Isocrates ~ 436-338 BC: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”
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I am almost finished Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (2011) by Michael Lewis* ~ another witness to the insanity of our financial times. Thousands of witnesses now stacked in chronological order upon the prescience of Isaiah the prophet.
Why is it that seeing, so many still do not see and hearing, so many still do not hear, decade after decade, debacle after debacle, libertarian upon libertarian?
Has not corruption proven itself to be the encoded, invariable, inexorable constant of unregulated, deregulated, poorly regulated:**
▪ Money concentration
▪ Power concentration
▪ Speculation (read: financial markets, etc.)
▪ BIGGER is better obsessives
▪ Charities
▪ Corporations
▪ Governments
▪ Lobbyists
▪ NGOs
▪ PACs
▪ PR firms
▪ Profiteers (of every stripe)
▪ Work sites (of every kind)
▪ & so forth, & so forth?
Doesn’t balance mean a little right, a little left, and a whole lot of middle in controlling these “feet that be swift in [forever] running to mischief” (Prov. 6:17)?
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* (where he quotes the above Isocrates at page 81)
** (read: appropriate, enforceable checks and balances)