Playing Freedom Cheap (Thomas Sowell)

Jewish World Review ^ | February 16, 2010 | Thomas Sowell

[jazusamo]

If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom.

Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic.

Alarms ranging from "overpopulation" to "global warming" and crusades ranging from "affordable housing" to "universal health care" have been among the distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and, if necessary, hate other people.

The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people — under Communism, the capitalists; under Nazis, the Jews.

Under extremist Islamic regimes today, hatred is directed at the infidels in general and the "great Satan," the United States, in particular. There some people have been induced to give up not only their freedom but even their lives, in order to strike a blow against those they have been taught to hate.

We have not yet reached these levels of hostility, but those who are taking away our freedoms, bit by bit, on the installment plan, have been incessantly supplying us with people to resent.

One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called "health care reform" bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress...

[jazusamo]

*PING*
Thomas Sowell

Recent columns
The Fallacy of “Fairness“: Part IV
The Fallacy of “Fairness“: Part III
The Fallacy of “Fairness“: Part II
The Fallacy of ‘Fairness‘

Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to or removed from the Thomas Sowell ping list…

[norton]

"Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced —and increasing a country's productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting "the rich."

Repeated just because I like it.

"You can see the agenda behind the rhetoric when profits are called "unconscionable" but taxes never are, even when taxes take more than half of what someone has earned, or add much more to the prices we have to pay than profits do."

Or: When taxes fund agencies and government programs based on headcount rather than on product.

[rockinqsranch]

Thanks for the ping jaz. Another good one.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Outstanding piece of writing!

[left that other site]

Great Picture! Terrific Article! Thank You!

[jazusamo]

Yes, this is especially good!

[jazusamo]

The credit for the pic goes to smoothsailing, I ripped him off. :-)

[left that other site]

Love the steam coming out of dumbo’s ears!

[wjcsux]

Thomas Sowell makes so much sense that even Libs should be able to understand him. Thanks Jaz.

[ImpBill]

Imagine that, a black man understanding the Liberal/Progressive Lie! Oh, that more people of all stripes would recognize the “lie”.

[wjcsux]

Amen!

[Billthedrill]

Sowell BTT. This one made me dance.

The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people...

Yes. Because hatred is like a drug - it makes you feel so good you don't even realize that it's killing you.

The assumption that what A pays B is any business of C is an assumption that means a dangerous power being transferred to politicians to tell us all what incomes we can and cannot receive...the power to say what incomes people can be allowed to make will inevitably move down the income scale to make us all dependents and supplicants of politicians.

Envy is such a drug as well. It doesn't just kill, it makes you a puppet of the ones who are adept at orchestrating it. Observance and understanding of the 10th Commandment could have saved an awful lot of people from con men such as Marx. Just my $0.02.

[csense]

Another good article by Thomas Sowell.

[smoothsailing]

The phrase "public servants" is increasingly misleading. They are well on their way to becoming public masters — like aptly named White House "czars." The more they can get us all to resent those they designate, the more they can distract us from their increasing control of our own lives — but only if we sell our freedom cheap.

Another masterpiece from Dr. Sowell. That part at the end made me remember an e-mail I got from a Nam veteran buddy of mine today....

......................E-MAIL.....................

Does this photo of President Obama in the Oval Office convey anything to you about his attitude?

Would you speak with the Chief of Staff, your Chief Economic Adviser, and your Senior Adviser with your feet up on the Resolute Desk - a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880?

We should inundate the White House with emails demanding he keep his feet off of our furniture.

This arrogant, immature & self-centered man has no sense of honor, or of simple decency.

While this posture is disrespectful in any culture, it is absolutely never done in any executive setting. Further, in over half of the cultures of the world, it is recognized not only as disrespectful, but as an extreme insult.

He thinks of himself as a king -- and not as a servant of the people, humbly occupying our White House for his term in office.

Electing him was an enormous mistake -- and will cost us in many ways, for generations.

[jazusamo]

This arrogant, immature & self-centered man has no sense of honor, or of simple decency.

That sums up Obama pretty well. He does excel as a con man or he wouldn't be sitting in that Oval Office defiling it, what a disgusting pic.

Thanks for posting this, Smooth.

When you think it can't get worse you realize you're wrong about Zer0, there's evidently no end to his low life stunts.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Obama reminds me of the famous NYC pimp, Silky Slim. Silky used to bring his hookers into marginal neighborhoods, drive down the real estate values, and then get a kickback frm the big boys, who would buy all the real estate dirt cheap, and “gentrify” the place. Think Obama, Geithner, and Goldman Sachs.