Where one finds a snark,
In a thread's lofty arc,
One finds the main shame,
Of that Noah of fame,
Who let a pair on the Ark,
So their kind would remain,
To bedevil the game,
Popping up without shame,
At mere breath of their name.
lawful means, including the constitutional process of amendment – some good, some bad, some mixed, but 100% constitutional.
Lawful means of acting beyond the plain text of the constitution include only the constitutional process of amendment. When John McCain authored, with Russ Finegold, a law that was clearly at odds with the first amendment and when George Bush signed that law, all three of them clearly knowing they were acting unconstitutionally, they were in real terms committing treason, which description may or may not be more inflammatory than calling them cancers.
Who are we talking about when we talk about “Progressives”?
Actually, Dalrymple was talking about John Kenneth Galbraith, who will do as an archetype. Dalrymple reminded me of just how sure Galbraith was that he knew better than the peasants how to order their lives. And just how contemptuous he was about constitutional limits.
Crony capitalism, of course, can only exist in the presence and with the connivance of cancers like Galbraith who provide the state power to fuel and enforce the cronyism.
I have no problem with city managers and other politicians who more or less strictly adhere to providing essential services to the whole population on a fair and equal basis. Once they stray into redistribution even a little bit they become cancerous, to continue the use of the term you abhor.
Theodore Dalrymple puts a human face on the cancer of progressivism.
Slavers sought to justify their ownership of human beings. Progressives seek merely to justify their ownership of the labor of human beings and their control of the products of that labor.
Update: In fairness I have to point out that it's wrong to morally equate slavers and progressives. Slavers were in general more honest. They did not at all times seek to justify pursuit of their self interest by explaining that it was for the good of their slaves.
@ Zoltan Newberry:
Hear, hear!
@ J.E. Dyer:
Where one finds a snark,
In a thread's lofty arc,
One finds the main shame,
Of that Noah of fame,
Who let a pair on the Ark,
So their kind would remain,
To bedevil the game,
Popping up without shame,
At mere breath of their name.
@ CK MacLeod:
Lawful means of acting beyond the plain text of the constitution include only the constitutional process of amendment. When John McCain authored, with Russ Finegold, a law that was clearly at odds with the first amendment and when George Bush signed that law, all three of them clearly knowing they were acting unconstitutionally, they were in real terms committing treason, which description may or may not be more inflammatory than calling them cancers.
@ CK MacLeod:
Actually, Dalrymple was talking about John Kenneth Galbraith, who will do as an archetype. Dalrymple reminded me of just how sure Galbraith was that he knew better than the peasants how to order their lives. And just how contemptuous he was about constitutional limits.
Crony capitalism, of course, can only exist in the presence and with the connivance of cancers like Galbraith who provide the state power to fuel and enforce the cronyism.
I have no problem with city managers and other politicians who more or less strictly adhere to providing essential services to the whole population on a fair and equal basis. Once they stray into redistribution even a little bit they become cancerous, to continue the use of the term you abhor.
Theodore Dalrymple puts a human face on the cancer of progressivism.
Slavers sought to justify their ownership of human beings. Progressives seek merely to justify their ownership of the labor of human beings and their control of the products of that labor.
Update: In fairness I have to point out that it's wrong to morally equate slavers and progressives. Slavers were in general more honest. They did not at all times seek to justify pursuit of their self interest by explaining that it was for the good of their slaves.