More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The Good Causes of the Left may generally be compared to NASCAR; they offer the diversion of watching things go excitingly around in a circle, getting nowhere.
socialism, which, as I understand it, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. I don’t think it’s any more complex than that.
intelligent young people are misled into the essential fallacy of Liberalism: that all society and human interaction is susceptible to human reason, and that tradition, patriotism, marriage, and similar institutions are arbitrary, and stand between the individual’s spontaneity and his ability to create a perfect world: that the individual’s reason is supreme, that he is, thus, God.80
this dysfunctional world requires his participation in a grand new scheme to put things right. This scheme may be called Marxism, Socialism, Fascism, Cultural Revolution, or “change.” It is attractive not to the supposed “victims” of the old order, the poor, the “colonialized,” the “oppressed,” but to the deracinated affluent.
a government will not and cannot admit mistakes.
If the Leftist were actually more interested in a more “fair” redistribution of income—which is to say, a distribution more in line with his own worldview—let him vote to lower taxes, and distribute his now larger share of his wealth, to the street sweeper.
In addition to actually giving more money of his own to the street sweeper, the Inspired Leftist may, today, without let or hindrance, give more money to the cabdriver, the dry cleaner, the restaurateur, and to all others whose services he employs. He is free to give them more money than they request, and so feel good about himself. But I doubt he will do so. For he does not want to pay what is here visible as essentially an “entertainment tax.” “Here, let me tip you, as I am a Big Spender.” No, he refrains from paying above the stated price for goods and services. To do so would reveal to him
...more
The cry for “fairness” is the child’s cry.
