Quotes

"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"

"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain

Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”

"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler

"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day

"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown

"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"

Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Government is another word for Entropy

Governments bring us mostly waste and war (the ultimate waste). War can at least destroy some governments, unfortunately war can destroy everything else first. That is how ultimately wasteful government is.

Empire Games by Theodore Dalrymple - City Journal
AUGUST 7, 2012

THEODORE DALRYMPLE
Reading Gibbon with an eye on the Olympics
As London prepared for the Olympics, the most that my friends there hoped was that they would not suffer inconvenience, at least not beyond the increased taxation that will no doubt soon be exacted in order to pay for the games. The worst report I have heard so far about the games’ impact on daily life is of the severe overcrowding at the Underground station at Earls Court, frantically busy at the best of times. But in the matter of the games, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall has some lessons. Writing of the Emperor Philip, “the minister of a violent government, elected for the private benefit of the soldiers,” he observes: “On his return from the East to Rome, Philip, desirous of obliterating the memory of his crimes, and of captivating the affections of the people, solemnized the secular games with infinite pomp and magnificence.”
History does not repeat itself except by analogy—and here, it is hard not to see an analogy between Philip and former prime minister Anthony Blair. Of course, we live, as Gibbon might have put it, in a politer age, when crimes have to be muted, untruths disguised by rhetoric, and the ruination of states performed by stealth rather than by personal extravagance and outright defalcation. Still, Blair’s regime benefited only those who worked for it, and the Olympics, for which he lobbied hard, were his parting gift to the nation he had betrayed, a fitting memorial to a man with a soul of tinsel. In this connection, one cannot help but note Gibbon’s account of the Emperor Caracalla’s legacy: “The prodigality of Caracalla had left behind it a long train of ruin and disorder; and if that worthless tyrant had been capable of reflecting on the sure consequences of his own conduct, he would perhaps have enjoyed the dark prospect of the distress and calamities which he bequeathed to his successors.” Caracalla, of course, was killed; ours being an altogether gentler age, Blair is thinking of making a comeback.
Historical analogies do break down eventually. The barbarians were external to Rome, but they are internal to Britain.
-more at link-

No comments:

Post a Comment