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The Loss Of Individual Liberty
Forbes ^ | 2008-11-13 | Peter Robinson

Posted on 12/28/2008 6:31:50 PM PST by rabscuttle385

Over dinner with Milton Friedman several years before he died, I offered the great man a compliment. He refused it.

I had just re-read God and Man at Yale, the 1951 book in which William F. Buckley Jr., denounced the leftist attitudes he had encountered among the Yale faculty and administration as an undergraduate. Buckley singled out the department of economics as the most collectivist department on the campus. "Today," I said, "nobody would call the economics department at a major university 'collectivist.'"

Academia as a whole may have continued its long, sorry wobble to the left, I continued, but the economics profession had proved an exception, moving the other way. Departments of economics across the country now grasped the importance of free markets. "Mises, Hayek, Stigler and you," I told Friedman. "You've transformed the intellectual climate. You've won."

Friedman shook his head. "We may have won the intellectual battle," he replied, "but in practical politics, it's difficult to see that we've had any effect at all."

Government spending had continued to grow, he explained. After a pause during the Reagan years, regulations had once again proliferated. For a moment, Friedman grew silent. Then he looked at me.

"The challenge for my generation," he said, "was to provide an intellectual defense of liberty. The challenge for your generation is to keep it."

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: bailout; bailoutnation; conservatism; friedman; govwatch; liberty; miltonfriedman
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"A republic, if you can keep it." —Benjamin Franklin
1 posted on 12/28/2008 6:31:52 PM PST by rabscuttle385
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To: qam1; bamahead; traviskicks; djsherin; murphE; Gondring
*Ping!*
2 posted on 12/28/2008 6:32:22 PM PST by rabscuttle385 ("If this be treason, then make the most of it!" —Patrick Henry)
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To: rabscuttle385

Problem is, economics takes too long to explain.

A boo-hoo anecdote usually makes the news and pressures people to “care” and be “fair”.


3 posted on 12/28/2008 6:36:10 PM PST by P.O.E. (Big Government is the opiate of the masses.)
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To: rabscuttle385
Sadly, I've heard a number of people come right out and say "Maybe Keynesian economics is right after all".

Sure ... in the face of economic trouble, just tax the heck out of productive people, print money as fast as you can, and spend it like a drunken sailor. I mean, it worked before, didn't it? What? You mean, it didn't work before? Well ... this time will be different.

4 posted on 12/28/2008 6:42:31 PM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: ClearCase_guy
I agree. People just won't learn:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire . . .

Kipling was a smart guy.

5 posted on 12/28/2008 6:50:48 PM PST by joe.fralick
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To: joe.fralick
I agree. People just won't learn:

VERY True, but when the point comes that it starts to directly affect an individuals bottom line and there is just no getting around the facts - it is too late to do anything but accept what is then inevitable .

Ergo - Who is John Galt?

6 posted on 12/28/2008 7:00:48 PM PST by jongaltsr (Hope to See ya in Galt's Gulch.)
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To: rabscuttle385

If you want a fun, and sometimes sad, exercise, ask people if they would like to have as much personal liberty as every American had right after the Bill of Rights was passed. I found it very common for people to say they would not.


7 posted on 12/28/2008 7:03:59 PM PST by theBuckwheat
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To: theBuckwheat
I agree. I think most Americans would have a difficult time defining a difference between Freedom and Liberty, but at some level they know it when they see it. It goes like this:

Freedom means I can do what I want. You can't stop me. I got my rights, it's a free country and I can do pretty much anything I want. Freedom is good.

Liberty means I'm responsible for me. No one owns me. I am not beholden to anyone, and no one is beholden to me. My actions have consequences, and I stand or fall based on my personal behavior. Liberty is about personal responsibility. And man, Liberty is a terrible thing. We gots too much of that!!!

8 posted on 12/28/2008 7:10:43 PM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: rabscuttle385
fortheluvofPETE?!!

Why do these threads always devolve into..."it's too late...we'll never learn..."

Do you people know what you sound like? Limpdicks.

Before you attack me, just read your posts. And see if you can find a sentiment like that among the founders.

If you're so all fired sure it's hopeless, wtf are you hanging around for? I don't get it.

