon always ready to fault the consumerist Western lifestyle. But he and his pals are quite determined to avoid Irish tax laws to ensure more of their hard-won capitalist profits so necessary to support their global lifestyles, at a time when their alma mater<\/em> is broke and unable to fund its once ample entitlements.<\/p>\n Little need be said any more about Al Gore, his homes, his private jetting, his hyping Armageddon on his way to a billion-dollar eco-empire other than he is a totem for a sophisticated, wealthy class of Westerners who find psychological penance for their own lavish lives by making others less fortunate feel miserable about getting up in the morning and driving to work or taking a hot shower. In that regard, his carbon credit\/offset schemes were medieval indulgences to the core. \u201cCrazed sex poodle\u201d indeed \u2014 or so the masseuse claimed.<\/p>\n John Edwards built a mansion, replete with a 3,000 foot \u201cJohn\u2019s Room\u201d playhouse in the compound\u2019s inner sanctum, as he oversaw a University of North Carolina Center with the pompous title \u201cThe Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.\u201d The more he posed with his cancer-stricken wife, the more he spun lies to hide his tawdry relationship, all subsidized by someone else\u2019s money. The best that can be said of Edwards was that he was a classic parasite, who made millions off the productive state by honing his rhetoric skills before gullible juries. The more I heard him lecture us in 2004 about \u201ctwo Americas,\u201d the more I expected his mansion to end up in Dr. Zhivago fashion as a collective residence for the poor.<\/p>\n I confess I never understood Timothy Geithner\u2019s tax schemes. As I understand it, the soon-to-be overseer of the IRS pocketed monies given to him specifically to pay his FICA taxes, while claiming his son\u2019s camp as a business expense \u2014 all as a requisite to his contemporary lectures on the need for higher taxes to fuel the Obama redistributive state (Note well: that OMD director Peter Ozsag assured us that the soon to be $5 trillion in borrowing was necessary as he entered the revolving door of Citicorp).<\/p>\n All I can say about Eliot Spitzer is that I never have watched his show except twice \u2014 when he reported on the sexual misfortunes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Strauss-Kahn. As another aside, why do elites bombard us with publicly funded messages about \u201csafe sex,\u201d specifically to use a condom and to be sure to know the sexual pedigree of our partners \u2014 as if the HIV epidemic is spreading solely among the ignorant and uneducated? It may be; but a better use of such funds would be directed at the nation\u2019s governors: \u201cArnold, Eliot, please use a condom or do not visit prostitutes, given the danger of sexually related diseases spreading to one\u2019s spouse.\u201d<\/p>\n Arnold, of course, was a strange case; in the midst of his angry pushbacks against his opportunistic opponents in 2003 who were peddling rumors of his serial infidelity and more, he had already fathered a child by his live-in servant. What goes through one\u2019s mind in such scenarios? I leave the possibilities to you the reader.<\/p>\n I wrote a cover story for the current issue of National Review<\/em> on Strauss-Kahn, a sort of trifecta hypocrite: the socialist in a $3,000 room and $20,000 suit; the Frenchman on the barricades of race, class, gender progressiveness at best sexually using the immigrant, black, single-mom maid from Africa, at worse sexually abusing her; the IMF grandee dispersing someone else\u2019s money to bankrupt socialist states from his itinerant perches at the world\u2019s Sofitels.<\/p>\n Anthony Weiner was known as a sort of Kleon-like demagogue, who shouted down or ridiculed his opponents \u2014 haughty, self-righteous, full of hyperbole about the evils of conservatives, currently hot on the trail of Justice Thomas, in efforts to bring down a Supreme Court justice. Again, it is not the sexual weirdness, but the hypocrisy that does them in: the liberal-minded feminist on the sly sending dirty pictures to young women, while ridiculing those who claimed that the evidence suggested that he was sending dirty pictures to young women. Nemesis might have let Weiner be had he not insulted his accusers and claimed his own perversions were his own perversions, but once he took the attack-dog route and lied, she swooped in.<\/p>\n I omit the Obamas, but note only that Michelle Obama and her entourage, in very un-Harry Truman fashion, have a fondness for recession-era Vail, Costa del Sol, and Martha\u2019s Vineyard amid the presidential lectures about spread the wealth, at some point you have made enough money, and the new financial Mason-Dixon line of the noble below $250,000 in salary, the demonized above.<\/p>\n Of course, we witness all these jarring disconnects amid a larger landscape of the collapse of southern European socialism, the tottering of the entire US financial system as the Obamites trumped the Republican deficits and have piled up another $5 trillion in debt, the discrediting of the global warming fundamentalist religion, and the unsustainability of the redistributive welfare state.<\/p>\n What are we left with? The daily struggle to remember sumus homines, non dei<\/em> \u2014 \u2019we are just humans, not gods.\u201d Whether Strauss-Kahn or Weiner or Gore, the common denominator is arrogance and a sense of exemption from the rules and protocols.