Watching Wal Mart Undercover

Philip Klein of The American Spectator recently attended a viewing of Wal Mart: This High Cost of Low Price at the Greenwich Village headquaters of the Socialist Party of New York City. Yes, he lived to tell the tale with his intellect intact. He has also written about it on his blog. I actually met Mr. Klein at CPAC earlier this year, and had a good conversation about drugs (what else?).

Apparently, the Mr. Klein's comrades in the audience had issues with captialism AND private charity:

The film also profiles a young Chinese woman who moved to the city of Shenzhen to work in a Wal-Mart factory, where she labors more than 12 hours a day for pennies per hour. This is sure to be unconscionable to any American audience, because Americans enjoy the opportunities that come with living in a capitalist economy. But China has been under Communist rule for over 50 years, so working in a sweatshop for 12 hours a day is actually an improvement over prior conditions. In fact, the woman who is profiled said that her mother asked her to move back to rural China to be a corn farmer, but she declined, choosing instead to remain at the Wal-Mart factory.

Of course, the audience of Greenwich Village socialists had a different perspective on the film.

One fact that got the audience's attention was that the Walton family has given less than 1 percent of its wealth to charity, but Bill Gates has given 58 percent. However, this didn't endear anyone to the founder of Microsoft.

"The idea that somebody with that much money can just give magnanimously to causes he chooses is insulting," one person said of Gates's philanthropy.

Unfortunately, Mr. Klein decided not to be an agitator, instigator or whatever it is Leftists call themselves to make the feel "revolutionary." One would think that Greenwich Village socialists would be really easy targets for either reason or ridicule.

The real revolutionaries in today's America are those who actually stand for individual freedom, the market process, and a limited, constitutional state. I count myself as one.