BenAbe > BenAbe's Quotes

“his sovereign slumbers in normal times but suddenly awakens when a normal situation threatens to become an exception.13 The core of this authority is its exclusive possession of the right of, or its monopoly of, political decision making. Thus Schmitt’s definition: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
― Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

“I begin from the assumption that in a good society, everyone may pursue happiness, not just the smart or the rich or the gifted. But the pyramid of options for achieving happiness narrows rapidly as gifts narrow, and the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are often not only the poorest people and the least educated, but [print edition page 249] also those with the fewest options for achieving happiness. Whence the upside-down pyramid.* This logic admits of an ideological objection. We may decide that there is no such thing as the individual without special gifts; all that is required is a social system that liberates them. A revolution succeeded in Russia on just such expectations—in the best of all possible Soviet worlds “the average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx,”8 as Leon Trotsky told us. Against that, I propose this formulation: Yes, there are hidden resources in just about everyone, resources that can make just about everyone a self-determining, self-respecting, competent human being. But the medians in the many assets which humans possess are going to remain about where they are now. And now and forever more, half of the human race will at any moment be below the median on any given measure. Only a comparatively few will ever have any one asset that is so far above average that they can compete for the peaks in any field, whether the peak is defined as Nobel Laureate or California’s top Chevrolet salesman. A system founded on the assumption that the only successful lives are the visibly brilliant ones is bound to define the bulk of the population as unsuccessful. Or to remain within the vocabulary of the pursuit of happiness, very large proportions of the population are not going to be achieving happiness by “the exercise of their realized capacities” in the sense that they excel in some specific vocational (or avocational) skill.”
― Charles Murray, In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government

“Of note, well before Karl Marx espoused his failed vision of how societies should be organized, the Utopian Socialist Robert Owen had founded New Harmony (Indiana) in 1824.16 Owen thought that a structured society might eliminate some of our “dark” instincts such as the desire to own private property. He would create a well-designed society where everyone lived happily ever after. How empathetic! New Harmony failed miserably. Robert Dale Owen, Robert Owen’s son, arrived at the following conclusion regarding his dad’s efforts to implement Utopian Socialism via the New Harmony community: “All cooperative schemes which provide equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle, must work their own downfall, for by this unjust plan of remuneration they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members—who find their services reaped by the indigent—and retain only the improvident, unskilled, and vicious members.”17 The quest for radical equality as envisioned by the Utopians, socialists, and communists will always fail because it is contrary to human nature.”
― Gad Saad, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind