{"id":2903,"date":"2002-09-20T16:29:28","date_gmt":"2002-09-20T16:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=301"},"modified":"2002-09-20T16:29:28","modified_gmt":"2002-09-20T16:29:28","slug":"riffage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2903","title":{"rendered":"RIFFAGE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a man who enjoys a well-turned phrase almost as much as a well-turned ankle, I often find myself reading one, and giving my usual reaction: &#8220;<u>Bastard<\/u>! <i>I<\/i> should have written that!!&#8221;<br \/>\nRecent email from reader Marshall has had me muttering under my breath.<br \/>\nI said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;I think that the root of my kind of liberalism is that belief that we can<br \/>\nbuild human systems that strive toward improvement, believing that<br \/>\nperfection is unattainable and still worth struggling for.&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He replies:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;The root of conservatism is that belief that human systems are not built<br \/>\nbut grow naturally, believing that perfection is unattainable and therefore<br \/>\nnot worth struggling for.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;The root of socialism is that belief that we can strive toward building<br \/>\nthe system, believing that perfection is attainable and is worth<br \/>\nlegislating toward.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;The root of totalitarianism is that belief that we can build human systems<br \/>\nthat are perfect, believing that perfection has been attained and is worth<br \/>\nkilling to maintain.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;The root of libertarianism is that belief that we can discard inconvenient<br \/>\nhuman systems, believing that that is perfection and is worth blogging for.&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bastard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a man who enjoys a well-turned phrase almost as much as a well-turned ankle, I often find myself reading one, and giving my usual reaction: &#8220;Bastard! I should have written that!!&#8221; Recent email from reader Marshall has had me muttering under my breath. I said: &#8220;I think that the root of my kind of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}