Is it all about guilt?

A long time ago I personally came to the conclusion that there was no way to live on earth without the stain of guilt, maybe the concept of Original Sin was a rueful recognition of this condition. Yet there is perhaps the chance that one may leave the earth forgiven. But that is another story.

-- Belmont Club's Wretchard

Michael Barone has touched on some very important guilt in his analysis of the "trustfunder left":

Who are the trustfunders? People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want. The "nomadic affluent," as demographic analyst Joel Kotkin calls them.

These people tend to be very liberal politically. Aware that they have done nothing to earn their money, they feel a certain sense of guilt. At the elite private or public high schools they attend, and even more at their colleges and universities, they are propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization, and the virtues of environmentalism and pacifism. Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism.

Their loyalties, as Samuel Huntington explains in "Who Are We?," are not national, but transnational -- they are citizens of the world with contempt for those who feel chills up their spines when they hear "The Star Spangled Banner." They are taught to have contempt for the economic contribution they make to their country as investors and to feel guilty if they make no other contribution. Their penance is that they must vote left.

(Via InstaPundit.)

These people should be asking whether and precisely why they should feel guilt. Is it because they have money? Or is it that the money was earned by someone else -- in this case, a parent?

It is natural enough to feel guilty over money which has been stolen or is the result of criminal profits. That is because the money is seen as having an illegal taint, and most people with consciences do not enjoy living on the fruits of crime. While this might be expected to apply to inherited criminal profits, it's a bit different for those lucky enough to be descended from a family of guiltless sociopaths. (Interestingly, most of the children of Mob bosses with whom I've been acquainted lack the guilt which plagues the children of legitimate business people. Might it be because Mob kids are raised in shame, as opposed to guilt cultures?)

I have also noticed that "old money" types are less likely to feel guilty than the children of the recently self-made. I can't say I know why, but I suspect it has something to do with having had generations to develop protective calluses against such things. I was shocked years ago to hear a sixth generation member of one of Philadelphia's Snottiest Old Families (the types who donate heavily to both parties) jokingly remark, "The rich get richer, and the poor have babies, and we just have to stay ahead of them all!"

But the self-made, upwardly mobile businessman or professional who has worked himself to the bone does not generally have the time to thinking about doing political end-runs around the latest "isms" to infect the body politic. It's all he can do to send his kids to the best schools. Guys like that naturally tend to think that the system which has been so good to them will continue to do the right thing, and educate their children properly. What a shock to have the kids return for their first Christmas home from college only to denounce their parents' wealth as "evil."

That's it in a nutshell. The Marxist, zero-sum philosophy is that wealth is simply evil. It is theft. Therefore, if you inherit it, you should feel very guilty.

But in logic, in order for there to be any real guilt, there has to be something intrinsically bad about wealth. Otherwise, there would be nothing evil about inheriting it, for there is no way that good money can be turned into bad money simply because it is handed from person A to person B.

This is where our much-vaunted "Puritan work ethic" comes into play. The moral communitarians on the left as well as many of the social conservatives on the right denounce those who do not "work" as bad. Not living up to their alleged "responsibilities." Again, this is no more logical than denouncing people as "bad" for loving a member of the same sex, but it is part of the culture (and it was a major reason "hard-working" Puritans in the North felt morally superior to the "lazy" slaveholders in the South).

To those who adhere rigidly and unthinkingly to the Puritan work ethic, one must work even if one does not have to work. "Work" is often defined not as self-employment, nor as investment activity, but as working for a regular paycheck. Work is something which is normally not to be enjoyed.

"Like the rest of the world!"

Such moralistic, shame-based thinking is judgmental and mistaken, yet it is played to the hilt by ideologues and moral scolds on both sides.

The result is that many of the trustfunders feel guilty because they do not have to work, and this guilt (whether deserved or not) is steered for a variety of reasons towards leftist political causes. Their enemies become the rest of the people who do work -- and the more successful they are, the more they're hated (the latter in turn often oblige by hating those who don't have to work). Their friends become all others who don't work. This can include other trustfunders, welfare recipients, penniless bohemians, or homeless outcasts psychologically unsuited for work.

What surprises me is how seldom people stop to think. Is money evil? Is wealth bad? Why is the presence of gainful employment necessarily more virtuous than its absence? For the most part, these are moral judgments made by other people whose goal is to shame, influence, manipulate. Why should money be a source of shame in a free country? If there is nothing shameful about earning money or creating wealth, then it follows that there can be nothing shameful about giving it to another generation. It follows, then, that inheriting money cannot be more "evil" than making it in the first place.

Furthermore, those designated as heirs (or beneficiaries of trusts) are guilty of nothing more than an accident of birth. At law, they are the "natural objects" of their parents' bounty. In a country operating with a free economy, why should that be a source of shame?

Trustfunders who haven't thought these things through are lost sheep. I know the breed well. They're ashamed of their wealth and keep it in the closet. They remind me of the guilty homosexuals whose sexuality presents as a sort of deer-in-the-headlights syndrome.

And if anyone can explain why the presence of money should be any more a source of guilt than the presence of sexuality, I'd like to hear about it.

Barone concludes:

The good news for Democrats is that they have found a new source of votes and money. The bad news is that an important part of their core constituency has the characteristic that the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ascribed to the press, "power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Not that I have anything against responsibility, but the problem is, the members of the trustfunder left have been taught to believe that they are behaving in a responsible manner. But it's all based on bullshit guilt.

I'd say a dose of irresponsibility (and by that I mean freedom from this externally imposed guilt) would go a long way.

Trustfunders arise! You have nothing to lose but your ill-gotten guilt!