Sunday, November 13, 2011

QotD: Dangerous Master Edition

"[T]he good of having the government prohibited from doing harm far outweighs the harm of having it obstructed from doing good."
Dang, but I wish I'd written that.

Mike's written a couple doozies lately. You should go read them, if you have not already.

9 comments:

perlhaqr said...

That's a pretty damn good quote.

Alan J. said...

Great quote! That's what I've always thought our Founding Fathers had in mind as they wrote the Constitution.

Matt G said...

There's a couple of other nice turns of phrases in there, too. Try, for instance, the last two paragraphs. (Hey, Mike? I was going to quote the last sentence on the penultimate paragraph, but my buffer wasn't large enough.)

WilhelmDurand said...

When your government's actions are actually worse than a random number generator's, then yes, this is true.

Zendo Deb said...

Wilhelm, government actions always drift towards the negative.

After Katrina, they turned back trucks filled with bottled water. (Took them 3 days to get 1 truck with water to the Superdome. It COULD have been there in 24 hours.)

After storms hit Florida. The LEOs routinely turn away people wanting to sell generators. Even if they have existing orders from people. Because, you know, they MIGHT be going to charge too much.

Think TSA. Having our planes safe, as they fly around the country is a wonderful goal. Having a bunch of unionized thugs groping and molesting women and children before they board a plane is not a good solution.

It is the nature of bureaucracies to expand their power.

1911Man said...

Mike wrote, "It is the side which believes the good of having the government prohibited from doing harm far outweighs the harm of having it obstructed from doing good."

I would have phrased it, "It is the side which believes the good of having the government prohibited from doing harm far outweighs the harm of enabling it to do good."

Buzz said...

Yup, just like guilty being "beyond a shadow of a doubt."

It's better to let a guilty one slide by that to put an innocent one in jail. The true scum will find a way to have his number come up again.

Mike said...

Thanks, that was very kind of you. I wondered what happened when comments started showing up.

Quizikle said...

"Concord Bridge or Ft Sumter"

The title alone says much...
(One was legal, one wasn't)
Q