Posted on 11/05/2009 6:43:27 AM PST by cpurick
The false premise here is that "tradition" is either arbitrary or antiquated when in fact it is neither.
A progressive should recognize that "traditional" American values are highly evolved, originating in a philsophical quantum leap known as the Age of Enlightenment. The lifestyle Americans enjoy is nothing less than Darwin on display: survival of the fittest. Not some zero sum game nonsense of Americans surviving while everyone else perishes, but evolution in the sense that our enlightened freedom displaces the natural poverty that other social and political structures just can't seem to eradicate.
The liberal laments that our prosperity is shackled by so much tradition (property rights, anyone?) without ever recognizing traditional values as the very source of that prosperity.
Every authoritarian government in history has been an experiment in all the same principles of liberalism. Progressives have new theories, but their ideas are neither better nor new.
Progressive income taxation did not work when the king took all the money for himself, and it does not work any better when the elites give it away to their favored interests. Prosperity isn't bound by whether there's a law against poverty -- the problem is that less gets produced when there are laws against wealth. And that's exactly what progressive taxes are, whether imposed by medieval nobility or modern-day elites.
(Excerpt) Read more at whoisjohngalt.com ...
You can’t argue with the mentally ill. They believe that dear leader will take care of them and that’s that.
When good compromises with evil, it is only evil that can profit.
He is right about everliving into the lowest common morals
Evolving
Spell check got me again.
He is right about everliving into the lowest common morals
everliving= Evolving
Lets see if the correction stays this time.
This belief in “evolving man” and that man is “basically good” logically leads them to empower elites to make decisions for everyone.
Some, obviously, are so much more “evolved” than others that they, logically, make better decisions, and should be given the power to do so.
Excellent piece! Thanks for posting it.
Some, obviously, are so much more “evolved” than others that they, logically, make better decisions, and should be given the power to do so.
But the Evolved man turns out to be the Hitler, Chavez, Pol Pot....
Funny, that...
They reject those counter-examples because those were the exception to the “elite” rule, just some people that went bad. They don’t understand that this is the INEVITABLE result of putting an inherently sinful/flawed man, ANY man, in a position of absolute power over others.
“It can’t happen here”, because THEIR “elite” are “basically good” and “have the best intentions”.
“The liberal laments that our prosperity is shackled by so much tradition (property rights, anyone?) without ever recognizing traditional values as the very source of that prosperity.”
Uber Liberals also lament that property rights are the source of much misery, contributing to the increase of greed, violence and death. If we can only go back to the Garden of Eden, where property was not formally understood, we would live communally, at one with ourselves, our neighbor and God. So saith the myth. This myth will not go away and, therefore, Liberalism will not go away. While it is important to have the underlining idealism of this myth, it is more important that the myth be tempered by reason. This clear sightedness may run in the face of religious change or a yearning for utopia. The only way Utopia will ever be achieved is if we relinquish our body and our private pleasures. Only the dead can do that and they are, perhaps, in Utopia in another more perfect world.
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