Medary.com

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.
In case you're wondering, "blithering idiotry" has its foundation in 1) believing you know better than someone else how they should run their lives, and 2) acting on that belief, almost always to the ultimate detriment of that other person, not to mention the corruption of your own soul in the process. And it's everywhere, but nowhere more concentrated than in governments big and small, and those sad, sorry people making up those governments.
It is not a virtue to be generous with somebody else's money.

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

The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope of freedom. -- Lord Acton

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

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention.

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:
Jonah Goldberg: Liberal Fascism "is simply useless against zombies, save in bulk. If you dropped a pallet of books on one, it would probably kill it, or at least delay its advance long enough for the double-tap. Obviously, this means people need to start buying it in bulk."

Who says conservatives don't have a sense of humor? And, perhaps THIS is why Sarah Palin was buying up all of those copies of her book. Don't believe that story about owing thousands of copies to donors of her PAC. That's obviously a smoke-screen. She knows something we don't. Maybe about sheep.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Watch out for sheep. Especially demon sheep. California demon sheep. I can't imagine those California dairy cows are very contented right now.

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

It is often said that political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom. This is true enough, but in a sense almost opposite from that in which the phrase is used by our planners. The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care which the socialists promise us and which can be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right.

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

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention.

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:

From the Cato Institute

We are so screwed. And it's not defense spending that is screwing us. We're doing it to ourselves.

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

In all this time not one of the many people who have (promised "potential plenty" have) produced a workable plan of how production could be increased so as to abolish even in western Europe what we regard as poverty--not to speak of the world as a whole. The reader may take it that whoever talks about potential plenty is either dishonest or does not know what he is talking about. Yet it is this false hope as much as anything which drives us along the road to planning.

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

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:
JUST SAY NO TO NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY.

OPPOSE THE OBAMA BUDGET WITH YOUR EVERY BREATH.

PUNISH ANY POLITICIAN WHO BACKS ANY PORTION OF IT.

CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND SENATOR AND TELL THEM: IF YOU SUPPORT THIS BUDGET, YOUR POLITICAL CAREER IS OVER.

WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH.

The Federal budget deficit, explained in video:


And now . . . A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention.

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

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

It is significant that the confusion prevailing on all these subjects that it should have become a cause for reproach that in a competitive society almost everything can be had for a price. If the people who protest against having the higher values of life brought into the "cash nexus" really mean that we should not be allowed to sacrifice our lesser needs on order to preserve the higher values, and that the choice should be made for us, this demand must be regarded as rather peculiar and scarcely testifies to great respect for the dignity of the individual. That life and health, beauty and virtue, honor and peace of mind, can often be preserved only at considerable material cost, and that somebody must make the choice, is as undeniable as that we all are sometimes not prepared to make the material sacrifices necessary to protect those higher values against all injury.

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

A (mostly) daily review of what's out there that caught my attention.

I surf the Web, so you don't have to!

Section One: The Word:
An occasional comment, rant, or snark, brought on by the flow of events:

InstaComment of the Day: The “Bush was as big a spender as Obama” line is just a flat-out lie, which the apologists for the powers that be hope you’ll buy because . . . well, because a lie is pretty much all they’ve got at this point.

Accompanied by the Graph of the Year:

The National Debt under Bush, and under Obama

And that's from last summer. It's gotten worse since then. So, Washington politicians, STOP LYING TO US.

Another random thought: Governments tax the rich for the very same reason that Willie Sutton said that bank robbers rob banks: "That's where the money is." The analogy between government and bank robbers runs fairly deep, although bank robbers don't lie to you about how much their robbery is going to help you--how their theft is good for "social welfare" or the "good of the community," sometime in the indeterminate future. (Actually, some bank robbers have justified their theft by saying that they're "spreading the money around." Sound familiar?)

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

Although the professed aim of planning would be that man should cease to be a mere means, in fact--since it would be impossible to take account in the plan of individual likes and dislikes--the individual would more than ever become a mere means, to be used by the authority in the service of such abstractions as the "social welfare" or the "good of the community."

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