Some “random thoughts on the passing scene” from Thomas Sowell:
Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.
Yes, so much so that it doesn’t even seem audacious or remarkable any more. Eric Hoffer marked this as well:
The change that matters is the change of a society’s axioms. The 1960s saw a slaughter of axioms. It would be interesting to identify the new axioms. I can think of a couple: (1) The object of life is fun. (2) The world owes everyone a living.
Sowell again:
How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?
How, indeed? I call what he’s referring to “cultural neoteny“.
Sowell:
Whenever you hear people talking about “a living Constitution,” almost invariably they are people who are in the process of slowly killing it by “interpreting” its restrictions on government out of existence.
Not much I can add to that. The Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause have holed our Republic below the waterline.
One more:
I have never known a word to become absolute dogma, without a speck of evidence, the way “diversity” has.
Quite so. God help us all.