The New York Times columnist is akin to Tom Ripley from Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley—evil wants status, even if it has to fake it or steal it.
We urgently need this common sense in our corporations, in Congress, and in the White House if we are to succeed as a nation, particularly in this time of crisis.
Small- and medium-sized businesses need a sustainable way to do business collaboratively. By helping them compete and grow, all Americans benefit. This makes economic as well as political sense.
Economic populism and its political cousin, political populism, are an antidote and a reality check to excessive globalization and globalist values and institutions.
It is not untrue that the former vice president is the largest living embodiment, the very best example par excellence, not of a Walter Mitty Life magazine pretend character but of classic cronyism.
At Davos, investment dollars flew like sand in the desert wind. The Chinese wanted factories, and they lined up from Nortel to Motorola just to shake hands. Big Pharma met and colluded on patents and pricing. Want to sell airplanes? Autos? You name it, even armaments. It was a global bazaar of high-altitude wheeling and dealing with high price tags.
Roger Scruton experienced what it means to be generous and what can be gained when civilization makes a concerted effort to celebrate and practice virtue.