Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Opposition to tolls has become a badge of civic virtue. Those who reject them invoke democratic slogans and insist they are fighting an attempt by big government to stamp on the citizenry, rich and poor alike. Opposing the tolls is assumed to show that you are willing to take on the powerful in support of social justice and the poor. To support them is to invite being labelled a government lackey, a friend of tyranny or one who despises the poor. All of which is odd, as e-tolling is a standard exercise in progressive taxation, which is usually supported by those considering themselves friends of the poor. – Steven Friedman in Business Day
