{"id":4482,"date":"2010-03-27T18:06:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-27T23:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=4482"},"modified":"2010-03-27T18:07:55","modified_gmt":"2010-03-27T23:07:55","slug":"governments-goal-should-be-freedom-not-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/4482\/governments-goal-should-be-freedom-not-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"Government’s Goal Should be Freedom, Not Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the MSM\u2019s mischaracterization<\/a> of all things Tea Party, this brief meditation on the true end of government<\/a> is a welcome corrective.\u00a0 A sampling:<\/p>\n

There is a more fundamental reason why government policy ought not to be directed at happiness. There is more to life than that. There are many forms of life \u2014 monastic devotion, public service, freedom fighter \u2014 in which the pursuit of happiness is a subsidiary value, if it appears at all. The realms of art and literature would be hugely impoverished if nobody were ever miserable. \u201cHappiness,\u201d as Montherlant wrote, \u201cwrites white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Precisely because human life is prolifically diverse, the history of Utopian politics is littered with offences against freedom by people who thought they knew what the people really wanted. The economics of happiness invariably leads to the politics of paternalism. The happiness gurus would be better off starting with Aristotle\u2019s generous account of flourishing, an idea that implies people choosing their own life course. If politicians need a single objective \u2014 and it is not obvious that they do \u2014 then setting the people free is a lot better than forcing them to be happy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Democrats used to understand this.\u00a0 Progressives don\u2019t.\u00a0 If the former ever extracts the latter from its ranks, the Tea Party won\u2019t be necessary \u2013 and neither will most of the federal apparatus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid the MSM\u2019s mischaracterization of all things Tea Party, this brief meditation on the true end of government is a welcome corrective.\u00a0 A sampling: There is a more fundamental reason why government policy ought not to be directed at happiness. There is more to life than that. There are many forms of life \u2014 monastic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1016,56,1017,28],"class_list":["post-4482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-aristotle","tag-government","tag-msm","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4482"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4484,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4482\/revisions\/4484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}