Saturday, August 8, 2009

Quote of the Day

"Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom. This has been recognized for centuries by some, but many others have not yet faced that reality, even today. If you think government should "do something" about anything that ticks you off, or anything you want and don't have, then you have made your choice between Utopia and freedom."

Thomas Sowell.

4 comments:

Martin said...

I'm generally against big government as much as you are, however, not 100%.

How would you answer something like this?

Stan said...

Generally speaking each assertion is false. Taking credit and assigning blame is a Leftist ploy that is based on no evidence, but is based on the presumption that if it is good, it was done by the Left. That is just false, bi-partisanship (remember that?) did most of it. Further, much of the progress they claim is not theirs to claim: they did not invent clean water, safe drugs etc. and what they did invent, Social Security, is a confiscatory Ponzi Scheme that is destined to collapse in a disasterous failure affecting millions.

Conservationism preceeded evironmentalism by a century, and was a functional movement as opposed to a religious movement worshipping Gaia, which environmentalism has become.

That piece is a self-congratulatory piece of fiction written by the annointed, for the annointed. And the annointed are proud of it. It makes them feel confident of their superiority.

Martin said...

I'm not saying I agree with it, but the question is: is some government regulation necessary? Is a true free market really possible? Should there be SOME government services? Should SOME things be socialized?

I really don't know. I'm just asking.

Stan said...

I personally think it depends on the character of the populace, whether the people as a whole accept personal responsibility for themselves, and whether there is an underpinning of the attitude of fairness as opposed to litigated "justice".

Too much of our current society has been reduced to a maleducated, non-contemplative, "new rights without moral foundations" consumerist peasantry. A truly free society needs better than that. Our society has been engineered for socialism from Dewey on; in retrospect it was inevitable.

The real question is, what remains for the rest of us? There is no wild, untouched frontier left for us to disappear into. The socialists will not tolerate our dissent: the goons have been launched. With that as a precedent, nothing much else is beyond imagination.