I Love Quicktime 'harch

Here's a suggestion for the good Quincy, IL Teaparty folks the next time the Secret Service gets uppity, emulate Empress Nympho's "selection" scene. When I saw the first video below, I couldn't help but think of the second. Needless to say, I found the whole episode pathetic, but then, that's what we've come to expect, isn't it?

But This Time Will Be Different, SPQR Edition

Despite several millenia's worth of accumulated evidence of failed government Utopian programs, everything from the Tower of Babel to the Great Society and beyond, my liberal friends seem wedded to the notion that this time will be different, and that "Universal Health Care" and all the other "progressive" causes de jure will prove to be completely benign, wonderfully efficient government programs with absolutely no unintended consequences. Lost are any notions of personal rights and responsibilities. Gone too, are quaint ideas like limited government. No, we must all shoulder our burdens and march off together into the Glorious Future, and like those on the Bataan Death March, dissent for us is not an option.

We can quote Nock:

If we look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society and the State. This is the fact that interests the student of civilization. He has only a secondary or derived interest in matters like price-fixing, wage-fixing, inflation, political banking, "agricultural adjustment," and similar items of State policy that fill the pages of newspapers and the mouths of publicists and politicians. All these can be run up under one head. They have an immediate and temporary importance, and for this reason they monopolize public attention, but they all come to the same thing; which is, an increase of State power and a corresponding decrease of social power.

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

We can quote De Tocquville on the rise of tyranny in democracies:

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

We can even hope the words of Thomas Paine might have an effect:

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Unfortunately, all would be to no avail.

We could go on to economics and discuss Hayek, Friedman, and Von Mises. We could even talk about Keynes' own misgivings later in life. None make a difference. We can point to The Federalist Papers, but might as well be be pointing to rolling papers and have as much effect on rational thought. We can show failed program after failed program. No, for our liberal friends, Hope does spring eternal, and this time will be different.

For we who see a doubling of the money supply, and know that inflation looms; for we who see a feckless foreign policy, and know the we face another generation of worldwide anarchy; for we who see yet more taxes, fees, and regulation, and know that our economy languishes as a result; for we who see faith in the collective, but know that the individuals making it up are flawed; for us is reserved the special hell of knowing the future, but being unable to change it. Because we know that this time won't be any different, our hope, like that of the last Legionnaire on the Rhine, is to forestall the coming collapse.

Uncle Ted: no, not THAT Ted

Am I weird for having the same opinion? When we delegate our protection to others, we give up our liberty. This young mother, whose father was a deputy sheriff, learned too late that she did so at her peril. Ted is correct, you have a right, in fact a responsibility, to protect yourself and those whom you hold most dear. I don't ever want to have to attend a trial and hope for justice if one of my loved ones is lost at the hands of another. Do you?

A Hero's Welcome

QOTD

From Glenn Reynolds:

Drunken sailors generally spend cash that they’ve already earned themselves, rather than running up debt to be paid by others. If our politicians started spending like drunken sailors, it would in fact represent a dramatic improvement.

Having had, shall we say, experience with drunken sailors, I'll vouch for the point's veracity.

Seems Hayek was Right

What a shock.

Hope and Change

The Anti-stimulus.