The Best Article of the Annum

___________________________________

I’m presenting you with an article tonight that was featured in the literary quarterly, The New Criterion this past February, but was only brought to my attention in the last couple of days.   After having read it, I believe I can state that it’s the best essay I’ve read this year, and perhaps in the last number of years.  Please click on the link below and decide for yourself…

Written by NC editor Roger Kimball, it’s called “Liberty vs. Benevolence,” and it addresses the essential human failing in the natural quest for benevolence, specifically how the ego-gratifying impetus to do good works often tends to be allayed through the easy escape of government largesse (seemingly “free to the giver”), leading to an eventual loss of liberty for the citizenry.  There are unbelievable quotes throughout this piece but this one captures the theme:

The sad truth is that theoretical benevolence is compatible with any amount of practical indifference or even cruelty. You feel kindly towards others. That is what matters: your feelings. The effects of your benevolent feelings in the real world are secondary. Rousseau was a philosopher of benevolence. So was Karl Marx. Yet everywhere that Marx’s ideas have been put into practice, the result has been universal immiseration. His intention was the benevolent one of forging a more equitable society by abolishing private property and, to adapt President Obama’s famous phrase, by “spreading the wealth around.” Every Marxist society has spread it wide and spread it thin. Hence Ronald Reagan’s observation that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

And the real question is not whether benevolence is objectively good for the giver — it unquestionably is.  The question remains, however, whether the objects of benevolence are any better off in receipt:

Just so with the modern Welfare State: a sterling incarnation of the sort of abstract benevolence Stove anatomizes. It doesn’t matter that the welfare state actually creates more of the poverty and dependence it was instituted to abolish: the intentions behind it are benevolent. Which is one of the reasons it is so seductive. It flatters the vanity of those who espouse it even as it nourishes the egalitarian ambitions that have always been at the center of Enlightened thought. This is why Stove describes benevolence as “the heroin of the Enlightened.” It is intoxicating, addictive, expensive, and ultimately ruinous.

The intoxicating effects of benevolence help to explain the growing appeal of politically correct attitudes about everything from “the environment” to the fate of the Third World. Why does the consistent failure of statist policies not disabuse their advocates of the statist agenda? One reason is that statist polices have the sanction of benevolence. They are “against poverty,” “against war,” “against oppression,” “for the environment.” And why shouldn’t they be? Where else are the pleasures of smug self-righteousness to be had at so little cost?

But what’s important is that this piece is not your run of the mill satirical chuckle at liberal world view, but rather a call to the defense of liberty.  Only by shucking this lazy and egotistic form of “government benevolence” can we expect to stem the gradual erosion of freedom we’ve experienced since the Wilson Era:

Hayek said that one of the “main points” of his argument in The Road to Serfdom concerned “the psychological change,” the “alteration of the character of the people” that extensive government control brought in its wake. The alteration involves a process of softening, enervation, infantilization even: an exchange of the challenges of liberty and self-reliance for the coddling pleasures of dependence. Breaking with that drift becomes more and more difficult the more habituated to dependence a people becomes.

Seriously, folks, the piece is about five pages long, fully printed out.  I would implore you to do so and read it thoughtfully, and see if you too can see how  easily egoism — and pride — can drive our impulse for “universal and fundamental change” which often brings with it the worst of unintended consequences, not the least of these the harm coming to those upon whom benevolence is bestowed.

__________________________

As for the market, I’m seeing a lot of great setups.  AUY, my current top gold pick looks very overbought here, but also looking like it wants to form a nice handle on the cup (really a “saucer”) that we’ve built over the last 28+ months.  I want to exploit that handle if possible, by adding more at the $14.25 or so mark, where I expect we should get a pullback.

I also like EDC … a lot.  If we can get a pullback tomorrow to the low $24 area , I must just add on some more, Rabbit, I just might.

Pay attention to that solar activity, eh?

Best to you all.

 

______________________________________________

 

 

 

 

If you enjoy the content at iBankCoin, please follow us on Twitter