Friday, November 12, 2010

Succinct and spot on

This says it all.

And it was said over one hundred years ago but people still don't get it.

I'd rather that England should be free than that England should be compulsorily sober. With freedom we might in the end attain sobriety, but in the other alternative we should eventually lose both freedom and sobriety.

— W.C. Magee, Archbishop of York, Sermon to Peterborough [1868]

(HT Future of Freedom Foundation)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's very similar to a quote (allegedly) of Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Bez

Lindsay Mitchell said...

I remember it as 'security'. Much as muchness anyway. Yes. Another great maxim.

Manolo said...

Excellent. I took the liberty of putting it in kiwiblog, citing the source, of course, :-)

Anonymous said...

If you think most people on benefits are scroungers, then rejoice

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/11/welfare-proposals-tip-balance

Anonymous said...

Lindsay: the point is not so much the semantical distinction between 'safety' and 'security', but rather the understanding of the opposed criterion; in both cases that of "personal responsibility" and hence personal authority, rather than a government derived entitlement.

Bez

Anonymous said...

from the guardian article:

All welfare systems are a difficult balance between ensuring incentives to work and preventing the defenceless falling into abject penury

This is the usual conceptual mish-mash that tries to appeal to legitimate moral sensbilities and sympathies

To speak in terms of "defenseless" is to bring to mind aggression against the helpless. But we are not talking about crimes against the poor. "Defenseless" has to mean disabled from working if a welfare check is to do any good in the case.

People who are genuinely and fully disabled are a very small population. The huge ranks of welfare recipients are people who elect not to work. As far as "being saved from penury", handouts can never do that. Nothing but productive work can elevate a man above the animality of sneaking and stealing, or living off the scraps of the productive.

Not that saving poor souls from penury is something welfare-statists aim at, anyway. They aim at holding the reins after they've shackled the productive with their moral perversions. And since they were never after saving anybody in the first place, the historically obvious fact that their programme will not succeed at doing that is of no concern to them whatsoever.

The "difficult balance" the article speaks of is actually the balance welfare-statists are constantly trying to affect, within the minds of the populace, between their natural, wholesome selfishness, which rejects the altruistic role welfare assigns them, and the guilt- and confusion-induced pangs in their consciences, due to religious and progressive doctrines.

Anonymous said...

defenseless against what is the question. If not other people initiating force against them and they really just mean reality, that does not obligate anybody else to do anything