In this morning's Inquirer, the following letter appeared in response to this column of mine:
I have just sent the following response to the letter-writer:Frank Wilson says, "My neighbors and I know better what’s good for our neighborhood than the people in City Hall do, but the people in City Hall may have a better idea than the people in Harrisburg do. And so on up the administrative ladder." ("Mark of true libertarians," Sunday).I wonder: Did antebellum plantation slaveholders have a better idea of what was good "for the neighborhood" of slaves than those distant, carping New England abolitionists?Bias loves a close-knit, like-minded community.Michael J. DeLaurentis, Elkins Park, michaeljad@comcast.net
Dear Mr. DeLaurentis,
I saw your letter in today's Inquirer.
What a bizarre analogy, at least as an objection to the principle of subsidiarity, given that the first effective opposition to the slavery that the federal government in fact permitted during the antebellum years began at the state and local level (see Underground Railroad, etc.).
Perhaps I should have cited another formulation regarding the principle of subsidiarity. Here is a classic one: "… it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do." That is from the Papal encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, issued in 1931 by Pope Pius XI.
My best,
Frank Wilson
Hi Frank,
ReplyDeleteMy brother Scott ran for Congress as a Libertarian in 1982 in Virginia. He has been active in the party in New Hampshire since moving back this way (I'm in Massachusetts, a 15-minute drive from his house in Pelham). I'm not sure how active he has been lately though.
I'm more apt to look at the different approaches from the different parties as being tools in tool boxes. It's how I look at philosophies as well, and psychologies. Each model gives a way of thinking through, while no model is the true model, or the right way as an ism. I'm very pro-labor, for instance, and see no one who is. Obama is a labor killer. People who go to work and pay attention to what they do for a living, don't have time to, and should not have to worry about whether they are getting paid fairly.
Right now, I believe I am registered as a Republican, so once in a while I call myself a Labor Republican. Truly, though, my being Republican has only to do with how you get to be in a party in this state. If I want to pick up any old ballot at the next primary, I would need to go to city hall to declare myself Independent. Then as soon as I ask for a Democratic ballot, my party status changes to Democratic--or whatever one I would choose. For an Independent to take a ballot, is for an Independent to join a party here.
By the way, my take on Romney is that he is not from around here. He came to Massachusetts and became the governor, because we are a good state for anyone who wants to set themselves up to become president. He has no passion for anything, it seems. It's as if the true cause that burns in him, which motivates him to become a politician, is merely the desire to be president of the USA. On the positive side, he really did not do a whole lot of damage to the state. He sort of administered and kept his nose clean, similar to how Obama was in the Senate. Obama never really did anything as a Senator, but never did anything anyone could vehemently object to either, just paid attention to keeping his nose clean.
Obama also seems like the mouse that roared. I don't think he expected to win the presidency first time around like he did. How could he have? Romney's more like Reagan. You have to run to get your name out there so that you can then really run later.
Yea Frank but if you get in an argument with an idiot a bystander can't really tell the difference. So to me it's not worth it.
ReplyDeleteYou are not going to change the sheeple's mind. They have been conditioned to be victims...and the same wonderful progressive! governments that brought in the last 100 years alone everything from sterilization of "idiots" as Oliver Wendall Holmes said when upholding a law mandating sterilization of the mentally challenged in Mass of all places "Three generations of imbeciles is enough" to illegal arms sales resulting in the death of a good and honorable ATF agent is always worthy, in that mind, of being worshipped.
What I don't understand is what happened to the hippies slogan "Question Authority?"