"Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I took half the pains to preserve it." -John Adams


Welcome to Patriot's Lament. We strive here to educate ourselves on Liberty. We will not worry ourselves so much with the daily antics of American politics, and drown ourselves in the murky waters of the political right or left.
Instead, we will look to the Intellectuals and Champions of Liberty, and draw on their wisdom of what it is to be a truly free people. We will learn from where our Providential Liberties are derived, and put the proper perspective of a Free Individual and the State.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Don't blame [insert politician], blame the people who elected him!

In the system of voting, not being plundered isn't an option. The choice is to what extent one is plundered and to what extent one receives the fruits of that plunder, with everyone being convinced that he's plundered more than what he receives back. In this way each person feels justified in voting to maximize the amount of pelf directed to himself. This is the war of all against all, organized, systematized and rationalized (as in moral excuse making).

Dr. Robert Higgs writes about those perceptive folks who say that we shouldn't blame the politician, but those who elect him, here.


Ambrose Bierce, among others (including yours truly), did not doubt that representative democracy is a sham: “You can effect a change of robbers every four years,” he wrote. “Inestimable privilege to pull off the glutted leech and attach the lean one! And you cannot even choose among the lean leeches, but must accept those designated by the programmers and showmen who have the reptiles on tap.”
The piece is worth reading.

To be sure, the folks who vote for [insert politician] may be morally repugnant for doing so, or they may be trying to alleviate the predations on themselves which they feel most acutely.

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