Jeff

“Tocqueville charged that Americans lived under the constant threat of a tyranny of the majority - an alternative despotism - that muzzled dissent and killed freedom of opinion in America. He claimed, 'I know of no country where there is in general less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion that in America.' What Tocqueville feared most from equality was a deadening uniformity of thought, which he believed he detected in America. he depicted Americans as victims of a crippling conformity of opinion, justified only in part by the great instability of conditions inherent in a new country, yet aggravated by an extreme case of national pride that made self-criticism unlikely. He complained that one could not even criticize the weather in America.”
― Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville

“… ideology… is an instrument of power; a defense mechanism against information; a pretext for eluding moral constraints in doing or approving evil with a clean conscience; and finally, a way of banning the criterion of experience, that is, of completely eliminating or indefinitely postponing the pragmatic criteria of success and failure. —Jean-François Revel”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision Of The Annointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy

“The rule through pandemic medical and emergency decrees is nothing more than a coup d’état on a worldwide scale and it therefore follows the same patterns, not necessarily in the same order, observed in banana republics:
First, pointing to a threat, lockdown of the borders, and restrictions of the means of transportation; checked.
Second, full control of the media; checked.
Third, declaration of a state of emergency and deployment of forces on the ground; checked.
Fourth, restrictions of assembly and civil rights; checked.
Fifth, repressive measure for those not cooperating; checked.
Sixth, changes to the figures and political scene as some go away and old ones come back; checked.
Seventh, attempt to return to normalcy; checked. - On Tyranny Through Emergency Decrees”
― Lamine Pearlheart, Awakening

“That so many grandiose social schemes which sound plausible to the intellectual elites not only fail, but prove to be disastrously counterproductive, is by no means surprising when these schemes are analyzed in terms of the characteristics of the processes by which they operate, rather than the goals they seek or the visions to which they conform. At the heart of many of these schemes is third-party decision making. Third parties typically know less, even when convinced that they know more, in addition to lacking the incentives of those who directly benefit from being right and suffer from being wrong.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision Of The Annointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy