David Mamet on Greed

I disagree with several details of Mr. Mamet's conservative epiphany, but he does score many incisive points. Like this one:

"The Left's current sentiment for the confiscation of benefits legally earned, but to them offensive, is Greed.

To wish to abrogate a legal contract between employer and employee because a nonparticipant feels someone got too much money is greed. It is not greed for money, but covetousness born of envy--the desire for that which legally belongs to another. That those in favor of this may not want the actual money for their own use is beside the point--they want the enjoyment of the power to strip the money from another. They may not use the confiscated funds to buy a car or a meal, but the billionaire who earns another million dollars cannot earn it either--he, like the offended Liberal, is enjoying the warm glow of its possession. A rampant and untrammeled glee, an unchecked ambition for gain is, in the individual, called miserliness; in the society which strips him of it, it is called Socialism.
-- David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge, 2011