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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.

– Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine, 1943.

27 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • And on the other side …

    Burke is often quoted as having said:

    All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

    [Note: though there is no firm record he ever said/wrote it, and some think it is most likely a derivative or misquote of “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Whichever is true, the shorter version surely contains at least some truth.]

    That seems to leave us on a difficult and narrow road between mountain peaks of high simplicity.

    Best regards

  • Bob Cree

    And so the modern Welfare State was born.

  • A variant of: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

  • Nigel –

    I think the two combine nicely, actually, if you take the Burke(?) quote to mean “do nothing in the face of threats from evil” rather than “do nothing for the promotion of good.” The idea being that most people have basically good intentions (which I take crudely to mean a desire to see less suffering in the world), but then there are some who have bad intentions. If we let the bad-intentioned have their way, evil triumphs. This is Burke’s(?) warning. Patterson’s warning is then not to take Burke as a blanket exhortation to “do good,” merely as a negative one – to “resist evil.” This squares nicely with a libertarian outlook, where laws really are meant to prevent evil (i.e. the prohibitions on murder, theft, etc.) rather than to take affirmative action to promote “good” (i.e. public education, welfare handouts, positive discrimination etc. – all of which can reasonably be argued to lessen suffering in the short term). Burke’s is the fundamental warning, and then Patterson is a constraint on how to implement Burke … kind of thing.

  • Nick M

    Perhaps a redifinition of “Good” is in order?

  • Nick M

    definition, obviously.

  • Ian B

    We can see this in action today, even as we mull here on samizdata- combined orchestrated assault by two pillars of the state feigning independence- Tesco and the British Medical Council, the latter of course represented by grim presbyterian arsehole Hamish Meldrum. Wouldn’t it be nice if some journalist, just one, somewhere, thought (or dared?) to question the motives of these people?

  • Phil:

    I’d argue that these people don’t have good intentions.

    I was looking for an article about the way Florida Governor Lawton Chiles got the law changed retroactively to make it easier for Big Government to sue Small Tobacco (and then turned around and sued the lawyers that argued the case when he didn’t like that the percentage of the settlement would be a large absolute number), and found this wonderful piece on one of the people who helped Chiles along the way.

  • Nick M

    Ian, no I didn’t click through but I suspect you’re on about TESCOs quite blatant attempt at price-fixing for our own good? And theirs too! See, it’s win-win!

    I was once a student and pretty broke. I took advantage of stuff on “Spesh” and many a fine night was had on 3 for the price of 2 booze and a bag of misshaped biscuits.

    A while back HMGov had it’s pantyhose in a kerfuffle because of Happy Hour. It stank. I have never got FUBAR-ed on happy hour prices. I have though used it to socialize when I was a student and brassic.

    It’s like cheap flights. Obviously our Lords And Masters want to price us plebs out of going abroad. It’s an outrage that I can get to Prague for GBP19 because that should be for the posh types. They seriously lose it when the realize that lil’ old me can go to Florida or Greece and get pissed and return without it being a “holiday of a lifetime”. Think how many puppies Gaia had to strangle for that one! Cheap flights are perhaps even more hated than cheap booze. Because inter alia they show-up the semi-state run railways. I could get to Ibiza for less than it would cost me to get to Carlisle. Makes a man think.

    They really are cunts of the first water. I have never used that word on Samizdata before but I can’t think of anything else to express my visceral feeling that they hate us so much. I am of Viking/Celtic stock and have a temper.

    The binge drinking scare is bollocks. Of course people get plastered but then they always have. The smoking ban is bollocks. Me, my wife and the bartender once went outside our local for a fag. Nobody else was in. so much for the inner Viking (or Celt).

    I have had enough of it. No, it’s not just my vices being cracked down on that pisses me off it’s everything else. It’s snidey little stuff like businesses displaying “social responsibility”. Surely that’s between me and the client? Do I perform a useful service to the community? Absolutely, otherwise they’d feck off up the road to PC World. The proof is in the networks I’ve set-up, the PCs I’ve fixed and the bread on my table.

    But have I been environmentally audited? No and frankly I could not give a toss.

    I am a bit of a geek (in a way) and am a recovering astrophysicist, now computer-fixer. I see traits in the likes of Dawn Primandproper like my own character. Is politics the new outlet for the geek who lacks the technical skill to do anything? Is that the reason why veritable tit-ends like Milliband get jobs in cabinet?

