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Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Hardest Lesson: Every Political Generation Resurrects Puerile Benightedness.


Alan: Political maturity in one's own life is shadowed by the daunting realization that there will always be a majority -- or near majority -- of juvenile citizens convinced Mencken is wrong. 

These perpetual sophomores know all the answers, answers that are not only clear but simple.

Most simple remedies include:

Lower taxes.

Stronger defense.

Personal responsibility (and corresponding punishment of failure whatever its causes).

If we subscribe to these bromides, problems will solve themselves so that we needn't concern ourselves with the actual disciplines of virtue, which -- truth be told -- only get in the way of God's Invisible Hand.


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Ayn Rand: Atheist Cornerstone Of Republican Economics"


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"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

More Merton Quotes


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