The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Derp’ Must Be The New
‘Shut Up, He Explained’

Posted on | March 23, 2011 | 4 Comments

by Smitty

There was a fun exchange on a recent post, Troubleshooting ‘Beyond the Welfare State’, with a certain Mork.

Mork: People say they hate “welfare” until they are beneficiaries of it. Plenty of Tea Partiers show up to rallies riding their state-subsidized electric scooters.

smitty: The fact that state welfare distorts behavior in anti-liberty ways justifies welfare how, exactly?

Mork: Seems to me that providing mobility for people who lack it is “pro-liberty” in the essential sense.

smitty: Liberty is liberty is liberty.
“Providing mobility” is one of those delightfully ambiguous terms that might not be completely evil (light rail) but which may just as easily prove an albatross about the neck (entitlements).
Why can’t I have liberty? Why is some helpy-helperperson perennially attempting to obfuscate simple liberty with some term like “providing mobility for people who lack it”?

Mork: Right. So if you can’t afford to pay for your own scooter, just stay at home. God wants it that way.

smitty: Let’s break that down:
“if you can’t afford”
Why can you not afford something? Is there a legitimate lack of equal opportunity? Have you chosen to invest your treasure elsewhere? Has the government decided you should be taxed until blind in order to keep a retirement fund solvent? We have a mix of subjective and objective possibilities here.

“to pay for your own scooter”
Is the foot an illegitimate means of transportation? Are bicycles OK? Why does it have to be some high-carbon scooter? Why do you hate Gaia?

“just stay at home. God wants it that way.”
Has the subject of this thought experiment prayerfully considered the will of God, and determined to be a hermit? If so, then this result should be a source of joy. But is transportation really a theological concern?

This ‘last word’ comment has disappeared from Disqus. The nice thing is that, for all we off-load comment management to a third party, we still retain a local copy in the WP back end. Since it was the driver for this post, I produce it here with an explanatory URL added.

Mork: Derp

Stacy McCain be lovin’ him some Disqus.

Category: Blogging, Uncategorized

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