[WASHINGTONTIMES] Boris Johnson, the irrepressible mayor of London, said some provocative things the other day to a private think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, and political London -- mostly the scribblers, anyway -- has been in a tizzy since.The mayor playfully invoked Gordon Gecko, who exists only in a movie, and his economic philosophy that "greed is good" to make the point that intelligence, ambition, inspiration and above all perspiration is the irresistible driver of prosperity for everyone. He observed that some people are smarter than others, and that the 2 percent pulls the 98 percent into the good life. To the consternation of conservatives in the government and the left-wing columnists and commentators, the mayor is still upright and walking around.
The 98 percent should be grateful to the 2 percent and not spend a lot of time cultivating resentment. "Some measure of inequality is essential for the spirit of envy," he said, "and keeping up with the Joneses is, like greed, a valuable spur to the economy." This reflects an unremarkable understanding of what was once called human nature before the liberals -- "progressives," they call themselves now -- decided that the state can install a better nature than God did.
Mr. Johnson then went even further. He said nice things about Margaret Thatcher, who has never been forgiven in certain of these precincts for pulling Britannia out of the deep coma imposed by a welfare state that had reduced an empire to "a little England."
The mayor sometimes talks less like a mayor than a newspaper columnist, which he is as well, for The Daily Telegraph. The squeals from the left and the harrumphs from the right after his Maggie Thatcher remarks may be less about the interpretations of his message than about the folly of electing a newspaper columnist to high office. Instead of bashing the rich, he wrote the other day, "we should be offering them humble and hearty thanks. It is through their restless, concupiscent energy and sheer wealth-creating dynamism that we pay for an ever-growing proportion of public services."