Amen. The thing that is most surprising and worrying is the number of people here in the U.S. who are advocating progressivism (taxation, regulation, welfare, environmentalism, etc.). This free, prosperous society is historically recent and novel, and it did not come out of nowhere. It was _built_ by people who set out to do so deliberately, and who paid a price to do it. We cannot have a free society without accepting the "prices" of freedom, one of which is the rejection of government supremacy.
There is a sociological/psychological component to all this. People struggle and scrape and sacrifice to build this wonderful free society, which then becomes incredibly prosperous. But without a strong philosophical code to guide them, people get softened by prosperity. Then they end up forgetting what it was that made them prosperous in the first place, and the focus shifts to maintaining the comforts of life (or the illusion of comfort) at all costs. Then when people legislate themselves back into bondage, the cycle begins again. I think it's referred to as the Tytler Cycle.
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JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2007/02/quote-of-day.html (2 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
Amen. The thing that is most surprising and worrying is the number of people here in the U.S. who are advocating progressivism (taxation, regulation, welfare, environmentalism, etc.). This free, prosperous society is historically recent and novel, and it did not come out of nowhere. It was _built_ by people who set out to do so deliberately, and who paid a price to do it. We cannot have a free society without accepting the "prices" of freedom, one of which is the rejection of government supremacy.
There is a sociological/psychological component to all this. People struggle and scrape and sacrifice to build this wonderful free society, which then becomes incredibly prosperous. But without a strong philosophical code to guide them, people get softened by prosperity. Then they end up forgetting what it was that made them prosperous in the first place, and the focus shifts to maintaining the comforts of life (or the illusion of comfort) at all costs. Then when people legislate themselves back into bondage, the cycle begins again. I think it's referred to as the Tytler Cycle.
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>