The Patriot Post® · A Complete Failure to Understand History
“Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to prosperity is by keeping its hands off.” –Ayn Rand
If you eat something that’s bad for you, you could get sick or die as a result. If that were to happen it would matter little whether the cook set out with that intention, or whether he simply had no idea what he was doing. What would matter most would be the end result.
Detroit once stood as a jewel of human achievement, a brilliant example of this country’s industrial and technological might, with a population of over 1.8 million people. Now the population is less than 700,000, industrial giants such as General Motors have moved the bulk of their operations out of the country, and the city can’t pay it’s bills. It faces an unfunded pension liability of $3.5 billion, a total estimated debt of $18 billion, and has filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Sixty years of control by unions, government bureaucrats, corrupt politicians, and the socialist left has turned Detroit into a ghost of what it once was.
Just out of fairness, make believe for a moment that all their efforts were well intended. The result is still a complete disaster, a ruin. And the socialist left and the corruptocrats own it.
Barack Obama threw millions of dollars of tax money at the problem, and, succeeded only in bailing out his union supporters. Apart from that, not surprisingly, he accomplished nothing.
Obama and the progressive left have learned exactly nothing from any of it, and if the left is allowed to persist, Detroit appears to be a harbinger of what is in store for the entire country.
While it’s taken decades for the left to destroy Detroit, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken less than a year to turn Egypt into a similar ruin. As opposed to the short sighted foolishness that ruined Detroit, the Muslim Brotherhood set out with the express intention of eradicating anything inconsistent with what they happen to believe.
Whether we’re talking about the possibly well intended left, as in Detroit, or deliberate destruction due to the malicious intent brought by the MB, the results are indistinguishable.
Tyranny is what can happen when somebody becomes certain that they know what is best for the people around them. Here are two pictures of the kind of destruction such people can bring to other people’s lives. One of these pictures is from Cairo, the other, Detroit. Which picture is from where makes little difference. One is because of an evil kind of hatred for anybody who doesn’t agree with you, and the other is the result of a complete failure of some people to understand history, who believe that government can somehow do things better than actual people. Either way, the result is the same.