By Mike Gray

The title quote is from F. A. Hayek in his The Road to Serfdom. Over on RenewAmerica, Frank Maguire has initiated a series of articles dealing with the rise and subsequent development of that which is now called progressivism with the original foundations in Fascist, National Socialist (NAZI), and Communist manifestations of Socialist-Collectivist-Statism.

He leads with

… the enthusiastic pronouncements of those who were (are) true believers in Socialist planning and advocates of collectivism instead of personal liberty. I will, later, quote some renowned “liberal” scholars who glorified State Planning until they actually lived amidst it and saw the nightmare incongruities. These scholars confessed their credulity in detail.

Of course, that’s all in the dead past, isn’t it? There’s no way a 21st-century American government would fall for such anti-individualistic, top down, coercive measures, right? Among his collection of quotes we find a couple from someone near and dear to the President:

(Government has a primary duty) “to constrain decentralized, individual decision making … (and) to weigh public welfare against the choices of private consumers.” – New Rules by Dr. Donald Berwick (1996)
(To reduce per capita patient costs) “rational collective action (overrides) individual self-interest.” – Dr. Donald Berwick in Health Affairs, May/June 2008

In his second article, Maguire takes on a seemingly innocuous idea:

There are many current “Look out!” euphemisms around these days that really should be examined critically and not merely accepted because they sound oh-so-good. “Public-Private Cooperation” is one of the linguistic Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that deserves close scrutiny.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Resources:

F. A. Hayek.

The Road to Serfdom.

The Illustrated Road to Serfdom.

RenewAmerica article 1.

RenewAmerica article 2.

—Mike Gray