Wal-Mart Hysteria: The Madness Continues (and Continues….)

Tom’s entry about Wal-Mart and Pullman, Washington, reminds me of what happened at a recent faculty computer training course I took here at Frostburg State. Some liberal arts faculty were there, and whenever we had discussion board exercises or anything like that, someone would bring up Wal-Mart, and then the jihad would continue. It is hard to comprehend the obsession that the “social justice” elites, plus all of their allies in the clergy, media, and universities have with Wal-Mart.

Of course, all of them are supportive of the recent anti-Wal-Mart bill that the Maryland legislature passed, and I suspect that they want nothing less than for the store to be destroyed and the company go out of business. Furthermore, this obsession is not limited to leftists; the Chronicles crowd of “social conservatives” is just as nutty on this subject as my leftist colleagues at FSU.

This madness is only going to get worse over the next few years, as more and more politicians are going to base their campaigns on anti-Wal-Mart themes. Two years ago, Theresa Heinz Kerry — who shops at places where people need references just to walk in the door — declared that “Wal-Mart destroys communities.” This year, expect even more of the same.Nor will it let up during the upcoming presidential campaign. When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton served on the Wal-Mart board of directors. I can guarantee you that her service for Wal-Mart (one of the few positive things she has done in her career) will be a central campaign issue during the Democratic Primary, and it will be interesting to see how she turns that into an attack on the company.

All of this is evil, and it is madness. It also is another example of how all these people who claim to love the “little guy” actually are contemptuous of such folk.

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8:54 am on January 25, 2006