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The market system delivers the goods people want, but those who make it work cannot readily explain why it is so. The socialist or communist system does not deliver the goods, but those who operate it can readily explain away its failure.

A Conflict of Visions

Thomas Sowell

The French revolution operated on assumptions much closer to those of the vision of the anointed. Where the American revolution deliberately created a government of elaborate checks and balances, to constrain the evils inherent in human beings, the French revolution concentrated vast powers in its leadership, so as to allow those who were presumably wise and benevolent to effect sweeping changes with little hindrance. Condorcet, as an intellectual supporter of the French revolution, could see no reason for the American system of checks and balances, in which society was to be “jostled between opposing powers” or to be held back by the “inertia” of its constitution. Indeed, even after the revolutionaries turned against him and threw him into prison, Condorcet still seemed not to understand the reason for limitations on government power.

The Vision of the Anointed

Thomas Sowell

Those who finish a revolution are rarely those who start it.

The 48 Laws of Power

Robert Greene

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