Alms for the rich, Alms for the rich—that's money talking

I wrote this article last Thursday after reading the morning paper. It seems that there were several articles and columns that, although not intentionally, appeared to be related. I tied them all together and sent it off to the paper. Then I checked my email and learned they wished to publish “Here comes the sun, let’s use it,” which I had sent in several weeks earlier

Now I can understand why everyone likes a good dinosaur story. They're so cuddly as little plastic play toys. And if you can tie dinosaurs into global warming, they are almost irresistible.  

The problem is that this piece, because it refers to specific articles in the paper, has a shelf life of about three days. I'm posting the story on the blog because I firmly believe this story has to go somewhere, and there just aren't that many options for this one. The links should take the reader to the original articles.

 

The American Revolution is what you get when intelligent men and women are willing to risk everything they have to be free.

The French Revolution is what you get when the rich and powerful become so arrogant that the poor and weak are willing to risk everything just to get even.

There was no middle road in the days leading up to the French Revolution because there was no middle class. Too bad because a middle road, a road of compromise, could have prevented the revolution from happening and maybe saved some heads in the long run. But you need a middle class to have a middle road.

Middle class gives revolution a bad name. Its people are comfortable, have enough money to eat, dress and live well, and enough education to recognize how well off they are. They have enough morals to treat one another fairly and enough drive to try and get the better of one another. The last thing they want is a revolution. A long, hard fought revolution can knock someone right out of the middle class and into the bread lines.

While it’s hard to have a revolution with a strong middle class it’s pretty easy to have one without a middle class. In fact, the absence of a middle class is what usually causes a revolution, although no one wants to look too deeply into this fact.

Thursday Pilot contained a wealth of information about what’s going wrong in our country. Americans don’t like to hear about class warfare because it sounds so un-American, as well as something only the poor would promote. But class warfare is universal and as old as the Appalachians. Americans would do well to understand this. The same people who don't want to hear about class warfare probably don't want to hear about the French Revolution.