Thursday, August 13, 2009

Discouraging good government

A financial blog I read has this quote from P. J. O'Rourke. "Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there." It's that sort of sentiment that leads to the incompetence we saw in the Bush administration.

Humans are social creatures. We live in groups. We need ways to govern those groups. Pretending that we don't is worse than foolish. I discourages attempts to construct good governmental structures--which is not an oxymoron.

I would go so far as to say that actively promoting this sort of thinking is unpatriotic and harmful to the country. I wouldn't want laws to stop it, but I would certainly criticize people who engage in that sort of rabble rousing.

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