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Perhaps the rarified air breathed by the putative 1% has at last impacted their mental processes. One thing is certain: any inhibitions they had about drawing attention to themselves seem to have dissipated in dramatic public fashion recently. We had the Tom Perkins’ letter in the Wall Street Journal, followed by comments from Sam Zell and other “cranky billionaires.” Now Charles Koch has chimed in with his own WSJ op-ed. I guess the time has come for us of the 99% to get lectured by our betters.

The Koch screed is a fascinating study in myopia. Charles and his brother David, as you know, inherited their enormous wealth from their father, an oil man who made a fortune building refineries for Stalinist Russia in the 1930’s. The elder Koch was an original member of the John Birch Society, and passed his antipathy towards the Federal government onto his sons. What you understand about people such as Charles Koch in reading his essay is that the one thing a person cannot inherit is a robust intellectualism. His affirmative argument for his own proposal (“I'm Fighting to Restore a Free Society”) would probably be shredded by a decent high school debater. A few examples:

Koch asserts that “the fundamental concepts of dignity, respect, equality before the law and personal freedom are under attack by the nation's own government.” He neglects to provide evidence or even one example to support the assertion.

“In a truly free society, any business that disrespects its customers will fail, and deserves to do so.” While it is not at all clear what Koch imagines constitutes a “truly free society’, he does sidestep the reality that the monopolies and oligopolies that dominate the private sector seem to do quite well while disrespecting their customers. Comcast is one of these. Check out Catherine Rampell’s (@crampell) smack down of the cable giant in last Tuesday’s Washington Post  opinion pages.

The one Koch statement that had me wishing I still possessed my copy of Logic and Rhetoric from freshman English was his definition of “collectivists” as “those who stand for government control of the means of production and how people live their lives”. Somehow the disgruntled Mr. Koch is able to conflate an economic system- socialism- with a socio-political system, tyranny. Again, he presents no evidence that either of those conditions exist today. For sure, though, he does not like either.

In a final irony, Koch says, “Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents.” This comes from a man responsible, along with his brother, for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on political advertising often criticized as dishonest.

The Koch piece is a pushback against the criticism directed against Charles and David for the massive sums they are spending to influence this year’s elections. Their goal is Republican control of the Senate. In retaliation, Democrats have begun making the Koch’s themselves an issue. Terms like “outside money” show up in Democratic campaign literature with greater frequency. Harry Reid has called the brothers “un-American”. Unaccustomed, I assume, to the rough-and-tumble side of politics, Charles felt compelled to defend himself. The result is a fatuous screed replete with platitudes about “liberty”.

The piece drew predictable barbs from left-leaning pundits. Koch, however, was successful in making one point clear: He is much better at writing checks than at writing an opinion piece.

Stick to what you know, Chuck.