From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 14 (²): Freiheit 451
Freedom on fire
Freedom is no more than a piece of combustible paper: a forbidden book, a speech draft in longhand, a film no longer printed on combustible stock but still setting minds aglow. All tyrannies in recorded history have sought to burn, confiscate and banish that paper or other media that carried the ideas of liberty, and to burn or banish the authors. Nowadays, such tyrannies exist primarily in Dar al Islam and in its lesser franchises of elective dhimmi socialism (abbrev. dhimmisocialism) in Western Europe and Canada and in nascent forms in the United States and Australia.
Paper, of course, has less wholesome uses, such as receptacle for sanctimonious twaddle, self-congratulatory schadenfreude, ignorant grandstanding, and solipsistic verbal onanism. What used to be called the “great” newspapers (and magazines) of the world all too often misapply precious wood pulp to such ends.
Duly Noted: Obama Needs To Spend
1. While writing this, the news spread that US federal spending outside the security and entitlement area is to be frozen for three years. Regardless of the laudable intention, some skepticism is warranted. The weaker the President gets – the vote in Massachusetts suggests that Obama is losing ground – the more he needs to spend. Spending buys support. The more is spent, the greater the influence of the administration will be. Stopping spending for the duration of a speech is possible. Beyond that time limit, however, we discover a major problem. It is that spending is not caused by discovering new holes into which money can be stuffed. The core reason for spending is that there is a philosophy according to which the allocation of dough heals problems – or at least it will shut the mouth of complainers. Therefore, the need of priority is not a case-by-case reduction of some marginal expenses. What the situation demands is the abandonment of the philosophy behind the process. The one is meant that regards the throwing of money at problems as statecraft.
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