Medary.com

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

Once government has embarked upon planning for the sake of justice, it cannot refuse responsibility for anybody's fate or position. In a planned society we shall all know that we are better or worse off than others, not because of circumstances which nobody controls, and which it is impossible to foresee with certainty, but because some authority wills it.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

SECTION ONE: The Word:
The next "national discussion" we need to have is how we have come to the national near-death experience we are now living through (at least, the hope is that we can keep it to just a near-death experience), how to step back from the cliff, and how to reinforce the guard rails so we never do anything like this again . . .

SECTION TWO: Things That Amuse Me: (see what I did there, tease-wise . . . now you have to click on "read more," don't you?)

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

. . . who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

SECTION ONE: The Word:
The Overreach Trap

The Democrats thought that with their victory in 2008, that they had a mandate to once and for all re-make the United States from a Constitutional republic to a European-style democratic socialist welfare state.

They were wrong.

According to this poll, three quarters of the American public is angry (either "very angry" or "somewhat angry") with the current policies of the Federal government. 45% of Americans are "Very Angry." Only 19% are either "not angry" or "not very angry."

The American public does not want European-style democratic socialism. What most Americans want is to be left alone to live their lives the best they can, with maybe a little bit of help at the margins--the "safety net" of basic services which any good and decent people will provide to the least fortunate among them.

The Democrats do not yet show any significant sign of understanding this basic truth of American political thinking. To the contrary, most of the Democratic leadership thinks that the problem is that they just have not explained themselves clearly enough to the American people. But what they do not understand is that they have explained themselves, their philosophies, their policies, and their attitudes quite well, and Americans overwhelmingly reject it all. For the Democrats' basic misunderstanding of the American political mood, and their subsequent arrogance and political tone-deafness, they will be punished severely in the next election, and possibly for as much as a generation to come. And they will have richly deserved their time wandering in the political wilderness. A few of them see the tsunami coming. But not enough of them.

(continued . . . )

SECTION ONE: The Word:
How 'bout them Super Bowl commercials, huh?

SECTION TWO: Things That Amuse Me:
Simians and other aminals*:
Animal advocates sue over USD monkey tests
*Yes, I know it's "animals," it's just that I always found the childhood mispronunciation really, really cute . . .

Travel:
Stay at home. Work. Consume. Big Brother is Your Friend. Palin is evil. Obama is good. Work. Consume.

Sports:
Weekend review

Science Fiction and Writing:
Zoomorphism in Science Fiction—In or Out?
Writing cultures: insider vs. outsider
Writers on Writing–Emotion
The Write Way and the Wrong Way
Ways to Trash Your Writing Career: Surrender, Dorothy!
Hey, remember when I used to post long, half-thought-out posts on big topics?
Least Favorite Authors of SF
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Science, technology, and space:
Nook Review
Looking At Light
Opinion: MacBook, or iMac + iPad?

Miscellany (amusing things not fitting above, or below):
NBC throws Conan down the memory hole, deletes his online content

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

I understand there's a football game today. However . . .

SECTION ONE: The Word:
People think that the Tea Party coalesced out of the political ether when Rick Santilli gave that rant on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. They're wrong.

The Tea Party spirit--the spirit of self-government which has made the United States unique among all the nations of the world--didn't began to revive when Sarah Palin was convinced to run for Wasilla City Council. It did begin to go national when McCain named her as his Vice-Presidential candidate. What happened with Santilli in Chicago last February is that the traditional American value of self-government finally found its voice after decades of disuse, under the oppressive attack of the progressives, the leftists, the socialists. The Fair Deal. The New Deal. The Square Deal. The Great Society. Hope and Change.

Palin isn't the leader of the Tea Party so much as she is its most prominent current expression. I find it amusing (and a bit distressing) that so many seem concerned that Palin or anyone else is "hijacking" a movement which at its core is the simple re-assertion of the sovereignty of the individual over the state.

If there are few Democrats participating in Tea Parties--if the Tea Party movement does not represent the Democratic Party--it is because the Democratic Party has now utterly rejected the traditional American political philosophy of individual liberty and limited government, for the system of industrial socialism and unlimited government created by 19th Century German political philosophers. (And yes, many Republicans have also basically embraced German socialism, as well.)

So let me be blunt:

If you are for government-provided welfare, you are a socialist.

If you are for government-provided health care, you are a socialist.

If you are for government mandates to "fight global warming" you are a socialist.

If you oppose the Tea Party movement, you are either a socialist, or you simply haven't thought things through yet.

The lesson of history, over and over and over again, is that socialism does not work It does not produce the "greatest good for the greatest number." It does not help the "little people." It does not feed the hungry, it does not clothe the naked, it does not care for the sick. What socialism does do, better than almost any other political system invented by mankind, is corrode and corrupt the human spirit. It corrupts those who aspire to the power socialism gives over their fellow men, and it dispirits those who have no opportunity to exert power, even over their own lives. Socialism is the philosophy of the parasite.

Socialism kills the human spirit. It also, as we have seen around the word, by incompetence or malice, kills people in staggering numbers--by the millions in the 20th Century alone.

If you are a socialist, you have embraced evil, suffering, corruption, and death. You either seek virtue by sacrificing yourself for others, or you seek power by sacrificing others on the altar of your own misguided "wisdom." You must kill others, or kill yourself. That is what socialism is, at its ugly core.

If you are a socialist, you are a blithering idiot.

Fortunately, blithering idiocy is not forever--it is treatable, it is cureable. The first step towards the cure is to realize that you have a problem. That problem has a name. That name is socialism.

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

The fact that the opportunities open to the poor in a competitive society are much more restricted than those open to the rich does not make it less true that in such a society the poor are much more free than a person commanding much greater material comfort in a different type of society. Although under competition the probability that a man who starts poor will reach great wealth is much smaller than is true of the man who has inherited property, it is not only possible for the former, but the competitive system is the only one where it depends solely on him and not on the favors of the mighty, and where nobody can prevent a man from attempting to achieve this result.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.

(It's morning somewhere . . . )

SECTION ONE: The Word:
I've gently re-formatted the Whip, the better to shine a light on the rampant epidemic of blithering idiotry amok upon the world. Yes, those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of us who do.

Other than the fact that I woke up at 11:30 this morning (yeah, sleep is good), I have no comment today.

From The Road To Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek, 1944, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, The University of Chicago Press.

The choice open to us is not between a system in which everybody will get what he deserves according to some absolute and universal standard of right, and one where the individual shares are determined partly by accident or good or ill chance, but between a system where it is the will of a few persons that decides who is to get what, and one where it depends at least partly on the ability and enterprise of the people concerned and partly on unforeseeable circumstances. This is no less relevant because in a system of free enterprise chances are not equal, since such a system is necessarily based on private property and (though perhaps not with the same necessity) on inheritance, with the differences in opportunity which these create. There is, indeed, a strong case for reducing this inequality of opportunity as far as congenital differences permit and as it is possible to do so without destroying the impersonal character of the process by which everybody has the right to take his chance and no person's view about what is right and desirable overrules that of others.

Excerpted under Fair Use for purposes of non-commercial education, discussion and comment. Any transcription or typographical errors are mine.