In the world of Liberal Land, you can just take for granted all the benefits of the existing society, and then simply tack on your new, wonderful ideas that will make things better.[1]The discerning mind of Thomas Sowell at work.
Years ago, I heard Don Imus speak of beating something like a rented mule. This refers, of course, to mistreating something in which one has no ownership interest.
It's a good way of thinking about the liberal approach to government. All liberals, progressives, or communists think about – when it isn't power and boodle – is how loopy schemes to put lemonade in water fountains and get surgeons to offer bypass operations for $199 can be implemented through legislation or bureaucratic regulation. The "liberty cost" or the destructive economic or social effect is never an issue.
Give the government an iota of additional power. Great! Do it 10,000 times. Lessons learned from 20th-century totalitarian murder and theft? Zilch.
All that matters is the imagined good to be obtained and the beauty of the abstraction. Experience counts for nothing and the idea that a mule can only be beaten so much or that one's own nest cannot be fouled indefinitely never, ever enters the progressive's mind.
Maintenance, preservation, safeguarding?
Alien concepts.
In marital terms, it's the equivalent of a man's chasing every woman he fancies. What matters is that if he fancies someone he can pursue this other women to his heart's content. That he might come home one day to find his golf clubs wrapped around a tree and the house empty is simply inconceivable to him. All actions he might wish to take are cost free.
Notes
[1] "Liberal Land: Where The Thinking Is Illogical And Bizarre." By Thomas Sowell. Investor's Business Daily, 11/21/11.
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