The 47% Solution

The news, both on the rightwing and leftwing channels, these last few days has been preoccupied with either attacking or defending a rather unexceptional statement by Mitt Romney, that 47% of the voters are addicted to the government teat and the cult of victimhood, and it is not worthwhile to seek their votes.

I would not have even wagered that the Left found this statement objectionable, except that they seem to object to all true statements just on principle.

I am flabbergasted: I honestly thought they would be pleased, and would have parades to celebrate the day when all men were beholden to the government. Everything for the state, nothing outside the state: that is the motto and the operating principle of the Left.

Don’t the communally-minded collectivists rejoice to hear the news that the collective has grown ever greater and stronger? Where is the insult?

What part of the obviously true and truly obvious statement does anyone have any objection to?

It astonishes me that commentators and pundits whose opinion I otherwise respect also find the statement objectionable or coldhearted or somehow ungood in some unspecified way. Some think it needs explaining or explaining away: others were actually, for some reason unclear to me, offended by it.

I don’t get it.

Why is anyone discussing Mitt Romney’s comment instead of discussing attacks by the Jihad against British, German and America embassies in embassy attacks Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Yemen?

That I do get: it is a sign of severe and radical civilizational decline. It is the Romans in the final days bickering and gossiping about the latest trivial scandal among the Patricians while the Goths are putting ladders up against the walls of the Eternal City.