Liberty at the market
As a blogger, I tend to immerse myself in the news. Lately there’s been so very much of it, and so much to think about, that I find myself neglecting some of the other parts of my life.
But yesterday it was time to go to the supermarket. And looking at all the wonderful food, in its tremendous variety and abundance—so much more than supermarkets had when I was a child—and the people there, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the wonder and bounty of it all. These days even the ordinary citizen has access to so much that most of us live in the lap of luxury compared to what it was like even when I was a child.
And then it occurred to me that for so many people the main thing must be to continue the good life (even through welfare, if they can’t afford it on their own) rather than to be devoted to some seeming-abstraction like liberty or responsibility. Obama and the Democrats promise that good life for all, and frame Republicans as wanting to take it away. Whether those facts are empirically true is hardly important; it’s the perception that’s vital.
Liberty? Too many people are inclined to take it for granted, or ignore it, or not understand how precious it is and how vulnerable to tyranny both obvious and subtle. Liberty can seem a distant concept, and food and other consumer goods and conveniences provide pleasures that are immediate, up close and personal. How many people care so much about an abstraction that they will vote for someone whom they think (rightly or wrongly) might take food out of their own mouths, or make them work harder for it?
That has always been the danger of having a republic. Its success rests on the character and the understanding of its people, because if they stop learning and comprehending what makes us great and unique—are not taught it in the schools or in society at large, or lack the skills or the motivation to understand or to care—then we will lose it. And the funny thing about liberty is that it’s only then that people experience (up close and personal) how important it was, and how deeply they yearn for it.
I’ve quoted this passage (from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor) before, and I’ll probably quote it again. It seems to take on more and more layers of meaning as time goes on:
Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?
No kidding!
What the hell do the people have to be angry about? Especially the rich liberals. Go to a Mother’s food store and look at the expensive natural crap they eat. There’s stuff there that I don’t what it is, looks like puke, but it costs $11/lb. (And funny how most of them don’t look that healthy.)
No kidding!
A Supermarket is a wonderful place to contemplate how fortunate we are; how many choices we have; and what a magnificent bounty flows toward us with so little effort on our part.
On the other hand it is also an opportunity to reflect on how very dependent we are on systems and persons over whose performance we have no control.
All true but the mass of lowinfo voters have neither the inclination nor the ability for contemplation and understanding.
They do not “Praise God from Whom all blessings flow,” but have been taught to “Praise O from whom all blessings flow.”
Years ago a friend told me this story. Right after the Soviet union fell, his wife’s relative from Romania came to the US on a visit. That evening she was cooking them a dinner and asked her husband to go to the local grocery store for a few items. Their guest went along and as they entered the grocery store he stopped right in the doorway with a stunned, disbelieving expression on his face. He couldn’t get over the sheer variety and amounts available.
That, perhaps better than any other example brings home the difference between capitalism and communism. It’s my contention that socialism always ‘evolves’ into communism because it must. When socialists ‘run out of other people’s money’ they don’t reexamine their premises, they double down and seize ever larger amounts of their citizens assets until totalitarian communism is the de facto lay of the land.
“We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders into repeatedly and gradually giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.” — Nikita Khrushchev
Geoffrey Britain,
Numerous years ago our local papers had similar stories. It seems that the favorite place for Russian visitors to have their photos taken (to be sent back home) was at the produce stands of the local grocery stores. As the song goes, “we don’t know what we’ve got ’till it’s gone!”
Neo,
You wrote
A related thought was voiced by Charles C.W., Cooke in his recent article In Praise of Paranoia. In it he quotes G.K. Chesterton:
I think Cooke is an essential read. The link:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348328/praise-paranoia
Good health, thank the Lord for that. And for most of us, we can have it with exercise and good nutrition.
First and foremost, don’t let em get your joy. There’s truth in the words “the joy of the Lord is my strength.”
Remember the scene in Moby Dick where Captain Ahab throws his pipe overboard? Kind of not loke that. Sure, you can be outraged and should be but that’s different than being bitter.
And you might want to enjoy it while you can!
Here’s thoughtful joy and scenery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IShsFHqGplg
On the other hand– I think it’s sort of good that people mind their own affairs, mostly. It’s hard to motivate people to act on an abstraction like “liberty.” And you don’t want too many people walking around acting on abstractions anyway; you and I may like “liberty” but the next guy wants “equality” or “peace.”
The founding fathers had much to say of the ‘interesting’ times within which we find ourselves:
“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” George Washington
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams
As some realize, our country is not a democracy but a republic that democratically elects its representatives. Thus the efforts by the left to subvert our Constitutional Republic and turn it into a democracy. As Jefferson observed, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
Benjamin Franklin agreed, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
Thus the right to bear arms.
“Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” John Adams
Thus the left’s concentration on the seduction of the MSM.
“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Thomas Jefferson
While Jefferson never knew Barack Obama and his ilk he knew full well of that type.
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.
In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.” —Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824
And the Founding Fathers limited the vote to property owners, right?
Many Soviet defectors who came to the US and went to the supermarket first couple of times thought it was a US Government trick.
