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Genuine progress is going to require more confrontation, partisanship, and serious and honest discussion of the truth about government, the economy, and every sector of American life.
Demagogues seek influence and political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, and expectations of the public.
Demagoguery is the enemy of liberty and serves the interest of power seekers across the political spectrum. Government attracts all those who enjoy using power over others and those who convince themselves that average people need “smart” people to take care of them. And only the demagogues can provide the “wisdom” to appoint those who should rule over us.
Demagogues manipulate a political issue in a manner to obscure or distort truth with emotionalism and prejudice. The goal of all demagogues is to achieve power at all costs.
American political culture, unfortunately, has come to worship at the altar of democratic majoritarianism. This has made the concept of rights arbitrary and capricious, and individual and natural rights are no longer cherished or understood.
Concentration on our material well-being and neglect of the moral principles that underpin material abundance will result in the loss of prosperity, peace, and liberty.
Envy is the painful awareness of another’s good fortune. It is usually associated with the desire to bring an end to that good fortune through some means. Thus is it worse than jealousy, which is wanting what another has. Envy seeks to take away what another has out of spite and hatred, and is driven by the desire to destroy.
That’s because the envious will stop at nothing in order to achieve their goals of harming those who succeed, even when achieving that goal is itself personally harmful.
Pursuing a policy of “freedom from want” is nothing more than a license to steal. Such a program guarantees poverty for the masses and power to the government elite.
Most people believe the people have a “right” to food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education, and jobs. This misguided school of thought has been around a long time and is responsible for the poverty and economic suffering and wars that we are forced to live with. All this because of a confused concept of what freedom is all about.
