Socialism and its Malcontents

Speaking to a friend today who I respect in many ways, we got on to the subject of inherited wealth, specifically re houses. My friend expressed vehement opposition to the idea of handed- down wealth. Right there I sort of got the whole picture of the socialist mindset - the hatred of achievement, the hatred of progress, the desire to make every year year zero, no building on the past, or respect for the past, a sort of mindless worship of regression, atavism and primitivism.

Civilisation is built on progressive steps by the generations towards self improvement and realisation. Each successive generation improves on the last, hands down its collective wisdom, passes on the baton to the next, wishes it a better life than it had, in an ever evolving vertical direction.

What does socialism proffer by way of an alternative? An appropriation of wealth and achivement and its redistibution to the non producers, the non achievers, all in a perverted, inverted, etiolated, anti concept of egalitarianism, which divested of its conceits and evasions is little more than plunder and larceny.

Envy of achievement is always disguised as a virtue, a desire to help the unfortunate. Except it never rings true. You don't have to talk to people with such views for long to see that they are consumed with hatred for those who have managed to achieve a modicum of material assets and want nothing more than to divest them of those things in order to mitigate their own sense of failure.