JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2010/10/quote-of-day-de-tocqueville-edition.html (8 comments)

  Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.

jsid-1286800530-55  GrumpyOldFart at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:35:30 +0000

While we're quoting, this seems like a good spot to put something I ran across while digging into a box of old books that has been in storage for most of a decade:

"Does it not seem strange that eternal salvation for the many, in a hereafter which they are asked to accept on mere assurances, should be attainable no other way than by their enduring hardships gratefully and laboring their lives in wretchedness for the further enrighment of a pious few who exhibit a suspiciously unholy interest in the quality of their own here and now?"

- James P. Hogan, Code of the Lifemaker

How many SUVs does Al Gore take to AGW conferences? What's the thermostat in the White House set on? What is the status of Geitherner's and Rangel's taxes? How "green" are Pelosi's travel habits between DC and SF?

See what I mean? Liberation Theocracy.


jsid-1286808722-430  Guest (anonymous) at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:52:02 +0000

"Liberation Theocracy".  Don't you mean "Liberal Theocracy"?

Newbius


jsid-1286809155-751  perlhaqr at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:59:16 +0000

"You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.  It is dark.  You will probably be eaten by a Grue."


jsid-1286809885-212  Ken at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:11:25 +0000

The philosophy, to the extent there is one, can be summed up as follows: "Booze, dope, and ****ing in the streets(footnote 1), sure...but let 'em actually govern themselves? Are you kidding me?"

(1)Lest I be mistaken for an acolyte of Judge Inkblot, I have no interest in the arrangements people make with respect to booze and dope, and while I am not sure the streets are the place for the third item, I am likewise indifferent to what consenting adults arrange to do with their privacy.

jsid-1286812410-955  John Stephens at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:53:31 +0000 in reply to jsid-1286809885-212

Re: ****ing in the streets

While "startling the horses" really isn't much of a problem these days, the effects on traffic do have to be considered.


jsid-1286815070-505  DirtCrashr at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:37:50 +0000

Don't you think the prescience of de Tocqueville was enhanced by his prior experience in Frrance? 
The impetus of the Bureaucratic State eminate from the 19th Century's obsession with discovery, classification and collecting. All that structuralism, all those wild and energetic regulation of "scientific" taxonimy extended into public life as people tried to devise whole systems that encompassed all the new discoveries. 
Even the use of the term "Systems" was a 19th Century innovation.  DeToqville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859) was only 13 years older than Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) who devised the most perniciously enduring utopian thought-experimant, one that still reaches out from the grave today to kill and maim.


jsid-1286822713-631  Borepatch at Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:45:14 +0000

de Toqueville in that passage was more than anything describing France of the first half of the nineteenth century.  That it has come so perfectly to describe today's America is astonishing.


jsid-1286950476-963  Mark Horning at Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:14:37 +0000

Kevin,  I know you are not a huge Rand fan (despite the blog title) but the obvious quote seems appropriate:
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."


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