Monologs with Murray, Day Two 08.16.02

Day Two

It was Balzac who said,

“Behind every great fortune is a crime.”A crime is committed only when a law is broken.

Most great fortunes were made before there were laws to prohibit the outrageous schemes used to acquire them.

So technically they were not crimes, but the new laws succeeded in preventing the accumulation of new fortunes by those means and legitimizing those that had already been acquired.

Early in man’s history, there were no laws.

When governments and laws were established, their sole purpose was to confirm the rights of the fortunate to hold on to their fortunes and the powers that came with them.

Such a government was designed to preserve the status quo.

Anyone who threatened it and its laws was now a criminal.

Now wasn’t that easy?

Social studies 101, in a nutshell.

No more “Law of the Jungle”.

We are now civilized!

We have dukes and kings and dynasties that a few generations earlier were bandits and mass murderers.

And now they rule by “divine right”.

In America, one generation will suffice to convert a family of robber barons into liberal governors, and bootleggers into presidents.

In Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”, the Thenardiers looted the bodies of dead revolutionaries.

They became so wealthy that the nobility could not ignore them.

The Thenardiers, in all their new finery, were invited to their royalist parties.

Looting is hard work. If you don’t think so, try it some time.

Wise guy!