LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Politics, by its own internal logic, is driven to expand. Yet politics fails because it expands. “
No. Not when that truth is obscured behind the obscene bulk of politics. Politics, by its own internal logic, is driven to expand. Yet politics fails because it expands. Politics is like a balloon. Think of politics as an inflatable latex item like... um... like the inflatable latex item us guys all carried in our wallets (more in hope than in expectation) when we were sixteen. Politics at that scale can be a kind of “useful safeguard to liberty.” And even then, it doesn’t always prove reliable. A shotgun marriage may ensue. But, if you make like a politician instead of a Romeo and blow a lot of hot air into that inflatable latex item, it gets very fragile. Actually, with politics it’s worse than fragile... It has the potential to be tragic. When you over-inflate politics, you can start out with a Trojan, safe and secure in a little foil pack of Constitutionalism, and wind up with the Hindenburg. “Oh, the humanity!” Socialism? It’s been tried. And tried and tried... We now have a proven track record of how socialism goes. A track record that is more than a century long as of the November 7, 2017, 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. That went well. So how is it that so many young, fresh, new Democratic voters and so many not-so- young – but full of fresh, new ambition – Democratic politicians are suddenly in love with socialism?
There’s a joke that libertarians have been e-mailing each other, a joke that explains the way our millennial “democratic socialists” fail to understand the danger – the fatal danger – of socialism. A libertarian walks into a bar at 9:58 p.m. and happens to sit down on a barstool next to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The libertarian stares up at the bar’s TV screen as the 10 o’clock news comes on. The news crew has its camera on a man on a ledge of a tall building, getting ready to jump. Alexandria looks at the libertarian and says, “Do you think he’ll jump?” the libertarian says, “I bet he will.” Alexandria says, “Well, I bet he won’t.” The libertarian puts $20 on the bar and says, “You’re on.” Just as Alexandria puts her own money on the bar, the man on the TV screen does a swan dive off the building and falls to his death. Alexandria is very upset but she hands her $20 to the libertarian, saying, “OK, here’s your money.” The libertarian says, “I can’t take your money. I saw this earlier on the 5 o’clock news, and I knew he would jump.” Alexandria says, “I saw it too. But I didn’t think he’d do it again .”
10
April 2019
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