Envy: Liberals’ Favorite Sin

That’s a shot from the 1997 cult-classic horror film The Devil’s Advocate, starring, in addition to Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, and Charlize Theron. It’s one of my favorites and I regard it as criminally underrated. I won’t speak too much on it except to say Pacino portrays the Devil, and his iconic line from the movie is Vanity; definitely my favorite sin.

Well, for liberals, their favorite sin is envy. Though comparing liberals with the Devil might be lowbrow, all sins have one thing in common: they bring out the worst in us. For liberals, envy brings out the worst in them.

Now that Elon Musk has become a trillionaire, critics are pouncing to condemn him for not solving all the world’s problems with his newfound riches:

Wokal Distance@wokal_distance

Leftists claimed Elon Musk could end world hunger for only 6 Billion dollars, and then Mackenzie Scott spent 4 times that amount and it didn't do anything to solve world hunger.

Pubity @pubity

Jeff Bezos' ex-wife MacKenzie Scott has given over $26,300,000,000 to charity, making her one of the biggest individual donors in history. She wants to spend the majority of her Bezos fortune on helping others and making the world a better place.

4:50 AM · Jun 28, 2026 · 65.9K Views

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It doesn’t matter to liberals if world hunger gets solved. They simply don’t like the idea of anyone having that much more than them. Their thinking doesn’t go any deeper than that. Their opposition to cutting government aid programs isn’t because people actually benefit from them. It’s because they regard the act of giving as the end itself. It doesn’t matter the outcome, success or failure has no bearing. If anything, failure is better than success, because it justifies demanding even more money.

It’s also worth noting that liberals are less likely than conservatives to donate to charity. Which is fine, of course - nobody is entitled to anyone else’s money. But it’s hypocritical to demand others be charitable while not being charitable yourself. How much money a person has doesn’t have anything to do with it, especially if they think the act of charity is the whole point. I believe there’s something in the Bible about how a poor person giving what little they have means more than a rich person giving a lot of what they have.

This is a talk for another time, but scholars like Rob Henderson point out that today’s class divide isn’t between rich and poor, but between the affluent and the even more wealthy. In other words, the biggest critics of the wealthy are quite well-off themselves, even by American standards. The irony is lost on these affluent liberals, of course, who see themselves as the voice of the voiceless.

The reality is, someone like Elon Musk has benefited more people than any affluent liberal or any leftist politician arguing for higher taxes ever will:

Ben Hart@BenHart_Freedom

This welder named Juan Hernandez just became a millionaire by working for SpaceX. His pay was $28 per hour, but he was also awarded $10,000 in stock when he became a full-time employee in 2015. He also bought a bit more SpaceX stock with each paycheck. He now owns 6,500

8:22 PM · Jun 12, 2026 · 6.56K Views

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Show me a single government program that can help a person like this. I’ll wait.

Of course, when you can’t win the argument, you move the goalposts:

EyeRoller@MaximumK75753

@SydSteyerhart You people seem to have this strange idea that you give to charity to "solve" homelessness or poverty or hunger. The point is to help the people suffering. To say that helping people in need is unimportant or insignificant is not only unChristian but fundamentally inhumane

3:09 AM · Jun 28, 2026 · 193K Views

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No. Just no. Liberals have made it clear the super-wealthy like Musk are supposed to use their riches to deliver millions from poverty, to affect major social changes, not merely ease suffering. All that does, at the end of the day, is preserve the status quo. Sure, it might make for some feel-good stories, but if the wealthy aren’t going to be expected to help the less fortunate rise above it all, what’s the point, really?

By the way, what did MacKenzie Scott donate her $26 billion to, anyway? This:

Katie Miller@KatieMiller

MacKenzie Scott has given away $26 billion — almost entirely to progressive groups that seek to dismantle the very way of life that built her fortune: • $275M to Planned Parenthood • $51M to The Trevor Project for LGBTQ youth • $1.2B for racial equity education • $586M to

4:20 PM · Jun 28, 2026 · 856K Views

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None of which helps pull people out of poverty. Looks like liberals don’t actually believe in that, either. What they absolutely do believe in is advancing the ideology. It’s an expensive job, you know?

They also tried blaming Musk’s DOGE initiative for the deaths of millions:

James Surowiecki@JamesSurowiecki

No - once you decide to become responsible for helping sick people get drugs they need to stay alive (which was an excellent decision), you accept that if you stop that assistance, people will die. Musk - and his ridiculous supporters, like Rufo - want to avoid that fact.

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @christopherrufo

The moral calculus here is insane. According to Kristof, the USA is responsible for every poor nation in the entire world. If an ambulance runs out of fuel in rural Liberia, that is our fault. The liberal has a pathological tension between the feelings of omnipotence and guilt.

1:52 AM · Jun 30, 2026 · 743K Views

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I’m not going to address the mathematical aspect of this, which requires some stretch of the imagination to credibly accept. I’m going to address the philosophical aspect of this - according to such logic, why should anyone ever help anyone? If helping someone effectively incurs a lifetime of liability, and there’s no way to back out of an entirely voluntary, one-sided commitment, why would anyone ever agree to that?

Liberals can attempt moral blackmail all they want. It doesn’t change a thing. Since it’s not up to them to decide what anyone else does with their money, nobody has any obligation of any kind to attach themselves to what effectively amounts to lifetime bondage. According to Bad Takes King James Surowiecki’s impressive logic, slaves should’ve never been freed since they’ve been made to be dependent on their masters for survival. It also stands to reason that once they’ve been freed, by no means do former slave-masters or anyone else hold any obligation towards them, except for perhaps what was separately agreed upon or what is legitimately owed. If America owed the former slaves anything, it was probably the plots of the land they worked or free trips back to Africa. But I digress.

