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Pastimes : Triffin's Market Diary -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Triffin who wrote (362)	10/26/2009 8:01:59 PM
From: Triffin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 868

BC: WE THE PEOPLE .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . . . . . Dave Wendt (14:45:29) : Corporations and businesses are driven by economic realism. They understand that, if they take their capital and profits and invest them in R&D,design, or new equipment and make all the right choices, they can expect to earn perhaps 10% on their money, maybe 25% briefly, if they come up with the hot next new thing. If, however, they invest $10,000, $100,000, or maybe a million or two in the political class, they can reap grants, subsidies, and contracts worth millions, hundreds of millions, or billions with little of the nasty uncertainty that accompanies regular investment. In the modern world it’s a no-brainer decision. The only really effective way to limit government corruption is to strictly limit it’s power and scope of control. The former Soviet Union is the crowning example. Since the State controlled everything corruption was endemic and pervasive. The smallest petty bureaucratic action couldn’t be accomplished without a bribe changing hands. The wise old white guys who were our Founding Fathers realized this and, guided by the work of Montesquieu and philosophers back to Plato and Aristotle, strove mightily to craft within our Constitution a governmental structure whose primary purpose was to protect the People from the Government. But even they realized it would take profound dedication and diligence on the part of the People to maintain what they provided. Unfortunately, that dedication and diligence has only been evinced quite sporadically, while the tyrannical impulse it was meant to guard against has been relentless. From Lincoln, to Teddy Roosevelt, to Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush, and now the One, government power has grown inexorably, while Liberty and Freedom have been slivered away like a pumpkin pie on a Thanksgiving sideboard, until we find ourselves in the present moment, perched on the precipice like flock of lemmings, staring into the abyss of a future ruled by a global government composed of self righteous nannystate bureaucrats. If the present trends are any indication, that world will be so tightly controlled that we will have to raise our hands like first-graders for permission to go to the toilet and it would be ironic justice if the single sheet of TP we are granted to complete our business was made from recycled copies of our Constitution, that most precious gift those dead old white guys gave to all of humanity, so that we can do literally, what we have been doing to it figuratively all these years. As I’ve watched the events of recent years unfold, I’m often filled with an overwhelming sense of shame since I can honestly say I saw this coming more than 40 years ago and while I’ve often taken the occasion to rise and rail against the looming tide, I’ve never had the courage to fight it with anything like the full commitment that it merited. I fear our legacy in the future will be to be an epithet on the lips of all those who will be forced to inhabit the world we are about to bequeath them. Not because of anything that occurs with the climate, but because we were willing to surrender human freedom to convenience, indifference, and acceptance of the manipulations of tyrannical hucksters. Our ignominy will be richly deserved.