    Given the state of science education in these Shittish Isles (now a part of Cuntinental Europe) then I only foresee an increase in sanctimonious moontwattery ahead.

    Hazel-fucking-Blears made me do it again!

  • RAB

    Red Dawn (or Rosy Pink as it now is)
    has a degree in Social Science, whatever that may be,but she sure isn’t a rocket scientist like Dale and yourself Nick.
    I have met the dim bitch. She has been hectoring us in Bristol ever since she was a student.
    Like I said on another thread, there is this itch to divide the world into things that are “good” for us and those things that are not. We are not allowed to decide these things for ourselves, and market forces will be interfeared with to affect the results “They” have decided for us.
    Can you imagine the number of things a committee of the great and good would not let us plebs have?
    Mobile phone? what do want that for? What’s wrong with the one in the hall? And we’ve gone to all the expense of putting up public phoneboxes…
    Computers? What one in every home that has the same power as one that took up an entire Govt building back in the 60s? Way too dangerous!
    The internet??? What you common people being able to access any information you want, talk to each other, swap pictures, info , find out what tossers we rulers are instantly and for free????? You must be Joking!
    They came for the lightbulbs. But I wasn’t a lightbulb.
    Then they came for the bottled water, but I didn’t have shares in Evian…
    Next they will come for the plastic whistles and party hats in Christmas Crackers.
    Next they will come for the crackers (actually they already have. Didn’t a shipment to our troops get banned as being too explosive by ELF N SAFETY!)
    Utter utter Bastards!

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Good quote; Isabel Paterson has been somewhat neglected; she was actually a great and early influence on Ayn Rand. Along with Rose Wilder Lane, they were the three most important classical liberal female writers of the early-mid 20th Century.

    Tom

  • Ian B

    Well Nick, as I’ve often ranted, I interpret “progressivism” or “interventionist liberalism” or whatever as basically a plot to replace liberal democracy by rule by an intellectual elite. As such it can indeed be said that it’s an attempt to achieve “and the geek shall inherit the Earth”.

    The problem is really there are two types of geeks. People tend to think geeks are automatically gifted, but I think there are gifted geeks and ungifted ones. Gifted ones do marvellous things in science and technology, and are an immense boon to western society. Ungifted, talentless ones… become cabinet ministers.

  • Kevin B

    Like Nick M, I rather doubt that our Lords and Mistresses are wrecking Britain in a perverted effort to do ‘good’. When I see the mess they’ve made since they came to power, (and I’m not just talking Nu-Lab here, I mean the whole bleeding bunch of them), I can only believe that they are consciously trying to destroy us.

    As to why, well in my old age I’m becoming increasingly paranoid so I would like to trace their education back to the Gramscian KGB and Stasi plants who masterminded the whole ‘March on the Institutions’ business with such obvious success, or delve into their offshore bank accounts for Soros money or contributions from Wahhabist charities.

    As I said, I’m becoming a conspiracy theorist in my dotage.

    But just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’ mean…

  • Ian B

    Kevin, virtually everybody is trying to do “good”. It depends on what your definition of Good is. Hitler thought a racially pure Germany would be a Good Thing. That’s where the trouble lies.

  • Kevin B

    Ian, while most of them are doing what they do to advance what they see as a good, (the destruction of capitalism and the western world) I sometimes think at least some of them are truly evil and are doing what they do for shits and giggles and because they can.

    (Yes, I still believe in good and evil. I’m old-fashioned that way.)

  • Cthulhu

    Here’s a variant on that thought:

    “Half the harm in the world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm doesn’t interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” — T. S. Eliot

  • Paul Marks

    The quote is a good one Guy.

    For example, the evilness of Hillary Clinton (her corruption, her desire to destroy her personal enemies, her lust for power for its own sake) would tend to actually REDUCE the amount of harm the Senator would do if she became President.

    The good man, Senator Obama, with a single minded devotion to do good – do good by increasing the size and scope of government. It is he who would do more harm – he would not be distracted by petty concerns.

  • FamouslyUnknown

    Ms. Paterson in 1943 was obviously unaware of the disclosures to come of the democides perpetrated by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, South American and Central American “dirty” warriors, and African tribal barbarians. These murderous dreckmeisters are responsible for circa 150 million deaths of innocents.

    Please give me the total murders perpetrated by Paterson’s “good people.” Perhaps she would define the warped inhumans noted above as her good people.

    Why do we continue to be fooled by the ‘bon mots’ of the banal and mediocre mentalities masquerading as savants?

