My Letter to National Review re: Two Excellent Book Reviews

From: patrickbarron@msn.com
To: letters@nationalreview.com
Subject: Two Excellent Book Reviews
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:15:10 -0400

Dear Sirs:
Congratulations on the two excellent book reviews in your August 2nd issue--James V. DeLong's review of The Next American Civil War by Lee Harris and Travis Kavulla's review of Prairie Republic by Jon K. Lauck. It isn't possible for most of us to read all the wonderful and important books that are written each year, so we must rely upon book reviews to distill the essence of these books, which your reviewers did so well. I was especially glad to see Mr. DeLong's defense of the Tea Party criticism of today's political class--Mr. Harris's "meritocrats". Most of the people in this class do not attain their power by merit but by rent seeking. They join the ruling class at low levels, adopt the arrogant outlook of the class and advance through the ranks through Soviet-style internal alliances. These people seldom are capable of earning a living in the private sector that comes close to their remuneration via government jobs and/or organizations that feed off of government grants. And herein lies the problem. Although the meritocrats may be a small percentage of our population, they buy the tacit support of the vast majority of Americans through their welfare and subsidy programs. For example, few Americans are willing to scrap Social Security despite the fact that it is nothing more than a government-mandated Ponzi scheme that will either fail or bankrupt the nation. Even our supposedly-independent farmers are little more than agents of the government, deriving much of their annual income through incomprehensible (to the rest of us) farm subsidy programs. The entire ethanol and wind power industries are completely dependent upon government subsidies. We are becoming a nation of pickpockets--all standing in a circle picking the pocket of the person in front of us...and who will be the first to cry "Stop"?

Patrick Barron