Schafe können sicher weiden,
Sheep may safely graze
Wo ein guter Hirte wacht.
where a good shepherd watches over them.
Wo Regenten wohl regieren,
Where rulers are ruling well,
Kann man Ruh und Friede spüren
we may feel peace and rest
Und was Länder glücklich macht.
and what makes countries happy.

The old stereotype says that leftists love humanity but hate people. I haven’t yet figured out the left’s peculiar combination of narcissism and self-loathing, but they do seem to dislike people in general. Particularly people who don’t agree with them about absolutely everything. Which, come to think of it, is nearly everyone, I suppose. But what I’m trying to get at is that I really don’t think that they’re motivated by their love of the downtrodden masses, as they claim to be. Leftists don’t love poor people. They just hate rich people. And many of their social policies appear to be more focused on hurting the rich than on helping the poor.

Think about leftist policies, of all different varieties, such as:

1. Confiscatory taxes on successful people to fund social programs with no measurable benefits to those they profess to help.
2. Affirmative action, which denies college spots to qualified applicants if they are perceived to be a member of the privileged class (It’s not really based on race – ask an Asian college applicant.).
3. Not keeping score in children’s sports. The losing team still didn’t win, but it wouldn’t have anyway. You’re just denying the winning team of the recognition it earned.
4. The left seeks to ban my profession, of concierge medicine. If there were no concierge medicine, would the poor get better health care? Of course not – they would be entirely unaffected. But the successful would no longer have the option of using their own resources to get better care, like they use their resources to buy nicer cars or drink better beer.
5. “White privilege.” When racial discrimination against blacks becomes increasingly rare and difficult to specify, you just punish whites for benefits they never received. Elizabeth Warren is a good illustration of this – she talks about white privilege all the time, but if she really believed in it, she would not have pretended to be an American Indian.

You may think I’m being overly critical. “Ok, taxes are too high, and social programs may be inefficient, but they do help somebody!” Well, maybe. But we have spent enormous amounts of money in our “War on Poverty” and poverty rates have not improved, so good luck showing real benefit. I’m not saying we should have no social programs – quite the contrary – I’m just pointing out that their benefit to actual poor people would be difficult to prove.

Dorian is inbound. Bottled water is gone from the grocery stores. Gas lines are hours long, and every gas station I’ve seen today has a police patrol car stationed at it, probably to encourage civility. People are putting up shutters or boarding up their windows.