Tough Love

Erick Erickson of Red State (http://www.redstate.com) has a challenge for conservatives: to read "A Message to Garcia" by Elbert Hubbard (1891) this week. The short tract is available here: http://images.redstate.com/message_to_garcia.pdf.

Those of you left senseless would also benefit from reconsidering your "maudlin sympathy" for "the downtrodden denizen of the sweatshop" and the "homeless wanderer searching for honest employment" and consider instead "this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, [which] are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary..."

Tough love, indeed, and the reason socialism never survives trial!