I'm attracted to logical arguments where emotion is a by product of serious thought rather than its substitute. And I recently read two books which put reason over emotional dreck. One was by Niall Ferguson - The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. He's a British author I happened to catch one day on C-SPAN Book TV. He was talking in that erudite, logical, old-style British liberal way I love. Where had he been all my life? I also read right afterward Paul Johnson's Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties. I also love him, though I have already read many of his works.
Both of these books are really about the same thing, or, at least, they argue from the same principle -- the principle that those societies thrive best which operate with the fewest restraints on their citizens within the framework of a stable government and a decent justice system. Democracy is nice, but it is no defense against government's heavy hand nor a guarantee against tyranny. It's the principles of stability, minimum government interference, and fair laws that divide the winners from the losers.
In Ferguson's book, he argues that the rise of the West can be understood as a consequence of the West's development of sophisticated financial systems. It was these systems that allowed European states to leave behind their murky tribal pasts to become the modern nations of today. And these financial systems have gone on to transform the world. We are our financial systems as much as we are anything. He gives plenty of examples that it's when governments and their chosen spokesmen over-meddle in the free market that problems are most likely to arise or worsen.
Johnson's book is lesson after horrifying lesson of what happens whenever a group or an individual is allowed to impose their will onto other people. Ideological ends coupled with modern weapons and modern beliefs of moral relativism inevitably end up crushing the life out of a society and its citizens.
Not being English, I can only crudely sum up what Johnson wrote about the various types of governments:
-- Evil states use the lives of those unfortunate enough to live under their sway as tools to fulfill the desires of their rulers.
-- Mediocre states pay lip service to democracy while professional politicians implement trendy social engineering schemes with few consequences for the results.
-- Successful states protect the rights of individuals against the unceasing efforts of those who would use political action to "improve" them, thus allowing individualism the fullest reign and society the fullest benefit of the free market and individual choice.
Can you imagine having dinner with these two? I'd have to blackmail or somehow extort their presence. We could have welsh rarebit and talk current affairs. And they would have to pretend to find me very interesting or else...
Peters Mountain Works akkurat som Opening Ceremony samarbeid for å skape en fargerik, full utendørs fashion
Posted by: Beats Studio | 09/14/2012 at 02:43 AM