Posted on 07/04/2012 5:54:25 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
.... Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women’s rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time?
(snip) What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late ’60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous. It’s all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.
From the beginning, the American idea embodied a tension between radical individualism and the demands of the commonweal. The document we’re celebrating today says in its second line that axiomatic human rights include “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — individualism in a nutshell. But the Declaration’s author was not a greed-is-good guy: “Self-love,” Jefferson wrote to a friend 38 years after the Declaration, “is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”
(snip) People on the political right have blamed the late ’60s for what they loathe about contemporary life — anything-goes sexuality, cultural coarseness, multiculturalism. And people on the left buy into that, seeing only the ’60s legacies of freedom that they define as progress. But what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same libertarian coin minted around 1967. Thanks to the ’60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You’re projecting, Kurt. You might be more selfish than ever, but those of us who embrace the free market and a true Constitutional government are looking out for our COUNTRY. The Utopian Dream is an illusion. If you haven’t learned that yet, you might seriously attempt to clear the left-over brain fog and embrace reality. Best not to project your stuff onto those of us who are trying to clean up your mess.
The writer in this article has no clue what true selfishness really is. Someone taking care of themselves and their own is not selfishness. Expecting someone else to is. The major problem that I have with the late 60’s generation is that they expected the rest of us to pay for the mess they made of themselves. For example, on drug legalization, I would contemplate the idea only with certain provisos. Those being that nobody is forced to hire a druggie, rent property to a druggie, pay any medical costs for a druggie, etc, etc. Being forced to pull the cart is not selfishness, riding in it is.
Selfishness is not dangerous to society unless it is combined with collectivism. We have both now and are in deep trouble.
“From the beginning, the American idea embodied a tension between radical individualism and the demands of the commonweal.”
And, for the libtards among us, the supremacy of the commonweal is unquestioned, and unquestionable; when, in fact, the survival of the individual is the only thing that can assure the commonweal.
They will never understand that. They lack sufficient linearity of logical thought.
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