A celebrated traveler arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born.  A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks — armed with rings, hooks, and cords — surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders."  A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs."  A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull."
"Stop," cried the traveler. Â "What God does is well done. Â Do not claim to know more than He. Â God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."
God has given to men all that is necessary for them to accomplish their destinies. He has provided a social form as well as a human form.  And these social organs of persons are so constituted that they will develop themselves harmoniously in the clean air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers!  Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers!  Away with their artificial systems!  Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
[The last few paragraphs of the short treatise "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat - 1850]
Happy New Year!
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Comments: 44
That's a very good description of todays professional politicians.
Funny thing about the Reagan ideology. It worked.
BTW the Clinton Surplus was a lie, He didn't consider the vast sum the government owed the Social Security Trust. That was what we call Political BS and artful bookkeeping.
I understand that you are angry. I get that. If your posted poem "Uncomfortable" is autobiographical (which I presume it is) then the basis for a portion of that anger is obvious. Such an upbringing cries out for latitude and such latitude you will receive. I ask however that you make your points without insults and foul language. You're a smart guy and such a minimum standard is surely reachable if you choose to. Please so choose.
The Keynesian idea of government spending to relieve a recession is at least inefficient. That's number one. Second, whether the government obtains it's funds for such a stimulus through inflation or via increased taxation, it shows a disregard for the basic principles of private property rights. Third, when it targets it's spending narrowly to this group and to that one rather than in a more general fashion it is clearly not treating all citizens equally under the law. Fourth, such policies are continually pursued by the left not because they are expected to work but because they are sold to an anxious public at a time of crisis and intentionally leave a larger more powerful government in their failed wake. So implementing such inappropriate Keynesian policies is not "correct" leadership.
As to the charge of racism against anyone that disagrees with the actions of this administration, such is a red herring. Surely you can see that honest disagreement with "bigger-government" policies would be the same if Hillary, Gore , or Kerry were pursuing them. It is only the speed and fervor demonstrated by this administration and this (retiring) Congress in seeking these ends that demanded an equivalently energetic opposition, not the color of the President's skin.
Tell me about the inflation rate (which is reported artificially low in that it does not include food or energy - another great idea). Tell me about the unemployment rate (which is substantially higher than the reported figure due to people no longer even looking for work).
If the federal government can pass any law it likes, stop the states from passing any law it doesn't like, spend any amount of money on any object no matter how narrow or wide, and tax any segment of the population by any scheme it devises then tyranny has come. That is what Bastiat was talking about. It is not I who stands in denial.
Please have the courtesy to remove your above recommendation/comment and move it sans the constant insults to the proper article where it properly belongs and I will certainly answer it and it's flaws.
BTW, a little research reveals your Marxist guy Harvey noted above gave away the farm when he admits (in a paper entitled "Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition" based on the book you cite) that Marxism is incompatiable with the US Constitution when he says:
"The co-revolutionary theory earlier laid out would suggest that there is no way that an anti-capitalist social order can be constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it and re-working the constitutional and institutional framework that currently supports private property, the market system and endless capital accumulation."
So to fulfill his ends you have to trick the American people or enslave them. What you can't do is state a real logical case for doing away with private property and the Constitution because they won't have it and they will bury you. Thus the obvious reason for the fraud and subterfuge from the left. Thanks for pointing that out. I hope they introduce a bill in Congress that makes every legislator vote for or against such a principle. What do you think would happen?
Marxism is great economic plan except that it can't generate any wealth for anybody, nor economic growth, and it can't set prices. Other than that it's perfect. Well that and the millions of citizens that give up their freedoms and/or die at the hands of their own Marxist leaders to make it go. What a record.
And Krugman, a self identified liberal, is not exactly an unbiased source. Lastly to derive that a certain economic practice is proven wrong because a state has a deficit when essentially all the states are running deficits due to the economic downturn is completely illogical and laughable.
The following shows that the Texas deficit is relatively much smaller than most other states of similar large economies.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/state-budget-deficits-2010-estimat
Game. set, match.
FYI Colonel is a Rank not a particular field of expertise. Your BIL and I are probably in different fields. I doubt I could do his job and I doubt he could do mine. i.e. I would be useless in a combat situation. My field of expertise is highly classified and specialized. He would not be able to do it or would not do it I guarantee you.
Before you call a person a Phoney best you know what you're talking about.
Please clarify, What does my military rank have to do with my political opinions? If you don't like what I say don't read it.