Eugene Volokh ends his post on societal inequality with this joke which I have excerpted.

The Volokh Conspiracy -:
"There's an old Soviet joke about the man who visits Hell. In Hell, there are three giant cauldrons in which the sinners are being boiled. On the rim of one stands a regiment of demons, shoulder to shoulder, constantly using their pitchforks to smack down the sinners who are trying to escape. On the rim of the second walk a few demons, who occasionally whack someone down. The rim of the third is empty, but no-one is getting out.

What's going on here?, the visitor asks. 'There are three kinds of people,' the Devil says. (In the original joke, they are Jews, Russians, and Ukrainians, but in honor of the Orange Revolution I've sworn off Ukrainian jokes . . . .) 'The first kind is in the first cauldron. When one looks like he's trying to escape, all the rest follow him. We need a lot of demons to manage them.

'The second kind is in the second cauldron. Occasionally someone is trying to escape, but the others don't pay any attention. It takes just a few demons to deal with this kind.

'The third kind is in the third cauldron: When one is starting to escape, all the others drag him back down by the ankles.'

Don't be that third kind."

There seem to me to be communities of the third kind today in America.  ¶ 12/14/2004 09:14:00 PM