Posted on 11/28/2021 9:52:13 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
I've written about this several times, and here is another instance. The Guardian asks: "Is society coming apart?"
Most of the article is throw away, but here we get something extremely important:
According to the Reagan-Thatcher worldview, there is no such thing as society. There are only families, who look after one another, and individuals, who participate in markets. The idea that government is the solution to people’s problems rests on a mistaken belief in the existence of society.
The amount of honesty in these few lines is rather quite remarkable. First off they are completely incorrect about the "Reagan-Thatcher worldview", but that's just window dressing and fluff, likely designed to elicit an outraged response so that the really important thing doesn't get focus. I will focus this properly.
"The idea that government is the solution to people’s problems rests on a mistaken belief in the existence of society." See. Government is society. Society is government. They are one in the same. If you are percieved to be attacking government in any way, then you are against society or simply don't believe that society exists. I'll show you how this works. When Reagan said the words "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem", that is not what progressives heard. Here is what they heard and what Reagan said:
Society is not the solution to the problem, society is the problem
You think I'm kidding. I'm not. This is what the progressives think Reagan actually said.
Evil never understands the light. "Society" is everything outside of government and without government. Government can only pervert and coerce society as we in our families and we as individuals seek to determine our own individual destinies. But a progressive is incapable of understanding this. I might as well have said something in dolphin clicks. It doesn't compute for them.
Right.
If you eliminate even 50% of the federal government you would eliminate about 99% of the whack job prog commies and the RINOs that love them.
Govern
Control, influence, or regulate (a person, action, or course of events
Government is just people controlling ot trying to control other people
A moral people try to do this as little as possible to others
I knew someone who would travel on a mission to former Soviet republics. Hot water was blasted centrally, so how hot your water was depended on how close you lived to the station sending it out. People didn’t know what Bandaids were….in a big city. Older people had to come to church to eat because their choice was to pay for rent or food. Only after figuring out that the families feeding the missionaries were skimping on feeding themselves so the missionaries could have more food did the missionaries start to grapple with some deeper issues of economics of the people.
They really believe that we are all idiots, unable to take care about ourselves. And they, the enlightened few, are (self)appointed to take care about us all!
Quite condescending, and totally wrong.
The total of knowledge and skills of millions of ordinary people, if let unleashed, is infinitely greater that of few anointed ones!
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.Conflating society and government is simply a way to make it hard to think about society as a concept as distinguished from government.Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one . . .the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.
The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest . . . — Thomas Paine,Common Sense (1776)And as Paine shows above, society and government are in a real sense opposites. Society being inherently good - and government an expense regrettably necessary because society is imperfect. He would promote government will inevitably be critical of society.
A jury is to represent society and to assume innocence in a criminal defendant who is prosecuted by the government.
This is a great reminder. Most appreciated.
"A jury is to represent society and to assume innocence in a criminal defendant who is prosecuted by the government."
This is really profound. The jury separation equation so that the government cannot hurt us indiscriminately.
“A jury is to represent society and to assume innocence in a criminal defendant who is prosecuted by the government.”Yeah, I thought it was a good line myself when it came to me yesterday.
We can hope that we won’t be given the scandalous provocation to repeat it in future.But I’m far from sure of that - and of course you can use it yourself with or without attribution if such provocation recurs . . .
Come to think of it, I’ve seen worse taglines . . .
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