9 posted on 12/28/2008 7:17:43 PM PST by the invisib1e hand (revolution is in the air.)
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To: ClearCase_guy

By the end of eight years of Obama and Democrat Congress I expect the national debt to double to over twenty trillion and the US dollar to be worth half what it is today. Maybe we can cut those losses to half by voting out both Obama and the Democrat Congress in 2012.


10 posted on 12/28/2008 7:27:10 PM PST by Aroostook25
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To: the invisib1e hand

I know. Don’t you just love the negatives. It’s always gloom and doom.


11 posted on 12/28/2008 7:29:34 PM PST by freekitty (Give me back my conservative vote.)
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To: rabscuttle385

RE “The challenge for my generation,” he said, “was to provide an intellectual defense of liberty. The challenge for your generation is to keep it.”

I agree 100%. Unfortunately NO one in Washington, not even our so- called conservative elected leaders, has shown any beliefs in our economic freedom. We havent seen that since early 1990s.

Try bailouts and stimulus packages.


12 posted on 12/28/2008 7:33:18 PM PST by sickoflibs (GWB : "Give me a 700B blank check to save the UAW until Obama takes office")
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To: Cacique

bumpforlater


13 posted on 12/28/2008 7:40:49 PM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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To: rabscuttle385; rmlew; Yehuda; neverdem; Clemenza; firebrand; nutmeg
Earlier today I had occasion to speak to a former citizen of the USSR. He was currently unemployed and looking for a job in these difficult economic times. He explained to me that even though things were not as prosperous in the old Soviet Union there was at least a stability, unemployment was rare and there was a certain security in the fact that there was little chance he would starve or be homeless. Essentially he was describing the certainty and comfort of being a slave.
14 posted on 12/28/2008 7:49:37 PM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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To: Cacique
The person in question didn't realize that his argument was the SAME EXACT ONE used by "humane" southerners who claimed that their slaves would "starve to death" were they to be freed and move north, and that they instead lived a comfortable life being fed by Massah and "singing in the fields" under the warm southern sun.

I've found this idiotic attitude among many folks who grew up under paternalistic dictatorships, NOT just the USSR.

15 posted on 12/28/2008 7:53:13 PM PST by Clemenza (Red is the Color of Virility, Blue is the Color of Impotence)
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To: theBuckwheat
I found it very common for people to say they would not.

There are whole nations of people who prefer group slavery to individual liberty. About half the people in this country ought to move into one of those.

16 posted on 12/28/2008 8:03:36 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Clemenza

Why is it that most American blacks — who, in view of their history, should be very much against slavery — make political choices which favor a servile status under an all-powerful but bumbling “massa” state?

A dependent attitude is the enemy of liberty.


17 posted on 12/28/2008 8:09:00 PM PST by docbnj
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To: rabscuttle385
Milton Friedman was without doubt one of the most influential free-market economists of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, he never wrote a college textbook, instead writing for other economists and, occasionally, for lay people (e.g., Free to Choose and his Newsweek column).

By far the most-read econ text is still Samuelson, treating the subject as "science" and boring the sh!t out of most students, who will likely never again pick up an econ book as a result.

As far as winning the political battle is concerned, it should be fairly obvious that we're losing that one, big time. The Forbes article goes on to list a number of outrageous things a Republican president and/or a Republican congress did which go against every principle of free-market economics. (If any of these Republicans ever read Friedman, which I doubt, they should hang their heads in shame.)

18 posted on 12/28/2008 8:14:23 PM PST by logician2u
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To: ClearCase_guy

You’re just a spoiler. Why not give the square wheel a chance? Yes I know we’ve tried to make it work before, but the round wheel is so boring and predictable. I know the square wheel will work if maybe we try rolling it downhill and push a little harder. The guys who tried it before, just didn’t try hard enough, this time it will be different. Our messiah will make it work.


19 posted on 12/28/2008 8:19:40 PM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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To: rabscuttle385

Going, going.....


20 posted on 12/28/2008 8:19:43 PM PST by editor-surveyor (The beginning of the O'Bummer administration looks allot like the end of the Nixon administration)
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