Why’s it that when liberals are told to be more charitable themselves, all they have to give are excuses?

James Surowiecki@JamesSurowiecki

@Cernovich How am I supposed to contribute money to USAID?

3:07 AM · Jun 30, 2026 · 353K Views

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Seriously, that’s his response. We already know liberals are far less charitable than conservatives. That’s fine, too - again, nobody should be told what to do with their money. But then why are liberals so preoccupied with how others spend their money? Why does everything need to come out of taxation? When will liberals ever invest any risk of their own?

Because when you’re the one assuming risk, the outcome matters.

This is why electing people who’ve never put any money or skin into the game or allowing them to participate in the political process isn’t just a bad idea, it’s anti-democratic:

Culture Explorer@CultureExploreX

What a cheap shot. Criticize Mamdani’s policies all you want, but saying he has built nothing because he hasn’t built companies at your scale only shows how narrow your definition of value has become. Public life, organizing, legislation, and representation count too. Wealth

Elon Musk @elonmusk

@FoxNews Mamdani has built nothing. He is a taker, never a maker.

5:35 AM · Jul 5, 2026 · 208K Views

1.43K Replies · 234 Reposts · 2.53K Likes

The point is that someone like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani risks nothing. If anything, he’s someone who made a career out of convincing everyone else to risk something. Now he’s in a position of authority, where he doesn’t need to ask. He simply tells. I think that matters. For democracy to work, we need to be able to trust that both leaders and voters know what it means to risk something, that they understand that not everyone can win, that sometimes people can lose. Anyone whose politics revolves around the idea everyone can win is selling a false bill of goods.

Of course, if we took democracy as seriously as we claim, we’d understand that.

Global entertainment superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, starring in the live remake of Disney’s Moana, laments the lack of representation in the media he endured as a child:

Variety@Variety

Dwayne Johnson says he lacked cultural representation in the media growing up: "'Indiana Jones' inspired me. When I was 8 years old watching Harrison Ford, I was like, 'I want to be that guy,' but that guy didn't look like me." variety.com/2026/film/news…

6:04 AM · Jul 8, 2026 · 4.79M Views

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Hmm. My gut, which is usually not wrong, tells me that The Rock didn’t give a damn about representation 15 or even as recently as 10 years ago. We all know what changed in the interim, there’s no need to go over that. For Johnson to claim that representation was an issue for him growing up is ironic, given that it never stopped him from pursuing an entertainment career, going on to become a mega-star.

Popular X account “RAW EGG NATIONALIST” claps back (we can play that game too!) with as good a response as any:

RAW EGG NATIONALIST@Babygravy9

It’s quite remarkable that no amount of success can temper or nullify the deep-seated resentment people feel. You can be the biggest action star in the world and yet somehow you’re still a child seething because Indiana Jones wasn’t from Fiji.

Variety @Variety

Dwayne Johnson says he lacked cultural representation in the media growing up: "'Indiana Jones' inspired me. When I was 8 years old watching Harrison Ford, I was like, 'I want to be that guy,' but that guy didn't look like me." https://t.co/qqwbSokU1T

1:37 PM · Jul 10, 2026 · 305K Views

282 Replies · 910 Reposts · 11.3K Likes

Seriously. At the risk of dating myself, I was nine when I saw Will Smith portray fighter pilot Captain Steven Hiller, U.S. Marine Corps, who saved the planet from aliens in the movie Independence Day. Despite not being black myself, not once did I think “I can’t be a fighter pilot like him; I’m not black!”1 No, I didn’t become a fighter pilot, but it had nothing to do with race nor the lack of representation of people like me in media.

Similarly, the fact Bruce Lee was Chinese didn’t stop millions of young White men from getting into martial arts. If anything, White men would’ve been considered even more racist than they already are if they expressed such sentiments. By the way, why are Whites consistently the least racist or racialized of people?

One of the false promises of liberal, civil rights-centric culture was that it wouldn’t matter that Indiana Jones was White. That the many characters Will Smith played were black. They all transcended race. You still saw a bit of yourself in them. One of the reasons why The Rock became a superstar was because millions of young White boys, as well as those of other races, saw something in them that they liked. I don’t think any of them thought, “He’s Samoan, I’m not. I couldn’t ever be him, I couldn’t ever identify with him.” The Rock was someone who transcended every divide imaginable. He still does, in many ways. That’s what makes these most recent comments on representation disheartening to hear.

A nice thought was all it was. In the end, civil rights and liberalism indulged envy, creating a society where literally everything is defined by the fact someone has more than you, has more representation than you, looks better than you, the list goes on, and you’re supposed to get angry about that. You could end up becoming as successful as Dwayne Johnson and it’s still not enough. There’s still an unaddressed grievance, an axe to grind. Maybe that’s the whole point, too, because without something to struggle against, does our existence even mean anything?

In that light, envy is just like hatred. It’s insatiable, something which cannot be assuaged. Hate begets hate, envy begets envy. Think about it: the last time you were jealous of someone, did you respect them? Or did you resent them? The feelings may not last, but the point is, in that moment you felt jealousy, did you also not resent them at the same time, even if the feelings eventually subsided?

The fact is, no amount of representation will satisfy anyone. No amount of charity will satisfy anyone. That’s because none of that matters. None of that was ever the point.

In closing, it’s worth remembering that of the seven deadly sins, hate wasn’t one of them. Envy not only was, hatred was considered a byproduct of envy. This means that envy is far worse than hatred. Yet, not only do we consider hate to be the greater sin, we build entire political platforms based off envy.

I see a problem here. Don’t you?

What are your thoughts on anything discussed? Talk it out in the comments section.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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