But our rich people are exceptional!
by David Atkins
As Digby posted earlier, wingnut CEO of Home Depot and incredible narcissist Ken Langone is very concerned that Pope Francis just doesn't understand how exceptional are the American rich. As Digby says, there's something pathological in his reaction.
I think I can explain what's going on. It cuts to the heart of American conservatism.
Langone's reaction is part of a growing response among American Catholics to Pope Francis' economic statements: that Pope Francis just doesn't understand true capitalism in a moral nation, because all he knows about rich people he learned from the corrupt kleptocrats in Argentina. This explanation is very prevalent among devout Catholics on conservative blogs and forums who need to square their conservatism with the Pope's infallibility. Our rich people don't behave like that. Theirs do. We're exceptional, doncha know. Pope Francis is talking about their rich people.
I've written before that while they may not seem to be connected, a belief in libertarianism requires racism to be sustainable because the effects of inadequate economic regulation are too obvious in developing countries. To believe that small government libertarianism can work in the United States is to believe that Americans are made of finer and more moral stuff than the inferior folk who just couldn't make it work:
The negative effects of the lack of a central government are so obvious in developing countries that wherever the social order fails as in Somalia, it must have been due to bad religion, or the defect of having been born to an inferior race.
Ron Paul fans must reassure themselves that such things would never happen to white, Christian folk. They're immune from the Somali problem by virtue being of different stock and different values, you see.
There's a unifying principle behind libertarianism, American exceptionalism and racism: that white Americans through God's grace and inspiration can create a holy libertarian city on a hill without government, one that has never existed and could not exist elsewhere. Everything liberal and progressive helps to corrupt that purity and destroy God's promise for America and for freedom.
There is nothing you can do with people like that except defeat them politically and destroy their ideas in the public square. You cannot compromise or reason with them.
.