Part of my “libertarian leanings” as a Conservatarian is for Government’s hands and intrusiveness to be hands-off. Let people, let Individuals, decide for themselves what is best for themselves.
The economy is composed of people, and is not a machine. It is like the English language, not like an English steam engine. The people are motivated in varying proportions by prudence, temperance, courage, justice, faith, hope, and love, with the corresponding vices. By way of such principles of motion, they pursue their endlessly diverse projects, knitting and model railroading…. Let them do it, laissez faire. Such an arrangement takes people to be liberated and equal and increasingly competent adults, as against the stolid peasants or helpless proletarians of conservative or progressive theorizing since 1848.
-Deirdre N. McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi (The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State)
One the other hand, since the first Industrial Revolution, Progressives / Socialists have believed that they could “bring order” to Society by managing it “scientifically” as one would a complicated piece of machinery. The downfall in their thinking is that men are not pieces of steel, rubber, plastics, or anything else and we are not “single purpose” cogs in that machine.
We are both simplistic and complex beings of flesh and blood and have two things that machinery does not have: emotions and intellect. We multitask, over time, because we have to: an employer, an employee, husband, wife, father, mother, friend, with interests that change over time and those emotions that can change within hours if not minutes.
Now, multiply all that with billions of decisions and actions every minute of the day over hundreds of millions of Americans (who generally hate being told what to do in the first place), how could Progressives ever competently “control” and/or “social engineer” Society to their own beliefs?
They can’t – but their hubris and lack of knowledge won’t allow them to do so. And one of their greatest faults is believing that Society is, like the steam engine analogy above, where they only have to set the rules, set it into motion, and then sit back and watch everyone behave as designated.
And we will have lost the Freedom on which this country was founded.
Who Chooses?
That is what is at stake next week. Choose wisely.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
