Something Worth Committing Oneself To

I have just learned that there is apparently a dangerous storm headed in the direction of New Jersey, New York and southern New England. This, of course, worries me, and I wish all the inhabitants of the endangered regions that no harm comes to them. However, what worries me even more is that if, unfortunately, the storm does cause some damage, numerous individuals proclaimed as the finest contemporary minds by the representatives of today's coercive power structures will likely announce that the seeming catastrophe is actually a blessing in disguise, capable of stimulating a failing economy back into prosperity.

If any of my readers would not regard such an announcement as a display of vulgar nonsense, let me just refer him or her to two names: Bastiat and Hazlitt. For the rest, a further observation: just as the deflationary effect of productivity growth can offset, and thus conceal the inflationary effect of manipulating interest rates via fiat money creation, an unprecedented advancement in natural sciences, technology and material welfare can divert one's attention from an abysmal retrogression in understanding the logical reality of human action, the kind of retrogression that plunged the 20th century into totalitarian barbarism and can certainly do likewise with the 21th.

What remains is to quote the ever prophetic words of the man: "No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result." This task might be easier today than ever before. There is the Internet and there is a growing distrust for the kind of "knowledge" offered by coercion-wielders. Thus, let us not miss the opportunity to make logic and commonsense the only game in town again.