Posted on 11/26/2013 2:05:51 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
At some critical point, everyone makes choices based on incentives and his own perception of self-interest. Somehow the Obama administration has forgotten that natural law.
A therapeutic sense of self-sacrifice is fine in the abstract, but in the concrete such magnanimity causes far more harm to the innocent than does a realistic appraisal of self-interest and a tragic acceptance of the flawed nature of man. The theme of the present administration is that it possesses the wisdom and resources to know better what people should do than they do themselves. From that premise arose most of catastrophes that have befallen this administration.
Consider the logic of Obamacare — a protocol that we lesser folk were supposed to learn about only after the bill was passed, in the expectation that eventually we will surely like it, although we are not able to know that yet. If you use medical care infrequently, you supposedly will rush to sign up to pay more for it, so that those who will pay less can use it more. I wish such idealism were innate to the human character, but nothing suggests that it is. Does providing more coverage at less cost to more people somehow lead to lower costs for all participants? If so, the entire history of capitalism would have to be rewritten. Is it true that the more you try to get onto a website and are stymied, the more you will redouble your efforts to log on? If that were true, wouldn’t Amazon rig its website to fail 20 percent of the time?....
[Following, Victor Davis Hanson lists 25 destructive times that Obama has acted out of self-interest.]
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
The problem with ignoring the role of unchanging human nature is that usually someone other than the utopian gets killed.
Our constitution's use as an actual governing document lasted as long as it did because it recognized and dealt with man's nature, rather than attempt to create the impossible "new man" of progressive imagination.
One thing the framers recognized was that government itself was a dangerous. We’re seeing that right now.
These people warn us not to stick letter openers in electrical outlets, then do it themselves. They’re idiots.
............."No matter how great the crimes progressives commit, no matter how terrible the futures they labor to create, no matter how devastating the human catastrophes they leave behind, the world outside the faith seems ready to forgive their “mistakes” and to grant them the grace of “good intentions.”..........
.....The first truth about leftist missionaries, about believing progressives, is that they are liars. But they are not liars in the ordinary way, which is to say by choice. They are liars by necessity, and often, therefore, without realizing that they are. The necessity for lying arises because it is the political lie that gives their cause its life.
Why, if you were one of them, for example, would you tell the truth? If you were serious about your role as part of humanity’s vanguard, if you had the knowledge (which others did not), that would lead them to a better world, why would you tell them a truth they could not “understand” and that would only servie to hold them back?
If you believed that others could understand your truth, you would not think of yourself as part of a “vanguard.” You would no longer inhabit the morally charmed world of an elite whose members alone can see the light and whose mission is to lead the unenlightened towards it. If everybody could see the same horizon and knew the path to reach it, the future would already have happened and there would be no need for the army of the saints.
That is both the ethical core and psychological heart of what it means to be a part of the left. That is where the gratification comes from. To see yourself as a redeemer. To feel anointed. To be among the elect. In other words: To be progressive is itself the most satisfying narcissism of all.
That is why it is of little concern to them that their socialist schemes have run aground, burying millions of human beings in the process. That is why they don’t care that their panaceas have caused more human suffering than any injustice they have ever challenged. That is why they never learn from their “mistakes,” why the continuance of Them is more important than any truth......................"
The first thing they realized was that government was necessary to secure our rights.
Madison’s Great Desideratum was how to design a government strong enough to accomplish its purposes, yet keep it from infringing our rights. The Framers hit a home run.
Horowitz is fabulous. His “Unholy Alliance” lifted the rock that hid the Leftist/Islamic coalition bent on destruction of the West.
“They are liars by necessity, and often, therefore, without realizing that they are.”
Not only that but they tend to ask questions that seem rhetorical but the truth is that they really don’t understand much of the world around them except for the one they’ve imagined having changed. Their questions are not necessarily rhetorical. Any honest answers that can be provided are incompatible with their operating system and do not compute.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ”
CS Lewis
VDH ping
And to be sure, all the radical feminists pushed the idea that men and women are no different other than physiologically. They also propagated the myth that all the peoples of the world are exactly similar in physical and mental capabilities. Leftists have been living in a dreamland for as long as there's been leftism.
