… is from page 349 of my late, great colleague Walter Williams’s 2015 book, American Contempt for Liberty, which is a collection of many of Walter’s columns and essays; this quotation specifically is from Walter’s September 15th, 2010, syndicated column, “Liberal Crackup“:
While America’s liberal elite have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision and, as such, differ only in degree but not kind. Both denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are for control and coercion by the state. They believe they have superior wisdom to the masses and they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. They, like any other tyrant, have what they see as good reasons for restricting the freedom of others.
Their agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Free markets imply voluntary exchange. Tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrants think they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning control and regulation.
DBx: By “liberal elite,” Walter here, of course, means “progressive elite.”
The sad reality is that in the more than 15 years since Walter wrote these words, many American ‘conservative’ elites have transmogrified into MAGA enthusiasts whose policy proposals are increasingly indistinguishable from the long-running policy proposals of the dirigiste left.
…..
Walter – whose collegiality, wisdom, humor, and friendship I continue to sorely miss – died very late in the day on this date, December 1st, in 2020.
