Quote of the day

Fairly early in my political education, shortly after I graduated from college, I used to sit in lunchtime discussions with co-workers about political issues. One of my friends was a liberal, and we had many conversations and disagreements over the way things should be, and the way that the world worked. And he always finished up by talking about ends, about children being fed and educated, about fairness and equality. His desire for these things led him to support of socialized medicine, affirmative action, free lunches, etc. And I finally said to him one day "I want all of those things, too - I just think that those are the wrong solutions to get them." And that's when I formulated my basic law number 1 about the difference between Republicans and Democrats, as the world existed in 1986.

"The Republicans and Democrats have, in many ways, similar end results that they'd like to see. The Republicans think the Democrats are wrong. The Democrats think the Republicans are bad."

That was the message, that has been the message, from the dominant media for my entire life. The Republicans are bad. The Republicans want to starve children, kick old people out into the cold so they starve and die. The Republicans want to kill American soldiers to enrich their oil buddies. The Republicans want to steal from the poor to give to the rich. Etc. Etc...


Which brings me to the quote of the day, from Friedrich Hayek's The Road To Serfdom:

"...the confusion has been further increased by the common practice of denying that those who repudiate the means value the ends..."

So you see, if I'd read Hayek when I was younger, I wouldn't have had to figure it out for myself...