Posted on 07/04/2016 12:45:43 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
During the Bretton Woods Conference, in 1944, Lord Halifax is said to have “whispered to Lord Keynes: ‘It’s true: they have the money bags but we have all the brains.’” By “they,” Halifax meant the Americans.
His frustration with the American mind—often prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations seems as valid today. As odious as Britain’s elites are; boy, are they cleverer than ours. Take the impromptu interview, on June 28, which Richard Quest, CNN’s imported British broadcast journalist, conducted with Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.
Farage had emerged exhilarated from the coven that is the European Parliament, where he had shared some home truths with the ponces leeching off Britain.
Other than to mouth formulaically about “small government, big military, balanced budgets and the penny plan”—America’s chattering class and ruling elites seem incapable of expressing the principles undergirding freedom. And members of this political Idiocracy dissolve into a puddle if their cue cards disappear.
Farage, however, spoke to some difficult ideas with ease, and without notes.
The act of secession, the quests for sovereignty, decentralization and regional autonomy from a second tier of tyrants—the first being the national, British government—involve comprehending complicated ideas.
About this, Milton Friedman forewarned in the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” Whereas “the argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument.” “The argument for individualism” and freedom, on the other hand, “is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”
Put differently: If you can’t express the principles of liberty, can you properly pursue them? Will you not forgo them?
It’s difficult for dummies to understand liberty, let alone defend it, a problem the scintillating, cerebral Mr. Farage doesn’t have.
(Excerpt) Read more at constitution.com ...
Happy Independence Day!
PING!
240 year refresh
“His frustration with the American mind—often prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations seems as valid today”
I want someone to make a valid argument that the British mind is more intellectual than the American mind. That is completely unsupportable in every field.
What an ignorant man.
The problem is the same on both sides of the puddle. People getting taxpayer’s money to do nothing and voting for the politicians that make it happen.
I’ll just note that Britain has not really done anything yet.
If you think the Brexit vote signals any sort of mass English rejection of statism and socialism, you are sadly mistaken.
However, it’s a start.
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