To: MSI who wrote (21480 ) 12/25/2003 8:26:30 AM From: Lane3 Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 793671 Those intelligentsia Sowell talks about serve as useful strawmen for the old contrived argument, that anyone opposed to vicious gov't/corporate monopolies "hates profits". I thought the Sowell piece was well done in the way it addressed the hates-profits crowd. There is, indeed, a hates-profits crowd. Both sides indulge their faithfuls' simplistic thinking and mindless sloganeering. Just as the mind-numbing drone of idiocy from the right-wing-talk-radio crowd drives you up a wall, there is a lefty equivalent, which has its profit-hating patter. Behind the knuckle-scrapers on the right are conservative think tanks that produce thoughtful arguments that the rabble may not even know about much less understand, but they exist. If the left has such a thing, they keep it well hidden, seems to me. To the extent that there is something more than profit hating coming from the the intelligentsia in question, I have missed it. I agree with you that Sowell's piece was insulting to those who have something more substantive and compelling than profit-hating in mind and maybe Sowell has deliberately misrepresented and mocked them. If so, shame on him. But I have not seen a coherent, comprehensive, and substantive argument from the left on this issue so I think one can be forgiven for thinking that the question is one of mindless profit hating. I've seen arguments about corporate malfeasance. Is that what this is all about? If so, then it should be framed that way because that would be a winner. Who could possibly not get onboard an effort to counter corporate malfeasance? If it's something other that that, I don't know what it is. Admittedly, I have not looked carefully into the issue, but if there is something more substantive than profit-hating out there, the message isn't getting out very well because I don't know what it is.