On Future Prospects for Economic Liberty

From economist Walter Williams’ piece in the latest issue of Imprimis:

In a free society, we want the great majority, if not all, of our relationships to be voluntary. I like to explain a voluntary exchange as a kind of non-amorous seduction. Both parties to the exchange feel good in an economic sense. Economists call this a positive sum gain. For example, if I offer my local grocer three dollars for a gallon of milk, implicit in the offer is that we will both be winners. The grocer is better off because he values the three dollars more than the milk, and I am better off because I value the milk more than the three dollars. That is a positive sum gain. Involuntary exchange, by contrast, means that one party gains and the other loses. If I use a gun to steal a gallon of milk, I win and the grocer loses. Economists call this a zero sum gain. And we are like that grocer in most of what Congress does these days.

Some will respond that big government is what the majority of voters want, and that in a democracy the majority rules. But America’s Founders didn’t found a democracy, they founded a republic. The authors of The Federalist Papers, arguing for ratification of the Constitution, showed how pure democracy has led historically to tyranny. Instead, they set up a limited government, with checks and balances, to help ensure that the reason of the people, rather than the selfish passions of a majority, would hold sway. Unaware of the distinction between a democracy and a republic, many today believe that a majority consensus establishes morality. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Of God and Good Manners

Though I haven’t been a newspaper editor for more than a year, I still read newspapers like crazy. Whenever I go out of town, for example, I always pick up as many different daily and weekly papers as I can in the cities and towns that I visit. You never know when you’ll find something really, really good. And Jack Hunter’s column, “Separating Church from Hate,” in the December 24 issue of the Charleston City Paper was really, really good.

An excerpt:

It seems for every pushy Bible-thumper there is always some Christophobic twit to match, whose obnoxious enthusiasm for his unbelief knows no bounds. The activist atheist who’s upset that he’s surrounded by Christians deserves to be accommodated about as much as the religious fundamentalist who’s upset he’s surrounded by heathens.

Both unquestionably have a right to their own opinion, but should also have the judgment to temper their personal beliefs with common sense and good manners.

Take Clint Eastwood Seriously, Please

In a time when celebrities are constantly urging us to be hypersensitive and outraged at something new every day, Clint Eastwood’s words are quite refreshing:

I hate the so-called PC thing. I think that’s one of the things that’s damaging our generation at the present time. Everybody is taking themselves and everything so seriously. If they just relax a little more and take themselves and everything else a little less seriously, they’d have a lot more fun.

Sowell on Elitism

From “A Personal Odyssey,” my favorite of Thomas Sowell’s books:

My early struggle to make a new life for myself under precarious economic conditions put me in daily contact with people who were neither well-educated nor particularly genteel, but who had practical wisdom far beyond what I had—and I knew it. It gave me a lasting respect for the common sense of ordinary people, a factor routinely ignored by the intellectuals among whom I would later make my career. This was a blind spot in much of their social analysis which I did not have to contend with.