My old and very dear friend Kerry “Over the Hump” Dugas prompts me to post this letter that I sent to the New York Times on 12 December 2004:
John Horgan asks “How do you denounce dogmatism in others without succumbing to it yourself?” (“Keeping the Faith, in My Doubt,” Dec. 12). The answer is to abandon the government-knows-best creeds of modern “liberals” and conservatives, and to join the likes of Milton Friedman, John Stossel, and your own columnist Virginia Postrel in championing individual liberty.
Champions of liberty tolerate the blooming of countless flowers – some beautiful, some horrid, many ordinary, but each growing in its own way, obliged by law only to avoid interfering with others. Champions of liberty understand that our world’s complexity is best met, not with clever central plans, but with unleashing as much creative human energy as possible.
The phrase “Let the market handle it” is shorthand for “Because any one person’s or group’s ideas are too likely flawed and certainly incomplete, let anyone who wishes have a crack at identifying and solving problems – and let each person choose which solution seems best to him or her.” Only by rejecting the rule of experts and scolds can we avoid dogmatism.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Share
Podcast RSS Feed
Full EconTalk Text
{ 154 comments }
← Previous Comments
“Does my point change?”
Yes, it does because you are still ignoring the rest of the post the paragraph 'virtually unlimited' appeared in.
“My apologies for the confusion – since my understanding of the two are one and the same in my case…”
So, we're to believe that the framers of the Constitution just so happened to put together exactly the document you would write. Wow. That's amazing.
Personally, if I got to write the Constitution and put in it what I want, it would be a little bit different than the current one.
A response to below, because it's getting small -
RE: “So, we're to believe that the framers of the Constitution just so happened to put together exactly the document you would write. Wow. That's amazing.”
No, you have it somewhat backwards. What I want is a constitutionally limited government that can still provide the people with the ability to make decisions on genuinely national questions. Since we have a Constitution written to do that, and since it's writtenly decently well, and since I come chronologically after the Constitution, “what I want” is for the Constitution to be enforced because I think it does a decent job. Does that mean if I were there in 1787 I would have written it the exact same way? No – I probably would have changed things. But given my options, “what I want” is for the Constitution to be enforced. So what I want and what the Constitution says do coincide, not because of some impressive, surprising coincidence but precisely because the most obvious way of getting at my ideal is to stick with a Constitution that gets as close to it as I think I can hope for.
You argue for community with the option to conscript members under circumstances YOU think are important enough.
The problem is that other members who agree with the option of conscription will likely differ on what is important enough to exercise the conscription option, and so we have military bases in over 130 countries around the world.
You argue for community with the option to conscript members under circumstances YOU think are important enough.
The problem is that other members who agree with the option of conscription will likely differ on what is important enough to exercise the conscription option, and so we have military bases in over 130 countries around the world.
← Previous Comments
Comments on this entry are closed.