P-Mac has it cold. Completing his essay on the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, he observes:
...perhaps we should all remember, at least this year. How could so many people have manned the fences of such regimes? The premise of communism was that, given power, the state could perfect society. Yet all it showed was how imperfect and unperfectible man is.
It's a modesty we who have always lived in freedom should keep in mind
G K Chesterton was in the same mine when he penned this:
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God."
McIlheran warns us that allowing the Government to claim Godlike power implies that we allow the Government to exercise that power.
And the earlier part of his essay tells us all about that.
the imperfectibility of man.
ReplyDeleteFrederic Bastiat also visited this theme in his great short book on philosophy, politics and economics in "The Law."
www.bastiat.org
Other gems at that same site.
Ken Van Doren
PS- you are correct on FDR doing exactly the wrong thing during the First Great Depression.