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“Mr. Rearden,” said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, “if you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?” “I . . . don’t know. What . . . could he do? What would you tell him?” “To shrug.”
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
The good intentions of socialism run up against the hard limits of human nature and reality. In seeking to overcome these limits, socialism necessarily becomes a totalitarian tyranny. Furthermore, it is the worst kind of tyranny, that of the well-intentioned tyrant who tyrannizes you for your own good and with a clear conscience.
Don’t Get Fooled Again: The Continuing Necessity of Anti-Communism
Murray Bessette
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