who you callin a ho, bitch?!

I guess banks are in the business of giving you free money. No wonder bankers are so rich!

No, I hadn’t thought of ‘ho’ that way, and my intended usage wasn’t color related. Whatever else you might say about him, Cornel West is an upright man and certainly ain’t no ho.

I know Micha to be a free-rider. He’s a rational man. So, Micha: less Wealth of Nations and more Theory of Moral Sentiments.

P.S. I wouldn’t send any checks either; the CEO of your bank might be a billionaire, and you wouldn’t want to give any money to billionaires, heaven forfend.

“He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the greatest number of men.”

and one of the more famous quotes:

“Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.”

and:

“Nothing is beneath you, if it is the direction of your life; nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that.”

Of course, these quotes are taken out of context. In any case, its important to note that Emerson, while railing against the pursuit of wealth solely for its own sake, was not against the free-market, even though he saw some of the worst effects of a not particularly free example of it in mid-nineteenth century England. He may not have liked it much (spiritual/mystical individualist that he was), but he thought that the socialist schemes (he got to see the Brook Farm experiment rise up and whither before his eyes) were not pragmatic and could be positively detrimental to individual growth.

I doubt you’d see Emerson lining up with Cornell West, who is proposing, from what I can tell, nothing but platitudes about sharing and being nice, a lot like my Kindergarten teacher, except with an extra helping of angry, pre-packaged rhetoric.

Thanks Will!