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The Bollywood to South Beach Voyage - Regent Seven Seas Voyager, October 29-December 18, 2009

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part One

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October 29 (Thursday, Day 1, Flying to Mumbai, India) -

We left our house at 9:30 AM for KCI. Security was no problem and we had a little bit of time to spend in the Admirals Club. We got on the plane for Chicago and were happy to have the middle seat empty between us. We got to Chicago and now had a 5-hour layover. We spent 2 hours in the Admirals Club and Snookums took a shower right before we left and went to O’Hare’s Terminal 5 for our Air India flight.

Our Air India 777, viewed from the O'Hare Admiral's Club

More after the jump . . .

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

"Freedom" and "liberty" are now words so worn with use and abuse that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood.

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

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

. . . the essential features of that individualism which, from elements provided by Christianity and the philosophy of classical antiquity, was first developed during the Renaissance and has since grown and spread into what we know as Western civilization--are the respect for the individual man qua man, that is, the recognition of his own views and tastes as supreme in his own sphere, however narrowly that may be circumscribed, and the belief that it is desirable that men should develop their own individual gifts and bents.

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

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

Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by De Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism. And now that we have seen a new form of slavery (socialism) arise before our eyes, we have so completely forgotten the warning that it scarcely occurs to us that (political freedom and economic freedom) may be connected.

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

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

But although until 1931 England and America had followed only slowly on the path on which others had led, even by then they had moved so far that only those whose memory goes back to the years before (World War I) know what a (classical) liberal world was like.

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

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

We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.

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

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

It does not affect our problem that some groups may want less socialism than others; that some want socialism mainly in the interest of one group and others in that of another. The important point is that, if we take the people whose views influence developments, they are now in the democracies in some measure all socialists. If it is no longer fashionable to emphasize that "we are all socialists now," this is merely so because the fact is too obvious.

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

On November 8, 2006, I posted:

I hope the Democrats, now back in power in Congress, will grow up, sober up and start seriously engaging issues from Iraq to Social Security.  I hope they do not squander the next two years with a crippling anal examination of every aspect of the Bush Administration, but instead will want to move forward, keep this country safe, and fix the entitlements mess for which they are largely responsible.

I hope the Republicans ponder the fruits of abandoning the small-L libertarian smaller-government, lower-taxes, individual-empowerment philosophy which was central to their taking over Congress in 1994, and rededicate themselves to being the reformist party that brought them to power in the first place.

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

Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was not a reaction against socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.

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

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

Hitler did not have to destroy democracy; he merely took advantage of the decay of democracy and at the critical moment obtained the support of many whom, though they detested Hitler, he yet seemed the only man strong enough to get things done.

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