No lines? no limit? no real waiting? how was this possible?
For the most part, yes. You know, the people who tended to pay taxes. He that pays the piper calls the tune.
GB @3:19
My mother used to help Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe get settled in the US. Invariably, when she took one of the women to a supermarket for the first time she would start crying.
Neo, don’t despair. We live in the heart of blue darkness but there’s lots of the country that doesn’t put up with it. Just remember that Obama’s biggest contribution to the economy has been gun sales. Freedom is in the heart and soul of a great number of Americans and they aren’t going to let it go.
“And the Founding Fathers limited the vote to property owners, right?” Ann
A quick search appears to reveal that prior to the founding of the USA no country had ever granted voting rights to non-property owners.
In 1870 with the passage of the 15th amendment, the US became the first major country to formally abolish the property requirement.
The short-lived Corsican Republic (1755—1769) was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage for all inhabitants over the age of 25.
It’s easy to judge prior societies by modern standards and find them wanting but intellectually dishonest to do so. What counts is how a society evolves in addressing moral injustice. Just as everyone has ‘feet of clay’ so too does every society. Perfection lies only in heaven.
Geoffrey Britain & T:
There are countless stories like that about people from behind the Iron Curtain being struck dumb at the sight of an American supermarket.
It is precisely our heritage of economic liberty (i.e., free market capitalism) which makes such bounty possible. If Obama succeeds in his goal of “fundamentally transforming” America, future generations will scoff at our stories of the plenty we used to have.
rickl,
I too had previously heard of similar stories. It is however the only personal witness of them that I have ever known.
Yes, future disbelief at stories of the plenty we used to have are certain if the left wins this war.
Churchill nailed it when he observed that, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, a creed of ignorance, and a gospel of envy. Its only inherent virtue, the equal sharing of misery.”
Socialism’s final nail in the coffin of human aspirations is its unavoidable transformation into totalitarian communism.
A grocery store is pretty free-market – not that much regulation. Through the government has done a pretty good job of shutting down farmer’s markets.
Less free market is health care. And its about to become a lot less free market.
Less free market than health care is education.
Now the challenge: convince low information voters that health care and education will be more like the grocery store if Republicans had a say. I know, its a tough sell, but its the only chance we have.
Paul in Boston,
Wholeheartedly agree. “We live in the heart of blue darkness but there’s lots of the country that doesn’t put up with it. Just remember that Obama’s biggest contribution to the economy has been gun sales. Freedom is in the heart and soul of a great number of Americans and they aren’t going to let it go.”
Not me, not my wife, not our sons and daughter, not my grandchildren, not my cousins, not my nieces and nephews. We will not back down. Our ‘liberal’ fellow citizens and their heroes are in for a big surprise if push comes to shove. Unintended consequences are a bitch. We 10% will hold sway. We can produce 1 MOA at 100 or more. With my scoped Mauser I can consistently put 1 MOA at 400 yards on the paper. Forces of fascists had better wear kevlar in their hair. And wear blinders least I spy the whites of their eyes.
Been reading VDH’s “Carnage and Culture.” It’s a quick and fascinating read because you want to get to the next one of his major nine battles to see why it proves his thesis.
The first battle he examples is Salamis, which was a naval battle and because the trireme’s (which have not even today been reproduced correctly) were staffed by the lowest denominator of common people, the history of the world was changed in that their victory gave them a vote, a vote resisted by Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hegel, Neitzche “and dozens of others would express reservations about democracy that gave unlimited political freedom to citizens on the basis of an unalienable right-that men in general are born and should die as freemen.
Those names do not resonate with liberty, but with fascism. The founders sought a way to prevent the general idea that all men have a right to inalienable freedom from becoming a tyranny. That basic idea is the idea that has been lost by the last generation who believes that gov’t is the grantor and guarantee of liberty.
rickl,
When I would read accounts of the mass starvation in the USSR caused by Stalin and his ilk, I would wonder how anyone could come up with such asinine ideas as they did thinking it would help improve matters. (OK – some of the ag policies were pure punishment, but others were most likely the product of ‘smarter’ people)
And yet I look at the things that Obama and his ilk have done, and think – ah yes – those are the true ‘wreckers’. Between saving snails and putting medicine under the strict government controls, they are killing the free-market goose. And they think they are doing the right things, these self anointed fools…
The super market is one example of what free enterprise can create.
Everytime I have stood on a street corner during a TEA Party rally and watched the cars go by, it has been an awesome sight to see the many varieties of vehicles that pass by. Trucks, vans, sedans, sports cars, luxury models, old beaters, jeeps, and much more – in many different colors and styles. Only a free economy that has created a lot of wealth has that kind of display of individuality and choice. Such a contrast with the East German Cold War auto, the Trebant.
Too many people take liberty for granted because they have never seen its counterpart.
Yep, the English individualists versus the collectivists and utilitarians. Locke, Adam Smith, and Mill versus Rousseau and Bentham.
I recommend to all Americans that they should refresh on our nation’s philosophical underpinnings – what the Founding Fathers were reading when they made us. The internet is a goldmine. Any reputable foundations of modern social thought philosophy course should suffice.