PreviewThe people shape their own destiny
-- either as free people or as slaves.

If they remain self-reliant, they stay free.
Unchecked, ever-expanding government power
-- destroys lives.

Government panacea is a defective idea.
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Saturday, January 3, 2009

Gleichschaltung meme

Gleichschaltung - forced co-ordination of persons' meme is a moral problem

Individual empowerment and responsibility go together. Great harm has come because people did not think themselves responsible for their own actions. The individual feels excused because the action is government sponsored or order of a superiors, or impersonal forces, leads to every evil result. An individual who senses his responsibility for an action, because he has the personal power to make terrible choices, will be less inclined to let himself be an agent of evil.

Thus moral society seeks to empower its individuals with equality of opportunity to refine their mettle, and personal powers like self-defense.

The failings of the American corporate body are the failings of its components. [May Heaven forgive us.]

Gleichschaltung shortchanges an individual the chance to develop to the fullest potential is a tragedy. This is what government does best. If you minimize the size and intrusiveness of government, you automatically increase and enhance the human experience.

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The great spurs to great achievement is the payoff and personal recognition and the simultaneous avoidance of failure. A government pay system in health care eliminates the possibility of overpaying for failure or success. Consequently only failure is certain.

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From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality.

F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 87.

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