Posted on 01/27/2009 6:04:11 PM PST by TheHound
I am considering this project, to present a conservative quote of the day. This will be my first. Depending on the responses, You will determine how long. Here goes:
"If the primary objective of the philanthropist, his justification for living, is to help others, his ultimate good requires that others shall be in want. His happiness is the obverse of their misery.
If he wishes to help “Humanity,” the whole of humanity must be in need. The humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.
But he is confronted by two awkward facts; first, that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people . . . positively do not want to be “done good” by the humanitarian. . . . Of course what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.
What kind of world does the humanitarian contemplate as affording him full scope? It could only be a world filled with breadlines and hospitals, in which nobody retained the natural power of a human being to help himself or to resist having things done to him. And that is precisely the world that the humanitarian arranges when he gets his way. . . .
There is only one way, and that is by the use of the political power in its fullest extension. Hence the humanitarian feels the utmost gratification when he visits or hears of a country in which everyone is restricted to ration cards. Where subsistence is doled out, the desideratum has been achieved, of general want and a superior power to “relieve” it. The humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.
Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1943) pp. 240-42s
You are most certainly allowed to disagree with my list and still be free. That was not the implication, but rather action over words. And I hope likewise that you don’t have a list that you expect me to agree with as well. If you did, then we would be standing at the abyss of equality.
My reference to “Give me Liberty or give me Death” was not realated to the previous portion of that post, but to the thread topic. I prefer simplicity to the inordinate complexity that reduces to the same precept. Liberty is all that I want, not equality. What about you?
First. Obverse? Unless you are trying to persuade a college professor that you deserve an "A", just say "opposite". I'm lazy. And old. I can't reach my dictionary without getting up.
Just kidding.
Second. Your Conservative Quote of the Day reminds me of one of my old Philosophy classes where I was taught that the Scrooge that begrudgingly gave to charity out of a sense of obligation was "more moral" than the do-gooder that gave ten times as much because it was pleasurable. I always accepted that idea as basically true. Scrooge is a jerk who is nevertheless honoring a higher obligation. The Do-Gooder is a "good person" who really is just taking care of Numero Uno.
A charity might have a different point of view.
Which brings us back to your main point on an organizational level.
What I am trying to do with my "quotes" is present a little more (200 - 300 words)of what the author is saying than the quotes found on calendars and such, so as to, maybe, produce a little more cerebral musing than just the emotional shot generated by a one line quote.
Look up my other quotes.
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