In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.
Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.
What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people’s plans by Government officials.
Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance.
One of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans is that we at least know what the Democrats stand for, whether we agree with it or not. But, for Republicans, we have to guess.
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.
People in the political world have every incentive to say things that lead voters away from a clear economic understanding of issues. What has happened more and more is that organized groups have more and more reasons to say things that don’t make any economic sense.
We’re not a socialist country, because the socialists believe in government ownership in the means of production, but the fascists believe that the government should have private ownership and the politicians should tell people how to run the businesses. So that’s the route we seem to be going.
People have a vested interest in promoting one set of polices rather than finding out what the truth is.
Child poverty in the United States declined after the work requirement was put in there. People realized that they had to work and people went out and worked and they got off welfare.
Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea – in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.
The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.
One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.
To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.
Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned – never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.
No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.
A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.9.
Slippery use of the word “privilege” is part of a vogue of calling achievements “privileges” – a vogue which extends far beyond educational issues, spreading a toxic confusion in many other aspects of life.
I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.