“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” ~ Frederic Bastiat
No. Not even.
When Romney said “there are 47 percent who are with him [POTUS], who are dependent on government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe that government has the responsibility to care for them” he was roughly half right. Very. Roughly. What he left out is that the “other” 47 percent, those that are with him [Romney] are after the same thing. Admittedly, the number of people who are unrepentant tax feeders, to use Will Grigg’s apt description, is likely (hopefully?) lower than 94 percent. The naive, hopeful dreamer in me would peg it at probably closer to 65–75 percent. Whatever the exact number is, the simple fact of the matter is that politics — particularly in the U.S., but abroad as well — is dominated by sociopaths with megalomaniacal tendencies who are often attended to and served by sycophants with dependency issues.
The other 25-35 percent and I just wish they’d all leave us the hell alone.
(Cross-Posted at LRCBlog.)
Wilt lives in Rochester, NY, with his wife and three children. When he’s not training for a marathon or furthering his part-time study of libertarian philosophy, he works as a principal research scientist in transportation safety, focusing primarily on the safety of subway and freight train control systems. His work has appeared on LewRockwell, Strike-the-Root, and Campaign for Liberty, and in magazines such as The New American, and Human Rights Review.
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This is why I don’t understand the obsession many libertarians have with ‘savin’ our country’, or ‘educating people’. These people don’t want to think. They don’t want responsibility. They don’t deserve your help. Nietzsche was right: pity is a vice.
While I think “educating people” is a worthy cause, I feel you. In the next-to-final analysis, the reason the B.S. has persisted so long is for exactly the reasons you mention. (In other news, I don’t vote either.)
Just curious, what do you think is the best way to further the libertarian cause then?