Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.
– Louis D. Brandeis
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Samizdata quote of the dayMay 17th, 2006 |
 8 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Perhaps it would be better put “When the government’s purposes appear beneficent”. Because, if they actually were good, what would be the problem? Once the bad results were discovered, a truly beneficent government would correct its error. Only apparent beneficence would be pressed upon its victims even when the evil truth was clear to all.
Robert:
Purposes are not necessarily fulfilled. A purpose is the motive someone has for undertaking an endeavor. So I think that quote basically means that people should be weary of government action even when the policy is said to help.
Cheers
That just looks like another way of saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I’m willing to give gov’t the benefit of the doubt, their intentions may be quite admirable but they’re going about achieving their ends by the wrong means. I don’t really believe that Blair and his cronies are evil dictators in waiting (George bush, on the other hand…) they are merely trying to to what they think is best with the tools at their disposal. Those tools being made up of a bloated and overweight bureaucracy based on archaic tradition and precedent, and an economic system which treats everyone as an employee (consumers as well). They have a difficult job and I have every sympathy for them. That being said however, they are obviously not up to the task and they should have admitted as much ages ago. If they are so blind that they don’t see where they’re leading us then they don’t deserve the responsibility that we have given them and we should give it to someone else.
Do you suppose that he includes the Supreme Court in “government”?
Mandrill: Are you interested in shares in a Jelly Mine?
NeuArbeit (Macht Frei) are not well-meaning incompetents (that role is filled mainly by the Lubberall Dimoldtwats) but a bunch of career politicos, too twisted for even the most dysfunctional corporate, bent on control of the entire organism that is the nation.
They want every penny we spend or save being spent or saved with an organisation that they have strings to. They are currently planning their attack on the voluntary sector, which exposes the NHS, PPPs, LEAs etc as the tragic dysfunctional fraud that it so clearly is. Once it is assimilated/Milibanned, there will be nothing to compare the failing State organs to. Communism will have arrived, except this time the profits of the clique will have been legalised.
The problem that Brandeis speaks of is that using government as the default benefactor, even when its results are truly good (especially then), creates the public view that government is the solution for all ills. In this he is exactly correct and quite prescient of the root of our current day problems. As Reagan said, “Government IS the problem.”
This is one reason, despite all of Bush’s thuggery, when I hear his tax cut architect, Grover Norquist, say, “I’m not entirely against government, I just want to shrink it down small enough that I can strangle it in the tub,” I know we have at least one libertarian in our government.
Trouble was (if my memory serves) that Justice Brandeis did not tend to apply his rule outside “civil liberties” cases (at least not often).
All the government had to say was that X spending program or economic regulation was for the “general welfare” (the PURPOSE of the powers given to Congress in Article One, Section Eight “the common defence and general welfare” – not a power in-its-self), and Justice Brandeis would go along with it.
Well at least (under the Brandeis rule) one could SAY “the government is spending my money on a lot of unconsitutional programs and ordering me about, in my daily life, in an unconstitutional way” – even if one could not actually DO anything about it (as the Supreme Court would find for the government).
This short article on Privacy by cryptography expert Bruce Schnier appeared yesterday in wired.com. I think its relevant. The full piece is here
“Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” Watch someone long enough, and you’ll find something to arrest — or just blackmail — with.”
And to me- perhaps the perfect answer to that question “”If you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?”. is “We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom.”
David