Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I was just reading the Friedman quotes that were memorable enough to be listed on ThinkExist, and it occurred to me that the American People would be much better off if we were all to go the next year hearing about them over and over again.
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.
You could stake the Republican party with a short leash, enacting an arbitrary rule that no campaign slogan can ever be used in 2012 that is not a Milton Friedman quote. They’d still take the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate with a commanding dominance, and with almost complete certainty. Occupy Wall Street types and all the various George Soros idea-outlets could come out with their propaganda about womans’ right to choose, Herman Cain is a molester, wealthiest one percent, derp derp derp. And it wouldn’t matter because Friedman’s points about the random havoc wreaked by out-of-control government possess the weightiest attribute of all intellectual arguments: They don’t need to be said. People, from sea to shining sea, can feel it in their bones that the job market should be better than it is. They can feel it that there is something called a business-friendliness climate, and it should be sunnier right now than it is. They can perceive with primal senses, the way you can perceive something is caught in the straw when you’re sucking on a fruit smoothie, that something is getting in the way. And that there is only one thing in all of Creation that has the power to get in the way.
One question I’m fond of asking big-government liberals that they’ve never been able to answer is: If all the smart people in the world intuitively understand that government programs are the key to happiness, and the smaller-government solution is only favored by drooling idiots like myself, and every single small-government Tea Party libertarian loudmouth like me is simply a big-government guy who hasn’t had his moment of edification just yet — what is going on with the American people? What is up with this tick-tock thing we’ve been doing throughout all of the twentieth century? How come we don’t have some moment of national epiphany, be it 1932 or 1964 or 1976 or 1992, and just stick with high taxes and big government forevermore? Is there any way to explain the setbacks at all…other than, there must be some liability involved in a leviathan government, understood by people once they labor under it, left undiscussed in these exchanges. Any other way to explain that at all? What happened in 1952, 1968, 1980 and 2000? Surely you won’t blame all that on tampered Diebold machines!
Haven’t got a straight answer yet.
Funny thing is, my inquiry would be a complete non-starter if progressive plans resembled in substance what is offered in the packaging. Supposedly we have poor, middle-class and rich, and our lefties just want to embiggen the government so that taxes and regulation can be rained down like Napalm upon the heads of those loathed rich. In practice, the barrier between rich and middle-class is mythical; the chestnut that really seals the deal, but is never quite delivered, is “the pain will be reserved for the people who make more than you do, it will never impact you.” I’ve often observed that if there are any numbers that define this “middle-class,” they have to do with the annual income of whatever audience is being addressed by the politician using the term at that moment. So to be realistic about it, there’s really only “rich” and “poor.” People are fooled into swindling from themselves, giving their own money away to people who do not value the sacrifices they’ve made to give themselves & their families better lives, but there’s a certain justice involved in it because they’re reaping the bitter fruit they had planted for someone else. “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the fellow behind the tree.” But we’re all the guy behind the tree, we realize, after the lesson has been well and truly learned. That’s my explanation for why America’s experimentation with big-government liberalism has taken a circular rather than linear trajectory; and, as noted above, thus far it is the only answer available.
What’s interesting is that if there were any other explanation, my “Milton Friedman Slogan” campaign would never work. As it is, this would be a sure thing. If there’s one thing on which people of all ideological dispositions can agree in the final weeks of 2011, it is that something was sold to the country three years ago, and the delivery has brought surprise and disappointment, failing to align with the expectations of even those who perspired and hyperventilated under the most exuberant optimism.
Friedman shucked his mortal coil before any of it went down. And yet his earthly quotes, somehow, bulls-eyed the entire sad debacle stem to stern. The unavoidable conclusion is not quite so much that Friedman was a genius, although in my opinion he was one. The point is that we are engaged in a period of learning, the lessons we are in the process of learning are not advanced or impressive. They are rudimentary lessons. They are also painful, and life will most assuredly offer them to us, repeatedly, as long as we demonstrate that we are in need of learning them.
That, and the stuff we are trying now doesn’t work. It relies too much on an axiom that some perfect and infinite wisdom is possessed by people who have been offered no means of achieving it, incentive for having it, nor have they chosen any vocation in the first place that would hold much appeal for those inclined to become wise.
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Milty Rocks.
I’ve been kicking around the idea of buying his “Free to Choose” series, even though it’s like $95.
- philmon | 11/10/2011 @ 13:25