There's an old, old saying, often attributed to Mark Twain, that goes something like this: "It's not so much what you don't know that gets you in trouble; it's what you know that ain't so."
Quite.
It came to me late this afternoon that I had discovered Ayn Rand and Objectivism and Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises and all that, back around 1974, and that that was almost 35 years ago. There's nothing magical about that number -- my house is older, for example, and so are many of my books, but my son is younger and so is my car and so on -- but it is a long time. I began thinking of what I used to hear, back in the day, when I would espouse certain positions. Some of these comments aren't heard so often any more, while some are still current. At any rate, here, with items presented in no particular order, and with some editorial comment interspersed, is my Top Twenty Things You Know That Just Ain't So.
(This is the first of two posts inspired by something I read at Peter Cresswell's blog, so if any part of it annoys you, please feel free to complain to Peter. )
1. You can't really influence your health through diet.
2. Lifting weights is bad for you.
3. Steroids don't work.
Right. And that's why today's pro bodybuilders are so much larger and leaner than Arnold Schwarzenegger ever was. That moon landing thing was faked, too, wasn't it?
4. FDR/World War II got us out of the Depression.
Sadly, I hear this more and more from conservatives and Republicans these days.
5. The economic system is now too large and complicated for any sort of laissez-faire approach.
See comment above.
6. You have to accept either inflation or unemployment. One or the other. Fortunately, you don't have to accept both at the same time, because they do tend to cancel each other out.
Good thing none of us had to live through the Seventies.
7. You can't have a gold standard any more. There's not enought gold in the world.
8. He may be a son of a bitch, but at least he's our son of a bitch.
Stalin. Somoza pere and fils. Chiang and Mao, at the same time and in the same respect. Thieu. Noriega. The Shah. Saddam. That's a lot of sons of bitches, m'kay?
9. Atheism is a religion, too.
10. Objectivism is your religion.
Only Lindsay Perigo, with his belief in fatwas, sees Objectivism as a religion.
11. Ayn Rand was a Communist.
Yeah, she was from Russia and an atheist, so of course that follows...
12. Communism is great in theory, just not in practice.
Where's that coherent theory part, again?
13. All religions basically say the same thing.
Yeah, the Dalai Lama might say that. But ask the imams and the muta'was if they agree.
14. All religions are basically true.
Did you get this from a Playmate of the Month profile?
15. Your belief in logic is based on faith: faith in logic.
I thought faith was the evidence of things not seen..?
16. Ayn Rand advocated rule by the strong.
No, she advocated that even idiots like you shouldn't be "ruled."
17. Reagan can't win.
Right, except twice as Governor of California and twice as President of the United States.
18. Get real. Telephone service needs to be a monopoly!
Well, AT&T thought so.
19. It's just naive to believe in laissez-faire.
Yes, that's why Mises and Hayek were wrong all along, and it was Reagan who brought down the Soviet Union. Or was it Reagan and Thatcher? Or Reagan and Thatcher and the Pope? Or Reagan and Thatcher and the Pope with an assist from Gorbachev?
20. If government didn't regulate the economy, corporations would be gouging us all, ripping people all right and left.
Oh. And how much did that browser set you back?
Posted by Craig Ceely at April 6, 2008 11:20 PM