I may have ranted this before, but take for example the idealistic sounding Marxist premise;
“From each according to their abilities, too each according to their needs”.
It is incompatible with self interest;
Now if left up to the individual it would be determined by basic human nature that my “needs” are a million dollars a year, and my “abilities” are to watch TV all day. Since this won’t support a sustainable economy and society it will take a third party, like slave master, to dictate your “needs” and “abilities”. And what we end up with is slavery.
The Soviets spent the majority of the 20 th century attempting to create the “New Soviet Man” who would instinctively act only in the interest of the collective and sacrifice individual self interest. In other words, a human who values being enslaved.
It didn’t work. People worked in their own interest. They started a black market that corrupted any sense of “collective”, and ultimately collapsed as the people starved for freedom could stand it no more.
Please allow me...
The theme of the present administration is that it possesses the wisdom and resources to know better what people should do than they do themselves. From that premise arose most of catastrophes that have befallen MANKIND.
There, fixed it.
5.56mm
Obama is transforming the way and the why America was founded.
Rush Limbaugh: “.......The vast majority of the people of this world since the beginning of time have never known the kind of liberty and freedom that’s taken for granted every day in this country. Most people have lived in abject fear of their leaders. Most people have lived in abject fear of whoever held power over them. Most people in the world have not had plentiful access to food and clean water. It was a major daily undertaking for most people to come up with just those two basic things.
Just surviving was the primary occupation of most people in the world. The history of the world is dictatorship, tyranny, subjugation, whatever you want to call it of populations — and then along came the United States of America. Pilgrims were the first to come here seeking freedom from all of that. They were oppressed because of their religion. They were told they had to believe in the king and his god, whatever it was, or they would be imprisoned.
They led an exodus from Europe to this country, people of the same mind-set. They simply wanted to escape the tyranny of their ordinary lives. This country was founded that way. For the first time in human history, a government and country was founded on the belief that leaders serve the population. This country was the first in history, the EXCEPTION — e-x-c-e-p-t, except. The exception to the rule is what American exceptionalism is.
It is because of this liberty and freedom that our country exists, because the founders recognized it comes from God. It’s part of the natural yearning of the human spirit. It is not granted by a government. It’s not granted by Putin. It’s not granted by Obama or any other human being. We are created with the natural yearning to be free, and it is other men and leaders throughout human history who have suppressed that and imprisoned people for seeking it.
The US is the first time in the history of the world where a government was organized with a Constitution laying out the rules, that the individual was supreme and dominant, and that is what led to the US becoming the greatest country ever because it unleashed people to be the best they could be. Nothing like it had ever happened. That’s American exceptionalism. Putin doesn’t know what it is, Obama doesn’t know what it is, and it just got trashed in the New York Times. It’s just unacceptable.
Millions of Americans understand exactly and precisely what American exceptionalism is, and that is why they are so appalled about this administration. That is why they are so appalled and opposed to Obamacare, Obama’s economic policies, amnesty, illegal immigration with impunity. It’s because it is a direct assault on the very foundation and fundamentals of the creation and the founding of this country. That is why there’s such opposition to Obama. It has nothing to do with he’s black and nothing to do with he’s inexperienced. It’s because he is conducting an assault on the founding of this country for the purposes of transforming it in ways that would turn us into subjects to government, just like every other person in this planet.”.....
“...Our constitution recognized and dealt with man’s nature,
rather than attempting to create a “new man” of progressive imagination...”
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Worth repeating.
I mention it because it fills in the broad brush strokes in Rush's commentary on the 17th century American colonies.
Great Britain sowed the seeds of our revolution when it was so preoccupied with civil wars that its colonies were almost entirely on their own. It left us in a near perfect Lockean state of nature in which we had to exercise harmonious self government or perish.
https://archive.org/stream/riseofrepublicof03frot#page/n5/mode/2up
Available also at Amazon.
“...1872 book by Richard Frothingham:
“The Rise of the Republic of the United States”...”
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No, I have not read it, but I probably should.
Thank you for the information and the link.
Bump!
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