Revisiting A Settled Debate

A NY Times reader misses the point, then assets a false claim. /wr

Try to understand my comments before you reply. The only “alternative reality” is the obvious and clearly evidenced failure to follow the main idea. 

That idea is the difference with which the rich in colonial times (the revolution was a reality!) and Romney’s father (who worked to end discrimination!) and Romney the son view the working class and the poor. 

Romney’s father lent him money for his first house in Boston; not many graduate students have families that can provide money for a house–but as a student, Romney didn’t earn it.

As a professional, Romney raised the money for his firm; it was given to him by wealthy contacts of his and his father’s. He invested it and made a return, but he did not make the money he used, it was given to him to use.

So his house and the money for his business were gifts. Neither earned.

You may disagree with the election results, but you can’t change the facts. Romney blundered so badly and lied so often (like saying Chrysler was sending jobs to China!), he lost the campaign to win the office by more than 3 million votes!

Save yourself some money and sign up for the ACA.

Wealth Has Been Around But The Attitudes Have Changed

A historical point: Henry Laurens of South Carolina, 5th President of the Continental Congress, was America’s richest person in the 1780s. His 18 volumes of letters has one to John Adams where Laurens shares the sage advice given to him by his enslaved gardener.

The point is, despite wealth, the utter contempt for workers and the poor–is recent in America’s history–as Mitt Romney’s own story attests–his father’s family period on welfare didn’t keep him from corporate and political success. Yet his son, Mitt, replaced the values of fairness, assistance, empathy, service through government, and a willingness to challenge the status quo that his father exhibited a generation earlier.

That story of a single American family defines the old and new approaches to wealth and privilege. The elder Romney was in the Henry Laurens camp: a systemic advantage didn’t become a visceral hate; Laurens equivocated on slavery, was at least open to discussion and at a time of great risk, never moved his money offshore, to Europe.

Laurens, imprisoned in London’s Tower, was swapped at war’s end for Gen. Cornwallis; he went to Paris as a peace commissioner with Adams, Ben Franklin and John Jay. They all resisted using government as a tool of wealth; money was to be independently made, not the result of favor, lies, and rigged legislation.

Slavery ended, but not the stereotypes developed to keep the memory and claim of divine right to wealth and entitlement. The Kochs are not the Laurens.