All the forces of conservatism in this society are ranged against the needs of the other America. The ideologues are opposed to helping the poor because this can be accomplished only through an expansion of the welfare state. The small businessmen have an immediate self-interest in maintain the economic underworld. The powerful agencies of the corporate farms want a continuation of an agricultural program that aids the rich and does nothing for the poor.
Michael HarringtonRelated topics
agricultural conservatism continuation corporate expansion helping needs nothing poor program rich self-interest small society state underworld welfare aids america businessmen forcesRelated quotes
I still believe that, in the long run, the aggregate of the decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is likely to do less harm than the centralized decisions of a Government; and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster. As I said earlier in this debate, our economic medicine may be painful but it is fast and powerful because it can act freely.
John James Cowperthwaite
[T]here could be no guarantee in a free market that the interests of race or state as Hitler defined them would take priority over the interests of businessmen or consumers. After 1933 the role of the state in regulating and directing economic life increased sharply, first in order to encourage economic revival, then to divert economic resources to the growth of German military power... [which] led, in an unplanned, incremental way, to the establishment of a kind of command economy.
Richard Overy
Islam lays great emphasis on the social side of things. Every day, the rich and the poor, the great and the small living in a locality are brought five times in a day in the mosque in the terms of perfect equality of mankind and thereby the foundation of a healthy social relationship is laid and established through prayer. At the end of Ramazan comes the new moon, the crescent as a signal for a mass gathering on the ‘Id day again in perfect equality of mankind which effects the entire Muslim world.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
Friedrich Hayek
...what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainslack brain workers, nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all-the realisation at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.
William Morris
