There will be no voting our way out of this, and that is as it should be, in at least one aspect: free people do not supplicate to government. They become manifest in their actions. In any case, however, whole generations have gone down under the rampant delusion that the sources of life spring from everything but individual human productivity: they believe that government can steal for them forever.His blog has become the definitive Jeremiad of the Endarkenment.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Quote of the Day: Cannibal Pot edition.
Billy Beck:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Beck is correct. There is zero chance of voting change in November or any subsequent November. The die is cast.
It does become clearer each day, doesn't it? Jefferson was right about the inevitable failure of democratic republics and the dream of the founders has been abandoned in favor of a welfare state.
Recovery from this is becoming more unlikely with each passing day.
de Tocqueville was right.
I hate saying that... not because I disagree, but because I hate admitting that a Frenchman was right about something.
The quote he doesn't attribute - "discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule" - is a pretty good description of the Red Terror, although the Bolshies didn't by any means intend or practice majority rule:"all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies: each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered."
I'd quibble, though, with the idea that majority rule is the culprit in this case, or that it even exists. I tend with the (small r) republican idea that in practice there is no such thing as democracy or majority rule. What you always wind up with is a tyrannical oligarchy acting in the name of the majority.
I do believe this is what Lenin meant by "dictatorship of the proletariat." Not a coincidence that Bolshevik means "majoritarian."
Who says organization says oligarchy (according to Robert Michels). The secesh look better every day.
One thing I like about this blog: it usually sends me to Wikipedia or to dictionary.com. Now I know what a jeremiad is. Learnin' is fun!!
Dixie,
Bastiat was right, too--and a pretty impressive thinker when one realizes he was describing a socialist system that had yet to bloom to its full glory of misery and death.
The quotation of the half-year on Bastiat.net:
"The State is also subject to Malthus’s Law. It tends to exceed the level of its means of existence, it expands in line with its means and what keeps it in existence is the substance of the people. Misfortune thus afflicts those peoples who cannot limit the sphere of action of the State. Freedom, private activity, wealth, well-being, independence and dignity will all disappear."
I suppose it's forgivable to overlook him, since he was by his own countrymen. That's probably why France leads the world in vacation-related deaths, but not productivity.
Alath: the unattributed passage in that item at my place was presented that way for a reason. In the hot-iron-strike of that moment, I wanted people to read it and seriously think about it, without prejudice, which is a real problem with that author. People hear this name and about seven out of ten of them promptly go up in flames.
It came from a pamphlet published in 1946, entitled, "Textbook Of Americanism".
It was Ayn Rand.
Post a Comment