We Need a Good Scapegoat

Scapegoating has got a bad name in recent years. Probably it's because our liberal friends don't like being blamed for the many failures of their welfare state.

But scapegoating is clearly a necessary part of life in human community. When things go wrong you need to pile all the blame on something or someone.

You cast the scapegoat into outer darkness. Only then can life go on, cleansed of the swirling cesspools of guilt and failure.

Very often in the past the king had to die to expiate the sins of the world. Christianity has gone the whole hog on this. God sacrifices his Son to expiate the sins of the world.

In modern democratic practice, we throw the bums out every couple of elections. At least, we throw the presidents out, focusing all our frustrations of the symbol of the nation. (President Bush is gone now, liberals. Time to move on.)

But I think we need better closure on the mortgage meltdown. I think our liberal friends are getting off cheap by blaming bankers and bonuses and Wall Street deregulation.

It can't be just the bankers that are to blame. That's because ever since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 finance has been a government program. You could blame the bankers back in the 19th century when the US didn't have a central bank. But not any more.

No, liberals. The problem wasn't bankers and bonuses. The problem was you and your Fannie Mae and your Freddie Mac and your Community Reinvestment Act and your villainous liberal politicians that bullied banks into making sub-prime loans.

So we need liberal scapegoats. And we know who they should be. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). The egregious errors and unrepentant arrogance of these two legislators are not to be borne.

(It is delightful that the villainous firm of lawyers in The Pickwick Papers, the chaps who hound poor Mr. Pickwick into debtors prison, went by the name of Dodson and Fogg. Pretty cute, eh?)

We must pitch Dodson and Fogg--I mean Dodd and Frank--out of Congress.

Otherwise justice will not be done. Otherwise we will not have propitiated the gods. Otherwise we will not have concentrated all our guilt and shame into the necessary scapegoats and cast them out into outer darkness.

Voters of Connecticut and Massachusetts! The nation expects you to do your duty.