[High Praise! to Hatless in Hattiesburg and One Cosmos]
America’s wealth is not an inventory of goods; it is an organic entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions. To vivisect it for redistribution is to kill it…. [G]overnment managers of complex systems of wealth soon find that they are administering an industrial corpse, a socialized Solyndra…. The belief that wealth consists not chiefly in ideas, attitudes, moral codes, and mental disciplines but definable static things that can be seized and redistributed — that is the materialist superstition.
Off topic, but…
This is “Talk Like A Pirate Day!”
IMAO has forgotten it’s long tradition.
Speaking of pirates… Obama.
Aaarrrggh, get that butt-pirate Reggie in ‘ere, Oy’ve rolled me peenie skin up in me zipper. Fore!
Here’s you pirate-related material:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvA5IyfSSQ
Lyrics are clean, but the innuendo is NSFW.
“To vivisect it for redistribution is to kill it” – Someone has been reading C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man! Good for them.
LOVE Gagdad Bob at One Cosmos. Delighted to see him linked here. One essay he wrote some years ago discussed wealth and poverty in the context of how liberals always act as if wealth just “happens”, as if it is an accident or a lucky occurrence. He pointed out brilliantly that poverty “just happens” as it is the normal state of existence. If you do nothing, poverty “happens.” Only when you apply your mind and effort can you CREATE wealth. Wealth is the result of conscious action.
When he skewers liberalism as an ideology, he is REALLY good.
I found this particular essay especially good as well and wrote about it some weeks ago. Bravo to Hattie and you for linking it!!! More people should read One Cosmos, IMHO.