The Cumberland Post

The Cumberland Post
My Backyard, Six Miles from the Cumberland River

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Whisky and NASCAR: Unintended Consequences

Many conservatives have spoken before about a huge liberal blind spot. No, I'm not talking about their blind stumbling drunk binges. The whisky stuff comes later.You know the blind spot I'm talking about. Unintended consequences.

Libs are so so smart, they just know this or that program when instituted will look as good as George Clooney's hair, they know they've thought of everything--all the amazing benefits that the unwashed and not so smart masses will enjoy as a result of their benevolent genius.

But they always forget the law of unintended consequences: Whatever you do will always lead to results you can't possibly predict, and some of those results will invevitably be bad.

And since liberals are never wrong, when they get a negative result, they just double down and get more funding to do whatever they did in the first place again. Usually this leads to another huge bureauracy at the federal level. Or more lost jobs if the word "stimulus" is involved. Or perhaps Hollywood steps in and produces a movie starring George Clooney or Matt Damon that blames the failure of the whole heroic (read shitty) enterprise on the CIA or a sleazy Republican senator or a greedy corporation.

To better illustrate the point I'm making, and to get that whisky picture and the reference to NASCAR explained, George Will in "Another round of Prohibition, anyone?" in the Jewish World Review talks about the unintended consequences of the prohibition movement.
Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

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