Quotes about Society

The progressives and socialists advanced their own dream in opposition to the American dream.

Of course, the whole thing is based on lies. Let's start with racism, which has become increasingly rare in a society where it is now customary, if not obligatory, to tiptoe around blacks and other people of color, to express deference if not subservience to their demands and to put up with behavior that would be utterly intolerable if anyone else did it. We live in a society of black and brown privilege, yet all that we hear about is "white privilege".

Does it follow, then, that progressives and socialists are entirely wrong when they say that there are rich people in the top 1 percent who are greedy selfish leeches, who don't deserve their money and who have gotten it by contributing little or nothing to society? Actually, no! Such people do exist, and they can be found among the ranks of the progressives and socialists themselves. Let's consider a few notorious examples.

The free society does not guarantee virtue any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed: it has to be won through personal striving.

As the German sociologist Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in a book tellingly titled Three New Deals, progressivism, Communism and National Socialism (also called fascism) were all sister ideologies, variations on a single theme, motivated by the same impulses, seeking to move society in a similar direction—away from free market capitalism and toward a collectivist society with the state as the instrument of the common good.

Around the same time, however, and beaten by the fascists by only a hair, a closely related ideology developed in America that also called for a powerful centralized state. That ideology was, of course, progressivism. The fascists, like the progressives, sought a radical transformation of society that is the very antithesis of classical liberalism or modern American conservatism.

In Obama's America, the wealth creators are greedy, selfish, and materialistic while the wealth stealers are the most morally wonderful people in the country.

The morality of capitalism, just like the morality of democracy, is rooted in consent.

Notice that the GOP program—articulated by Douglass and affirmed by black leaders—is none other than the color-blind ideal outlined in Martin Luther King's famous "dream." King envisioned a society in which we are judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. This is substantially what Douglass and other black Republicans called for, more than a century earlier.

Tocqueville writes that, for Americans, religion "must be regarded as the first of their political institutions.

Let us concede at the outset that, in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. Thus we should not be surprised that there is a considerable amount of vice, licentiousness, and vulgarity in a free society. Given the warped timber of humanity, freedom is simply an expression of human flaws and weaknesses. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best.

When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration.