I don’t much bother with political posts, though that doesn’t mean I lack a considered opinion on the workings of my home country’s government. Mainly I’ve found that those who understand things don’t need my help in understanding, and those who do not understand, do not understand that they do not understand.
Mr. Henning W. Prentis managed to sum up an important abstract in the creation and running of governments though, that I wish more people would read. While this quote below is a bit wordy, it is easy enough to understand. It goes about explaining — way back in 1943 — that new ideas are not new, and are not really complex to understand: only difficult to recognize when you are looking right at them.
I’ll let him explain and not bother with my own analysis. I will say though, the reason I do not adhere to any particular political party’s rhetoric is that they all want to march us in the cycle… round and round. The problem isn’t in a specific ideology, but that the people — both in office and in the voting booth — are in the phase of “the golden calf of economic security.”
See you at the polls.
“Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security.
The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more. At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas.
Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States.
Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.”
― Henning W. Prentis, Industrial Management in a Republic, p. 22, 1943
Johnny Killmore 