Tag: Jim Thompson

Of Politics and People

Many of you may wonder why I have been so dogged with my “Quotes for Discussion” posts over the last year.  I usually offer them up without context or commentary, and they are tangential to the point of the sites where I post them at best.  Further, few people, including few of you, bother to read them or discuss them.  And even more, sometimes the quotes, and my purpose in posting them, is very hard to gather.  So, I’ll tell you why.

It is my belief that most political programs and ideas fail because they are not conceived or implemented with people in mind.  Take, for example, Marxism. Marx knew a lot about economics, about philosophy, and about politics.  But every single society based on Marxism, from the Soviet Union to each commune and kibbutz has eventually failed, and failed badly.  The reason for that is simple: Marx understood people, individual people, very poorly.

This is the root of my politics: that it has to be about people, and how they really live.  I don’t support legalization of heroin and marijuana, prostitution and gambling, property rights and gun rights, because I think any of those things are so great in and of themselves.  People will abuse drugs beyond their capacity to manage, cheat on their spouses and lose their paychecks, believe in the ownership of their property and seek to defend themselves with violence, whether I condone it or not.  Policies meant to attack these things will inevitably fail and cause great injustice.