That’s a shot from the 1997 cult-classic horror film The Devil’s Advocate, starring, in addition to Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, and Charlize Theron. It’s one of my favorites and I regard it as criminally underrated. I won’t speak too much on it except to say Pacino portrays the Devil, and his iconic line from the movie is Vanity; definitely my favorite sin.
Well, for liberals, their favorite sin is envy. Though comparing liberals with the Devil might be lowbrow, all sins have one thing in common: they bring out the worst in us. For liberals, envy brings out the worst in them.
Now that Elon Musk has become a trillionaire, critics are pouncing to condemn him for not solving all the world’s problems with his newfound riches:
It doesn’t matter to liberals if world hunger gets solved. They simply don’t like the idea of anyone having that much more than them. Their thinking doesn’t go any deeper than that. Their opposition to cutting government aid programs isn’t because people actually benefit from them. It’s because they regard the act of giving as the end itself. It doesn’t matter the outcome, success or failure has no bearing. If anything, failure is better than success, because it justifies demanding even more money.
It’s also worth noting that liberals are less likely than conservatives to donate to charity. Which is fine, of course - nobody is entitled to anyone else’s money. But it’s hypocritical to demand others be charitable while not being charitable yourself. How much money a person has doesn’t have anything to do with it, especially if they think the act of charity is the whole point. I believe there’s something in the Bible about how a poor person giving what little they have means more than a rich person giving a lot of what they have.
This is a talk for another time, but scholars like Rob Henderson point out that today’s class divide isn’t between rich and poor, but between the affluent and the even more wealthy. In other words, the biggest critics of the wealthy are quite well-off themselves, even by American standards. The irony is lost on these affluent liberals, of course, who see themselves as the voice of the voiceless.
The reality is, someone like Elon Musk has benefited more people than any affluent liberal or any leftist politician arguing for higher taxes ever will:
Show me a single government program that can help a person like this. I’ll wait.
Of course, when you can’t win the argument, you move the goalposts:
No. Just no. Liberals have made it clear the super-wealthy like Musk are supposed to use their riches to deliver millions from poverty, to affect major social changes, not merely ease suffering. All that does, at the end of the day, is preserve the status quo. Sure, it might make for some feel-good stories, but if the wealthy aren’t going to be expected to help the less fortunate rise above it all, what’s the point, really?
By the way, what did MacKenzie Scott donate her $26 billion to, anyway? This:
None of which helps pull people out of poverty. Looks like liberals don’t actually believe in that, either. What they absolutely do believe in is advancing the ideology. It’s an expensive job, you know?
They also tried blaming Musk’s DOGE initiative for the deaths of millions:
I’m not going to address the mathematical aspect of this, which requires some stretch of the imagination to credibly accept. I’m going to address the philosophical aspect of this - according to such logic, why should anyone ever help anyone? If helping someone effectively incurs a lifetime of liability, and there’s no way to back out of an entirely voluntary, one-sided commitment, why would anyone ever agree to that?
Liberals can attempt moral blackmail all they want. It doesn’t change a thing. Since it’s not up to them to decide what anyone else does with their money, nobody has any obligation of any kind to attach themselves to what effectively amounts to lifetime bondage. According to Bad Takes King James Surowiecki’s impressive logic, slaves should’ve never been freed since they’ve been made to be dependent on their masters for survival. It also stands to reason that once they’ve been freed, by no means do former slave-masters or anyone else hold any obligation towards them, except for perhaps what was separately agreed upon or what is legitimately owed. If America owed the former slaves anything, it was probably the plots of the land they worked or free trips back to Africa. But I digress.
Why’s it that when liberals are told to be more charitable themselves, all they have to give are excuses?
Seriously, that’s his response. We already know liberals are far less charitable than conservatives. That’s fine, too - again, nobody should be told what to do with their money. But then why are liberals so preoccupied with how others spend their money? Why does everything need to come out of taxation? When will liberals ever invest any risk of their own?
Because when you’re the one assuming risk, the outcome matters.
