At some point in the last 20 years, someone on the left decided that "The Koch Brothers" were evil. And ever since, lefty boilerplate has routinely identified "The Koch Brothers" as the very fount of evil and oppressive capitalism.
So when David Koch died, aged 79, after a long battle with prostate cancer, all kinds of lefties expressed their delight.
I'm not really inclined to attack them for that. Most lefties are fools, that have never read a book, and merely spout the hate that they have been carefully taught, from year to year, in their little ears.
The Koch Brothers were exemplary businessmen that inherited a family business from their father and turned a business worth tens of millions into a business empire worth tens of billions.
That means, lefty friends, that they created jobs, jobs, jobs.
But to the New York Times he and his brother Charles were right-wingers.
Which meant, of course, that when David Koch stumped up $100 million to help refurbish the New York City Ballet, all the fashionables with the right opinions -- as in correct rather than right-wing -- expressed their horror at allowing this monster a shield of respectability.
Give me a break.
I honor the Kochs for putting so much money into libertarian ideas, although I stop short of true libertarianism. That is because my reductive Three Peoples theory recognizes that the People of the Subordinate Self want protection, not just political protection from pirates and plunderers, but economic protection from the tides of the market. My politics tries to give them that -- or at least an illusion of economic security -- rather than declare that government has no business in the economic safety net business.
But what I honor the Kochs for is their work with dad's business. You don't get much information from the NYT obit, which is heavy in politics and family lawsuits, but I understand that when the Koch brothers inherited the business it was in trouble, partly because of a lawsuit relating to technology that Koch père had developed. But the Koch brothers persevered and made Koch Industries into a thoroughly modern corporation that encouraged its employees to take responsibility -- and even dare to make mistakes.
That is a big deal for me, because I think that the secret of life is to develop the courage -- or what my daughter calls resilience -- to try out ideas, knowing full well that most new ideas end up in failure.
But for our liberal friends the Kochs were all about "dark money" and funding "the right" and being a secretive private corporation. I get it. Private corporations don't have to tell the world very much about their affairs, and lefties hate that. And they also hate people that they can't effectively bully into conformity. It really is offensive to them that the Kochs could live and work and fund their ideas and charities when the Kochs were opposed to everything good and woke.
It's a strange world, isn't it. You take your dad's company, and instead of clipping coupons you expand and deepen it and provide jobs for tens of thousands. But that makes you into cartoon villains for our lefty friends. What is wrong with you guys?
Never mind. David Koch, of The Koch Brothers, was a good guy. Rest in peace.
So when David Koch died, aged 79, after a long battle with prostate cancer, all kinds of lefties expressed their delight.
I'm not really inclined to attack them for that. Most lefties are fools, that have never read a book, and merely spout the hate that they have been carefully taught, from year to year, in their little ears.
The Koch Brothers were exemplary businessmen that inherited a family business from their father and turned a business worth tens of millions into a business empire worth tens of billions.
That means, lefty friends, that they created jobs, jobs, jobs.
But to the New York Times he and his brother Charles were right-wingers.
David H. Koch, an industrialist who amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune with his brother Charles and then joined him in pouring their riches into a powerful right-wing libertarian movement that helped reshape American politics, died on Friday at his home in Southampton, N.Y.It's weird isn't it. The right-wingers that I read are mostly annoyed with the Kochs because they are pro-gay, pro-abortion, and pro-immigration. And they funded libertarian enterprises like Reason magazine. But to the New York Times obituary writers, Koch was "right-wing."
Which meant, of course, that when David Koch stumped up $100 million to help refurbish the New York City Ballet, all the fashionables with the right opinions -- as in correct rather than right-wing -- expressed their horror at allowing this monster a shield of respectability.
Give me a break.
I honor the Kochs for putting so much money into libertarian ideas, although I stop short of true libertarianism. That is because my reductive Three Peoples theory recognizes that the People of the Subordinate Self want protection, not just political protection from pirates and plunderers, but economic protection from the tides of the market. My politics tries to give them that -- or at least an illusion of economic security -- rather than declare that government has no business in the economic safety net business.
But what I honor the Kochs for is their work with dad's business. You don't get much information from the NYT obit, which is heavy in politics and family lawsuits, but I understand that when the Koch brothers inherited the business it was in trouble, partly because of a lawsuit relating to technology that Koch père had developed. But the Koch brothers persevered and made Koch Industries into a thoroughly modern corporation that encouraged its employees to take responsibility -- and even dare to make mistakes.
That is a big deal for me, because I think that the secret of life is to develop the courage -- or what my daughter calls resilience -- to try out ideas, knowing full well that most new ideas end up in failure.
But for our liberal friends the Kochs were all about "dark money" and funding "the right" and being a secretive private corporation. I get it. Private corporations don't have to tell the world very much about their affairs, and lefties hate that. And they also hate people that they can't effectively bully into conformity. It really is offensive to them that the Kochs could live and work and fund their ideas and charities when the Kochs were opposed to everything good and woke.
It's a strange world, isn't it. You take your dad's company, and instead of clipping coupons you expand and deepen it and provide jobs for tens of thousands. But that makes you into cartoon villains for our lefty friends. What is wrong with you guys?
Never mind. David Koch, of The Koch Brothers, was a good guy. Rest in peace.
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