“authority without responsibility creates monsters.”
And I vehemently disagree with this. They were monsters FIRST. Only monsters would deliberately create a situation like this knowing full well many innocent people would die because of it, and they did not care. In faact, thy were overjoyed.
Monsters before, monsters now, and monsters forevermore.
Amen to that! They deliberately tried to create a bubble of unaccountability around themselves to carry out their murderous scheme.
Later in his essay, Wallace could have been describing the major players in Operation Fast and Furious when he asserts that "authority without responsibility creates monsters."As far as voting for president is concerned, the theory of absolute "it happened on his watch" responsibility has to apply. Of course one of the primary ways the AP journalism monopoly puts its thumb on the scale is by applying high standards of responsibility to Republican and no standard of responsibility to Democrats. A Ronald Reagan can, quite properly, verbally "take responsibility" for a serious lapse which happened on his watch when he does not ascribe negligence or malfeasance to his subordinates. He did so in the aftermath of the truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. But when he did, Sam Donaldson asked him if he was going to resign!And if Wallace's analysis applies, demanding the "I won" administration to tell us "who gave the order" is futile and will lead only to boxes of purged e-mails.
But a Bill Clinton can get caught with an opposition research specialist committing felonies on a wholesale basis in the WH basement, without even admitting that he hired whoever hired Craig Livingstone - if indeed he didn't do so himself. No thought, on the part of any journalist, of absolute responsibility then!!!
Basically, journalists, academics, and others who criticize without any bottom-line responsibility for the results of their supposed panaceas are the worst sort to be put in charge of anything. They will promote socialism, which is the ultimate separation of responsibility from authority. And that is monstrous, as the article suggests.
Well said, and absolutely right.
And I vehemently disagree with this. They were monsters FIRST.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)