From Pine View Farm

QOTD 2

George McGovern:

It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil,… that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it’s not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure.

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2 comments

  1. George Smith

    March 18, 2014 at 11:33 am

    And look what it got him. As he once said, the country broke his heart. If you tell people the same thing long enough, for decades, that government is evil, and then when in power staff its functions with those who will make it perform poorly in necessary services, many will come to accept it as true. It’s not an accident, it’s a system. Screwing things up so badly in emergency response to mass industrial water poisoning in West Virginia and North Carolina isn’t an accident. It has the byproduct of making people furious with the local government when the agencies that have been tasked to help are seen as having been in on it and unresponsive. That doesn’t happen by coincidence. Then come election day, the undiscerning are furious and make things worse by electing those who will work assiduously to make sure conditions become worse.

     
  2. Frank

    March 18, 2014 at 11:01 pm

    I don’t care for the persons who have submerged themselves in the Reagan/Republican fantasy world.  That cause was lost a long time ago.  Someone who chooses comfortable delusion, especially a delusion that fits right in with his or her racist prejudices, will not release the delusion.
     
    I think the quotation speaks directly to the leftie purists who say, “You did not support every jot and tittle of my beliefs, therefore I shall vote for (this election’s version of) Nader or for no one.”
     
    Ideals are all well and good–I certainly have my own–but responsible citizens live and vote in the real world.
     
    I have no use for purists in the voting booth.