THE CLASS-WARFARE CARD

In the run-up to the last election, I heard Fox  cable "news" anchor Larry Kudlow accuse a guest (who was being slightly critical of the Republican's "hands-off business-no-matter-what" policies) of "playing the class-warfare card". 
It got me thinking, just how many rich men are there who have no rational economic opportunity after High School but to enlist in the Armed forces? Just how many poor people control editorial boards? How many poor people set corporate policies? Investment strategies? Just how many rich men died digging the gold and copper out of other mens's mines? How many rich men died building the mighty railroads that criss-cross America's mountains and deserts?

 Do I hear you right, Larry? Two plus two isn't four because my shoes need a shine? That's no defense at all, it's a simple logical fallacy, Dr. Aristotle.  This old ad hominem defense,  accusing your critics of "playing the class-warfare card" just isn't gonna work, Larry. When what you are trying to defend are self-serving deceptions, byzantine frauds, massive greed, selfish motives, predatory reflexes, evasive accounting and PAC behavior that smells exactly like plain old-fashioned bribery. the jury is gonna want to hear a whole lot more than that. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

It doesn't take an economist to tell a dairyman from his cow. The one ending up with all the milk is... not the cow. Even more revealing, your remark marginalizes the glaring fact that there truly is a class war furiously raging, but it's been pretty one-sided so far, with one side doing all the warring, and the other? All the dying.

The "Class-Warfare Card" has been on the table for a long, long time, fruit of "the root of all evil..."

From Teddy Roosevelt: ”...the most dangerous members of the criminal class, the malefactors of great wealth...”. Asked how a meeting went, “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions to be worth hearing, but as a rule, they don't know anything outside their own business.” 

E. H. Harriman,
Skull and Bones

Of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman Roosevelt said, “...he said he could buy a sufficient number of Senators and Congressman to protect his interests, and when necessary, could buy the Judiciary.”

House Tyrant "Uncle Joe" Gurney

Senator Weldon Heyburn of Idaho: In opposition to the eight-hour workday: “People should toil from sunrise to sundown and to hell with the clock.” On calls to regulate lumber and mining interests in the West, “It is revolutionary to insist that the rights of the public to the national resources outweigh private rights.” 

Idaho Senator Fred Dubois

Idaho's Fred Dubois, Heyburn's Democratic colleague in the Senate from 1903-07, wrote to mine owner Harry Day,  of Weyburn, "You and I both know his faults, but at the same time he has virtues. One of these is that he will be outspoken and fearless in protecting all the industries of Idaho"".

Through the clear eye of history, the real "class-warfare card" looks just like a funeral invitation.