The state despotic ... Mark Steyn

Steyn Online ^ | June 2009 | Mark Steyn

[GeronL]

good read.

sad end of liberty

[livius]

“We can be what once we were, or we can settle for a gradual, gentle descent into servitude.” I wish I were more sanguine about how that vote would go.

Good article. I really wonder if we'll be able to come back from this.

[cherry]

how does it go...”....out of slavery,hope,...”

[AmericanVictory]

from the triumph of Ci-cago identity politics of corruption.
The folks there accepted it years ago.

[thecabal]

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs… The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd

Amazing. 200 years ago, de Tocqueville was more insightful about our society than most of our own citizens are today. I need to read more, I have never seen this quotation before.

[AndyJackson]

“Human dignity,” writes Professor Rahe, “is bound up with taking responsibility for conducting one’s own affairs.”

While I give 0's administration low marks here, it is the behavior of the late administration that is particularly reprehensible in this regard, sine it is Republicans who are supposed to know better.. There is a straight line from Dick Cheney's hyperobsession with metal detectors, and how many US soldiers died because of the outrage over the indignities at Abu Ghraib, etc. that his so-called legal team spent so much time trying to find legal justification for.

Honor and respect and trust are about letting your fellow citizens get on with doing what they have to do without your bizarro interference.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[Jack Hammer]

“I wonder if those early settlers would recognize the people, and their assumptions about the role of government.”

Sure they would. They’d recognize them as the very same variety of @ssholes they left Europe to escape.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Screw the state. Let’s do it ourselves.”

There's hope yet.

[SatinDoll]

“...sad end of liberty”

Horse pucky! My ancestors came here as early as 1653. I’m in no way giving up, period.

[gridlock]

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the solution to this crisis lies in the British Monarchy. Somebody has to drag young Prince William aside and explain to him the facts of life, pump his head full of Teddy Roosevelt, Montesquieu, Rousseau, de Tocqueville and Rand, so he can go about saving England, and England can once again save the World.

[livius]

I don’t know about England saving the world. Henry VIII was probably the “most absolute” of the absolute monarchs, because he got rid of the one balancing force, the Church, and insisted on a level of personal loyalty from his subjects that not even the looniest Continental monarch had even thought of receiving up till then. The ideas of our Founders on liberty came from a variety of sources, particularly French and Spanish thinkers who had devoted much thought to the concept of the consent of the governed.

Furthermore, I think a point could be made that the British Socialist movement starting from the turn of the last century has had a lot of influence on US ways of thinking about society. It was in general not a revolution-based movement, but one that just had the state - as Mark Steyn suggests - gradually absorbing more and more of the individual’s responsibilities and “taking care” of him.

The Brits did have some good economic philosophers way back when, of course, but modern British society is already a lot more socialist and dysfunctional than ours.

[luvbach1]

Nothing lasts forever. Yes. But did it have to be this way?

[rightwingintelligentsia]

Steyn with Levin mention ping.

[luvbach1]

...so he can go about saving England, and England can once again save the World.

The royals haven't run England for a long time.

[Biggirl]

Keep an eye on the tea parties, they could be the start of something.

[freekitty]

“it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd”

And so the demise of the car industry and many other manufacturing companies in America.

[freekitty]

“it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd”

And so the demise of the car industry and many other manufacturing companies in America.

[don-o]

Steyn again applies the hammer to the nail. Why do we not have such matters debated during our elections?

I’ll tell you one reason. We are getting dumber every day. For proof, spend some time reading the texts if the Lincoln - Douglas debates.