This rant brought to you by capitalism.

I must rant this evening.

A couple of weeks ago I made the mistake of bookmarking a blog aggregator that collects blogs of quilters and puts all their latest entries in one page. Materials, techniques, pictures of cats, photos of travels. This interests me.

Unfortunately, it also aggregates all their Marxist anti-American screeds, along with screens and screens of "ZOMG! Global warming will kill us all!11!! Teh poor polar bears will drownd!" quilts. Polar bears can swim, and I thought leftists believed in evolution? Anyway...I deal, to get to the good stuff.

Today one particular blog jumped out at me. It's by a couple of retirement age, who have been driving around the U.S. and Canada in their hybrid, staying at quaint B&Bs, visiting museums and gardens ("peace gardens", eating at lovely organic cafes, shopping at cute locally-owned shops, and taking a billion pictures with their digital camera and posting their adventures to the Internet. Sound idyllic, minus the usual anti-Bush rants...except today their post was about "the evils of capitalism", how capitalism destroyed Montana, and how the U.S. has to do a better job of redistributing my income for "social justice."

Let's see. Their hybrid vehicle was brought to them by...capitalism. No one would have designed, marketed, and manufactured it if they hadn't thought they could make a few bucks. The museums and gardens? Doubtless sponsored by corporations and foundations and legacies left by...capitalists (as many taxpayer dollars get wasted on crap like "peace gardens", they're not enough to keep any of it open). Organic cafes, serving local produce, brought into down by trucks powered by fuel...capitalism, capitalism, and capitalism in action. Digital camera--hey, capitalism! Internet...didn't take off outside of academia until people realized they could make money from it.

And finally, I'm sure a couple can't drive cross-country patronizing the quaint and the organic for months on end on their Social Security alone! If they have all that extra damn money and they believe poor people should have other people's money, why don't they donate it to some drop-out single mothers in their home state for diapers instead of spending it on luxury items while they agitate for the government to remove my opportunity saving and investing so I can spend a year in my retirement driving cross-country?

(That's rhetorical; I already know that liberals have no inclinations toward walking their talk.)

I'm not sure what pisses me off more: the ignorance, or the arrogance. Sounds like a good name for a soap opera.

I'm not going to say Montana doesn't have some problems these days, but Communism isn't going to make a single damn thing better. At least they can get toilet paper all the way out there in Butte...


*sigh*
I just wanted to spend a Friday night looking at quilts...