Leave it to The Nation to spend, what, five thousand words or so sympathizing with a guy who can't get a job with his $35,000 degree in puppetry. Yes, puppetry. While useful in a, "no, really, they are all a bunch of dreamy losers" way, the article also proves a second point.

A key to understanding progressives is getting your head around their belief that constraining someone's choices is the same thing as having no choices at all. While you and I may see this guy's unemployment as the logical result of his bad decisions, progressives see it as an example of the corrupt system. His lack of work is caused by corporate greed sucking away the money and the morals required to pay this guy to do exactly as he pleases. From that point of view it's quite logical to take the next step. If immoral corporations and greedy rich people are what really stand in the way of his $250,000 a year puppeteer job, then let's use the power of the state to take that money and force them to do the right thing with it.

As with so many other progressive and liberal ideas, even if they got what they wanted it wouldn't work. If the past experiments with socialism have proven anything, it's that when you take money from people who make it and give it to people who don't, the people making the money will stop. Which leads us to another leitmotif of the left: human nature is changeable. The reason all those other experiments failed had nothing to do with the fact the ideas are wrong. No, sir, they failed because the people involved weren't smart enough, talented enough, or strong enough to follow them through to success. We aren't them, so this time will be different. It's perfectly fine to try the same social recipe again. It will work because we know it will!

The problem for them is the horse has truly left the barn. After 2006, and especially after 2008, Democrats held all the cards required to implement as much of a progressive agenda as they dared. We're standing in the middle of that "success," and every poll I've seen is showing not just defeat for them, but outright debacle. Nobody knows yet who the Republican nominee will be but it doesn't matter much. The Republican president who replaces Obama will have, as he did, super majorities in both sides of Congress. Even better, unlike Democrats, when Republicans get put in charge Stuff Gets Done. True, sometimes it's not the right stuff, but the Democrats have made such a spectacular mess of things the cleanup effort should keep the social conservatives too busy to cause too much trouble.

The US is a coiled spring right now. Everything I've read is about how businesses are sitting on huge piles of cash, too afraid of or constrained by the current administration to do anything with it. Put the right people in charge and the whole thing will come undone with a mighty "SPROING!" I definitely won't be worrying about the occupiers then, because they'll all have jobs.

Who knows, if the economy grows fast and far enough, that guy might even get to do puppetry in one.

Via Instapundit.