Beck: Is It Really That Bad?

Billy asks some truly important questions, including the one above:

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...Rolling around the web today, I hits the link from Martin's place, in which Richard Epstein lays open some of the political and economic dynamics of the state play for communist medicine.

He moves fast so you have to stay clear and think to keep up. Listen more than once if you have to: do it as often as you have to until until you understand how such a plot must necessarily drive everyone into its maw sooner or later.



The real depravity in it all is what Epstein calls the "Principal of Invincible Ignorance". "We'll just raise taxes." (attributed by Epstein to Judith Feder -- 10:44 of the viddie)

Of course, there is no doubt that a person like her would say something like that, and the disrespect of reality in it is nearly an actionable outrage. Like flicking dandruff off her shoulder, she would happily consign your productivity and the very hours of your life that you devote to it, to anything for which she thinks it should be disposed. It's as if you do not even exist, except for the given of what your carcass can feed in the commune.

Epstein's point is well taken, which is that the facts of the straits to which this philosophy brings humanity simply do not penetrate the socialist brain. This is part of what makes these times so bloody in outlook: these lessons should have been quite learned by now, in the wake of the twentieth century.

And so very large and curious questions loom.

What exactly is the defender of freedom dealing with?

Are these socialists now really the howling fools that Epstein's "ignorance" would imply?

Or are they the criminals that the "Invincible" element would imply?

Is it really that facts are impotent before political power?

Is it really that bad?

It's a pretty important question for some kind of a long-range idea of what to do about it all. ...if there's anything left to be done.

I'm gonna go play now.
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Dum spiro, pugno.

While I breathe, I fight.