Posted on 02/25/2013 10:50:28 AM PST by jazusamo
John Stuart Mill's classic essay "On Liberty" gives reasons why some people should not be taking over other people's decisions about their own lives. But Professor Cass Sunstein of Harvard has given reasons to the contrary. He cites research showing "that people make a lot of mistakes, and that those mistakes can prove extremely damaging."
Professor Sunstein is undoubtedly correct that "people make a lot of mistakes." Most of us can look back over our own lives and see many mistakes, including some that were very damaging.
What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to override our mistaken decisions for us. That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the left.
Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.
Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?
Think about the First World War, from which nations on both sides ended up worse off than before, after an unprecedented carnage that killed substantial fractions of whole younger generations and left millions starving amid the rubble of war.
Think about the Holocaust, and about other government slaughters of even more millions of innocent men, women and children under Communist governments in the Soviet Union and China.
(Excerpt) Read more at creators.com ...
Good points again by Dr. Sowell! We should never cede totalitarian power to the Leviathan.
You’re correct, he didn’t miss it but I sure did:)
Post 22 was to you. I’m really messed up:)
Yes, I saw it as I am sure jazusamo did. However, that sentence addresses only WORDS, NOT actions. When we LEARN from our mistakes and correct them, we take action. When we admit (or don't admit, as the case may be) our mistakes, it is only words.
Example: "Yes, your honor, I was driving drunk 2 nights ago when I was arrested." Those are words. "Yes, your honor, I was here last week on a different drunk driving charge." That's a failure to learn from the mistake and that is government!
Home Viewing Bookmark.
Hey, T. McGee... can you make your video available to mobile? All I’ve got these days is my phone for getting online. Thanks.
D. C. Wright
We tried to jigger the settings for phones, but couldn’t make it work.
Ok. Maybe when I get a tablet I can make it work...
Ain’t irony wonderful?
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