[T]here seems to have been an actual decline in rational thinking. The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously — after all, if an athlete is paid a million or more a year, he knows he is important … so his opinions of foreign affairs and domestic policies must be important, too, even though he proves himself to be ignorant and subliterate every time he opens his mouth.
Complete failure
The whole political vision of the left, including socialism and communism, has failed by virtually every empirical test, in countries all around the world. But this has only led leftists intellectuals to evade and denigrate empirical evidence.
State PR
The state spends much time and effort persuading the public that it is not really what it is and that the consequences of its actions are positive rather than negative.
Freedom vs. responsibility
To the frustrated, freedom from responsibility is more attractive than freedom from restraint. They are eager to barter their independence for relief from the burdens of willing, deciding and being responsible for inevitable failure. They willingly abdicate the directing of their lives to those who want to plan, command and shoulder all responsibility.
Equality and liberty
Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time are either psychopaths or mountebanks.
Socialist ‘economics’
If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.
Slavery vs. the welfare state
New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof asserts that there is ‘overwhelming evidence that centuries of racial subjugation still shape inequity in the 21st century’ and he mentions ‘the lingering effects of slavery.’ If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state.
We have to work to preserve freedom
Freedom degenerates unless it has to struggle in its own defense.
Comparative greeds
It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it “greed” to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.
Life support for racism
Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as “racists.”