Yesterday, I considered whether people should give up some liberty even if it made them more prosperous. What if, contrary to the thinking that freedom is the source of wealth, it turned out that we could be more wealthy with just a little more regulation and a little less freedom?
If you could somehow separate freedom and prosperity, which would you choose? Yesterday I recalled thinking that P.J. O'Rourke had a pretty good answer to this, and I have since found it. Not even knowing the original context, O'Rourke's answer is clear:
America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.
Somebody said that O'Rourke is the closest thing we have to a modern-day H.L. Mencken. How appropriate that he is the Mencken Research Fellow at Cato.
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