A lesson on Copenhagen from George Mason professor Charles Rowley, who recently started blogging:
A fox, caught in a trap, escaped by tearing off his bushy tail.
After that, the other animals mocked him, making him feel so ashamed that his life was a burden to him. He therefore worked out a plan to make all the other foxes the same as him, so that in their common loss he might better conceal his own deprivation.
He called a meeting of foxes. A good many came to it, and he gave a speech, advising them all to cut off their tails. He said that they would not only look much better without them, but that they would get rid of the weight of the brush, which was a very great inconvenience.
But one of them interrupted his speech.
“If you had not lost your own tail, my friend,” that fox said, “you would not be giving us this advice.”
Aesop 6th century BC
Let us hope that the alpha-male US fox, at the forthcoming meeting of all the foxes in Copenhagen in December 2009, remembers this fable, and understands its meaning, when listening to the pleas of all those foxes from Continental Europe who have already cut off their own tails, and now beg those that are yet not disfigured to mutilate themselves likewise.
If the big US fox is insufficiently smart to heed the fable, one can rest assured that the smarter foxes from India and the People’s Republic of China will prove to be adept at retaining their brushes so that they can mock and humiliate the now incredibly shrinking, debrushed US fox.
The UN called a meeting of the nations. A good many came to it, the wealthest country among them. A leader pleaded their cause was just and asked all to forgoe their economies and prosperity. He said that not to do so would be mean-spirited and it was the only way to save our planet.
No one deserved to be better off than their neighbor and the rich countries could atone for their historical wrongdoings. The weight of not being respected and loved would thus be removed after all wealth had been fully re-distributed.
Standards of living dramatically fell for the masses in the West. It did not matter that the peril depicted had not been true.
The wealth was gone and the damage had been done.