<\/p>\n In a word, human nature as we understand it from the earliest observances of the Greeks. Be careful about lecturing others on their moral frailties. If one consumes well beyond what one needs, ensure that one pays one\u2019s own tab and does not indulge on someone else\u2019s money. Beware of Nemesis, an omnipotent, all-seeing deity that marks in her scrolls every pontification, every sermon we make and then collates such professions with our deeds \u2014 so eager to note the discrepancy. She is an unforgiving goddess, and perhaps a cruel one as well. I used to give her a prayer for exemption at her temple at Rhamnous.<\/p>\n In the end, we are left with the nobility of hard, physical work, the elemental reality of producing food, fuel, and durable goods, the distrust of fad and cant, the acceptance that we are fallible and age and will not get out alive. In comparison, the media hype, the DC apparchet, the eco cons and the high-life socialism are as nothing. \u201cKnow Thyself\u201d and \u201cNothing Too Much\u201d were written on the architraves of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and for good reason, to remind us where we came from and who we were, and to shun excess \u2014 material, emotional, sexual. My grandfather\u2019s (a man who at one time in 1936 housed 27 relatives in my present house) advice of 1970 to a smart-aleck, silly teenager still resonates to me: \u201cNever sell this small piece of land, you may need it some day as a refuge from what you don\u2019t wish to become.\u201d<\/p>\n And then he got serious that July afternoon as we were walking toward the vineyards, and said, \u201cOkay, boys, you run the water down the north 100 rows, and I\u2019ll do the south 100.\u201d<\/p>\n And so out we went\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Nemesis is always hot on the trail of hubris, across time and space, and the goddess has been particularly busy in destroying the carefully crafted images of Bono, John Edwards, Timothy Geithner, Al Gore, Eliot Spitzer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Anthony Weiner, and a host of others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,41],"tags":[56,12,207,342,473,719,65,1020,9],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Io","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1383,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/democratic-leadership\/","url_meta":{"origin":2752,"position":0},"title":"Democratic Leadership?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's The Corner Not Quite the Clinton Solution In all the talk about returning to the Clinton income-tax tables, I have been confused on one small point: As I remember the Gingrich-Clinton years, the tax raises were followed by spending freezes and caps, and some time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2010"","block_context":{"text":"August 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/august-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1482,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/pampered-populists\/","url_meta":{"origin":2752,"position":1},"title":"Pampered Populists","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner It's surreal to see President Obama play the class-warfare card against the Republicans while on his way to vacation on the tony Maine coast, and even more interesting to note that now gone are the days when the media used to caricature Bush I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2010"","block_context":{"text":"July 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/july-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2375,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-angry-aristocracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2752,"position":2},"title":"Our Angry Aristocracy","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists. Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former Vice President Al Gore orNew York Times\u00a0columnist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2009"","block_context":{"text":"August 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/august-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1850,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-not-about-poverty\/","url_meta":{"origin":2752,"position":3},"title":"It’s Not about Poverty","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Katie Couric and the New Populism With all the talk of corporate greed and inequality, did people like Katie Couric think that in tough times they were immune from the laws of populist outrage? Did Couric believe that, amid significant layoffs at CBS, she\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2569,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/there-are-no-socialists\/","url_meta":{"origin":2752,"position":4},"title":"There Are No Socialists","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Are There Really Socialists? Two unconnected developments were announced this past week. President Obama is releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, despite the absence of a global embargo or horrific natural disaster \u2014 and despite a litany of assertions from 2008 that drilling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Greece"","block_context":{"text":"Greece","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/greece\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2024,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-idiotic-corner\/","url_meta":{"origin":2752,"position":5},"title":"The Idiotic Corner","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media It is odd for a newspaper in unsigned editorials to go after a writer. But the Monterey Herald has done that on occasion with me, and with the usual\u00a0ad hominem\u00a0tactics and failure to offer a rebuttal, which seem at odds with basic journalistic ethics.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2753,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2752\/revisions\/2753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}