Topic: Ron Paul
Zeitgeist It is the ghost of time who sets agenda, not kingmakers. The libertarian revolution will be a response to disorder, not a product of order.by Jack Galway
(Libertarian)
Monday, March 10, 2008
Libertarianism has some exquisite contradictions, but these probably arise from the rich background of libertarianism.
One of the most beguiling conundrums deals with leadership. How are libertarian leaders made, and how do they lead? In my earlier college days (I am in my 46th year of lifelong education), I was exposed to the difference between a zeitgeist view of history as opposed to the much more popular "great man" explanation.
Zeitgeist, the ghost of time, ascribes events to the collision and collusion of other events, and leaders bob up as corks in the sea of history. On the other disagreeing hand, "great men" bring about history (where great does not necessarily equal good). The former concept owes much to our beloved unforeseen consequences. The latter appeals to planning fans.
Right now, Obama, Paul, McCain, and Clinton are the men (and woman) of the hour, but does anyone view any of them as indispensible? Zeitgeist says that each is positioned by just an accumulation of events. The great person idea says that each reached today by focusing on it since childhood (a neat but cheap use of hindsight).
When we finally get a libertarian leader, it will be through an unlikely series of interacting events, just as a series of unpredictable events puts me at this computer typing this piece.
This is not to say that all humans are created with equal capability, since we can only be born with similar opportunity (and that very infrequently). Nor is it to say that we all try as hard. But we are to history as swimmers are to water. To be sure, Napoleans and Hitlers are not found daily, but each of those fleeting lives had a million chances to be somebody and something else.
It takes a colossal ego or a colossal ignorance to believe that George Bush was appointed through the agencies of God. Leaders and misleaders are made not born.
Golden lads and lasses must, all, as chimneysweeps, come to dust -- William Shakespeare
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2008 Jack Galway, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, March 10, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The views expressed in this
article are those of Jack Galway only and do not represent
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I actually agree with most of what you're saying...
But who's to say that God doesn't "make" leaders? Running that tangent is jarring, and pretty irrelevant to the rest of the article. It takes a colossal ego or colossal ignorance to deny God a hand in anything.
(Which isn't to day that I think Bush was ordained to be our leader. Just that the invocation of religious spite isn't germane to the rest of the well-written text.)
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2008 Jack Galway, all rights reserved.