Or, I was a lot smarter than this at that age (emphasis mine)...
Leftists are pouring into town to rail against freewheeling capitalism during the World Social Forum, gleefully cheering the humbling of bankers and business titans by the global economic meltdown.
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Gustavo de Biase, a 22-year-old Brazilian wearing a shirt proclaiming "Socialism is Liberty," said the world's leftists are convinced they can get presidents from the U.S. to Brazil to embrace policies "of respect and equality aimed at lifting the poor out of misery."
"We want to distribute the riches to people," he said. "We're fighting for a more equal society and we're saying 'Down with hunger' and 'Down with war.'"
Wants to distribute the riches to people, hmm? Exactly whose riches are we talking about here? I am going to hazard a guess that Mr. de Biase means the money made by the richer in society. Furthermore, I am also going to hazard a guess that he thinks the better-off among his people should just sit there and take it as those tyrannical idealists plunder their wallets and give their money to those who didn't earn it. One wonders what he and his kind thought of the Boston Tea Party, in which the colonists protested over a 3 percent tax. One also wonders if he sees any contradiction at all in the slogan emblazoned on his shirt -- because, at its core, socialism functions by doing exactly what he seems to want to do, plundering from the rich to give to the poor -- and that is about the furthest thing from liberty, because those people are essentially being denied the right to their property, and if you don't have that, you really don't have liberty. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at their rhetoric, but it's still disgusting.
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