Thursday, December 16, 2004

Quotables Two quotes . . . The first from Dave, the guy who cuts my hair: How can you privatize something social? I'm just a hair stylist and even I can see that doesn't make sense. The second from Lewis Lapham (Theater of War, 101-2), in a rather Dickian moment: If the Supreme Court can construe the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in such a way that it endows the corporation with the rights and attributes of a person, why should a person not aspire to the condition of a corporation? What wonders of personal self-realization might not follow from so marvelous a virgin birth? Bound by law to no purpose other than its own profit, untroubled by the nuisance of a conscience, and its sphere of moral reference reduced to that of a flatworm or a fern, the corporation feels not the sting of envy, the pang of hunger, the fear of death. Distribute the same freedoms of movement and expression to the American people as a whole -- allowing them to spin off their mistakes and disappointing progeny as nonperforming assets, to repudiate their debts and live handsomely beyond their means -- and we all might enter into the dream of heaven favored by the nation's leading politicians and sold in the nation's better stores. 1:18:44 AM    comment []

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