Jonah Goldberg comments on a Denver Post interview with a progressive activist named Michael Huttner, an interview which contained this excerpt:BH: Do you think conservatives just aren't getting the right information?
Huttner: Conservatives are all about me, me, me. It's the Ayn Rand philosophy, a totally selfish philosophy, which is just appalling to me.
BH: Could you have married a conservative?
Huttner: No way.
BH: What's in your future?
Huttner: My goal is to build ProgressNow to 25 states. But before I got married I spent a lot of time in India, I went to the ashrams. I am interested in meditation. And if I aspire to anything, it's just sitting and being simple and not being caught up in politics and other illusions that are thrown at us every day.
BH: How is it having children?
Huttner: We have a 3-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl. We took them trick-or-treating and it was great. And the next day we took their bags of candy and gave them to the homeless. They couldn't have been more excited about it.
BH: What's your greatest fear?
Huttner: That people like Tom Tancredo and the right will once again take over Colorado.
Goldberg comments, "Okay, never mind that studies have found conservatives are more philanthropic and altruistic than liberals. Forget that his 'greatest fear' is not being eaten by wolverines or consumed by fire ants — it's Tom Tancredo.
But you just have to love the 'our kids love giving their Halloween candy to the homeless' story. Frankly, it smells fishy to me, but whatever. If it's true, it won't last long. In fact, I suspect 30 years from now, those kids cite things like that as why they're now wildly pro-freemarket evangelical Christians."
Of course, even though I agree with Goldberg that Huttner's Halloween candy story seems invented, one must admit that the re-distribution scheme it represents is classic liberalism; that is, Huttner prove his caring, generous principles by giving away someone else's wealth, wealth he didn't generate and which he simply confiscated (for his own purposes) by wielding an intimidating police power.
