Showing posts with label Imprimis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Imprimis. Show all posts

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Charles Kesler on the New Liberals

Charles Kesler delivers an interesting take on the new liberalism in Imprimis' May/June 2010 edition:

FDR's New Deal implied that there's nothing to fear from making government bigger and bigger, because political tyranny—at least among advanced nations—is a thing of the past. In truth, however, the new socio-economic rights were group rights, not individual rights. They were rights for organized interests: labor unions, farmers, school teachers, old people, blacks, sick people, and so forth. Collectively, these rights encouraged citizens to think of themselves as members of pressure groups or to organize themselves into pressure groups. Subtly and not so subtly, citizens were taught to identify their rights with group self-interests of one kind or another...These new group rights were conspicuously not attached to obligations.

The new rights pointed to a kind of moral anarchy in which rights without obligations became the currency of the realm—in which rights, understood as putative claims on resources, were effectively limited only by other, stronger such claims. The result was, at best, an equilibrium of countervailing power....Liberalism in these terms is just a preference.


Basically, Kesler sees modern-day liberals favoring freedom without morality and duty. He believes such a path leads to moral relativism and a slow erosion of individual rights.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Dick Armey's Axiom Number One

Dick Armey's Axiom Number One: "The market is rational. The government is dumb."

His entire speech, printed in Imprimis, can be found by searching here:

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

Mr. Armey goes on to say, "George Washington might have become our king, but he chose not to. His governing idea was that government is our servant because we are inherently free. It is an idea too many in government today forget."

Dick Armey is perhaps most famous for a statement made during the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998. A reporter asked him what he would do if he were in President Bill Clinton's position. He replied "If I were in the President's place I would not have gotten a chance to resign. I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, 'How do I reload this damn thing?'"