This is why electing people who’ve never put any money or skin into the game or allowing them to participate in the political process isn’t just a bad idea, it’s anti-democratic:
The point is that someone like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani risks nothing. If anything, he’s someone who made a career out of convincing everyone else to risk something. Now he’s in a position of authority, where he doesn’t need to ask. He simply tells. I think that matters. For democracy to work, we need to be able to trust that both leaders and voters know what it means to risk something, that they understand that not everyone can win, that sometimes people can lose. Anyone whose politics revolves around the idea everyone can win is selling a false bill of goods.
Of course, if we took democracy as seriously as we claim, we’d understand that.
Envy Is Worse Than Hate
Global entertainment superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, starring in the live remake of Disney’s Moana, laments the lack of representation in the media he endured as a child:
Hmm. My gut, which is usually not wrong, tells me that The Rock didn’t give a damn about representation 15 or even as recently as 10 years ago. We all know what changed in the interim, there’s no need to go over that. For Johnson to claim that representation was an issue for him growing up is ironic, given that it never stopped him from pursuing an entertainment career, going on to become a mega-star.
Popular X account “RAW EGG NATIONALIST” claps back (we can play that game too!) with as good a response as any:
Seriously. At the risk of dating myself, I was nine when I saw Will Smith portray fighter pilot Captain Steven Hiller, U.S. Marine Corps, who saved the planet from aliens in the movie Independence Day. Despite not being black myself, not once did I think “I can’t be a fighter pilot like him; I’m not black!”1 No, I didn’t become a fighter pilot, but it had nothing to do with race nor the lack of representation of people like me in media.
Similarly, the fact Bruce Lee was Chinese didn’t stop millions of young White men from getting into martial arts. If anything, White men would’ve been considered even more racist than they already are if they expressed such sentiments. By the way, why are Whites consistently the least racist or racialized of people?
One of the false promises of liberal, civil rights-centric culture was that it wouldn’t matter that Indiana Jones was White. That the many characters Will Smith played were black. They all transcended race. You still saw a bit of yourself in them. One of the reasons why The Rock became a superstar was because millions of young White boys, as well as those of other races, saw something in them that they liked. I don’t think any of them thought, “He’s Samoan, I’m not. I couldn’t ever be him, I couldn’t ever identify with him.” The Rock was someone who transcended every divide imaginable. He still does, in many ways. That’s what makes these most recent comments on representation disheartening to hear.
A nice thought was all it was. In the end, civil rights and liberalism indulged envy, creating a society where literally everything is defined by the fact someone has more than you, has more representation than you, looks better than you, the list goes on, and you’re supposed to get angry about that. You could end up becoming as successful as Dwayne Johnson and it’s still not enough. There’s still an unaddressed grievance, an axe to grind. Maybe that’s the whole point, too, because without something to struggle against, does our existence even mean anything?
In that light, envy is just like hatred. It’s insatiable, something which cannot be assuaged. Hate begets hate, envy begets envy. Think about it: the last time you were jealous of someone, did you respect them? Or did you resent them? The feelings may not last, but the point is, in that moment you felt jealousy, did you also not resent them at the same time, even if the feelings eventually subsided?
The fact is, no amount of representation will satisfy anyone. No amount of charity will satisfy anyone. That’s because none of that matters. None of that was ever the point.
In closing, it’s worth remembering that of the seven deadly sins, hate wasn’t one of them. Envy not only was, hatred was considered a byproduct of envy. This means that envy is far worse than hatred. Yet, not only do we consider hate to be the greater sin, we build entire political platforms based off envy.
I see a problem here. Don’t you?
What are your thoughts on anything discussed? Talk it out in the comments section.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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Worth noting that even today, there exists a significant under-representation of blacks in the fighter pilot community. That the character of Capt. Steven Hiller was written for and portrayed by a black man 30 years ago shows the extent to which blacks were accommodated and normalized through media portrayal.
Liberals are VERY generous. With other people's money.
In Democrat run states (I know Oregon best) liberals cannot wait to send millions to "non-profits" who are going to fix drug addiction and homelessness.
Here is the game. Democrat run unions and "non-profits" make donations to liberals. Those people get elected and return those donations ten fold cause it ain't their money.
Of course, the more they get, the worse the problems are because you cannot grift on a problem that has been solved. The money disappears, the people running the "non-profits" get very rich and there is never any accountability. But everyone in the giant grift circle feels pretty good about themselves.