  • Ivan

    Cthulhu, quoting T. S. Eliot:

    “Half the harm in the world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm doesn’t interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

    A great quote. Do you know the source by any chance?

  • Paul Marks

    FamouslyUnknown.

    According to many acadmemics and media people (such as so many New York Times writers) Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were good people, working for noble ideals.

    Surely you are not saying they were not telling the truth?

    “But they did not know about the killings when they said what they said”.

    Well my father knew about Stalin in the 1930’s – the terror fammine and so on was well reported in the Daily Express. Odd that the Cambridge University people (and so on) had not heard of it.

    “They could not be expected to believe the capitalist media”.

    What about the all the information that the Russian Section of the State Department provided?

    Mrs Roosevelt (a great admirer of Uncle Joe and held up as good person to every generation of American school children to this day) knew all about this data – which is why she demanded the Russian Section of the State Department be closed down.

  • Paul Marks

    The great dictators of the 20th century rarely were “in it for themselves” they worked for collectivist ideals.

    The “planning of society” for the good of the people.

    This was true of men like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and the rest.

    As the Chairman of the Labour party in the 1940’s, Harold Laski (one of the most noted academics of his day and one of the writers of the international declaration of rights) pointed out – it is not possible to have collectivsm whilst clinging to reactionary traditions of conduct.

    So, Laski argued, one must reject this ractionary limitations on public power – for the good of the people.

    Clement Atlee (the Labour Prime Minister) rejected Harold Laski’s arguments.

    But in the context of the debate Laski was clearly correct – if the government clung to reactionary limitations the forces of reaction would eventually be returned to power in an election.

    As they were in 1951.

    Clement Atlee put British tradition above socialism.

    A terrible hurt to the needs of the people – from the point of view of collectivism.

    By the way – everyone agrees that Harald Laski was a charming man to meet. He (like Lenin, Hitler and so on) was motivated by high ideals – the people’s welfare.

  • FamouslyUnknown

    Ivan — The source of the quote you wanted is T.S. Eliot.
    Google “Half the harm in the world” for more info/commentary.

  • FamouslyUnknown

    Definition of ‘Good’ —
    How about as a minimum, “that which harms none.”
    The next step up would be “that which harms none and justly benefits some.”
    The ultimate Good would be that which benefits all.

  • FamouslyUnknown

    Paul Marks:
    Thanks for expanding the discussion and filling gaps with pertinent facts.
    The presupposition that “The great dictators of the 20th century rarely were rarely ‘in it for themselves’ –they worked for collectivist ideals” cannot be accepted witout knowing the thoughts driving the dictators’ actions.
    Paraphrasing Nisargadatta Maharaj, “To know what a person believes, observe what they do, not simply what they say.” Christ said something similar.
    Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, ,… operated on the principle that the end justifies the means. No proof of that principle was ever presented.
    A moment’s consideration leads to the obvious position that the end is justified only if produced by just means.
    ‘Live and let live’ would be a basic criterion for evaluating means and ends.
    A more complex standard would be, “Knowingly or unknowingly do no harm, but if you must do harm, do as little as necessary.” This is the thinking person’s life challenge amidst the ignorance, greed, courage, and kindness that makes the human condition.

  • Paul Marks

    FamouslyUnknown:

    You are quite correct in holding that I can not see the thoughts in other people’s heads.

    So I have to judge what these thoughts are by the words and writings of these people – and by the expressed opinions of others who knew them well.

    And according to all this evidence – Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and so on were all sincere collectivists who believed they were doing good.

    Their primary objective was not their own comfort (indeed in some cases, such as Stalin who lived very simply, their own comfort was not an objective at all) – but the good of the people.

    “But they committed terrible crimes”.

    Now there you would have a point.

    Not the vague “harm” principle of such thinkers as J.S. Mill, but actual aggression (crimes – as the term was traditionally understood before the rise of legal positivism) theft , coercion (ordering people about with the threat of violence), murder and so on.

    Libertarians hold that such crimes are not justified by the good intentions of the people who commit them.

    For example, higher taxes, regulations and other interventions in Civil Society tend to increase poverty over what it would have been over time.

    But even if they did not – saying “look what HARM poverty does people” would not justify any crimes as far as we are concerned.

    It is a position that holds that the “rules of the game” (the nonaggression principle) is more important than any particular outcome.

  • The road to salvation is narrow and as difficult to navigate as a razor’s edge. Somerset Maugham

  • darkbhudda

    My favourite quote:

    “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis