The Death of Politics (1969)

> I recall very clearly, there was a moment, at a conference to determine the campaign's "farm strategy," when a respected and very conservative Senator arose to say: "Barry, you've got to make it clear that you believe that the American farmer has a right to a decent living."

> Senator Goldwater replied, with the tact for which he is renowned: "But he doesn't have a right to it. Neither do I. We just have a right to try for it." And that was the end of that.

One thing is to have the right to have something, the other to simply have the right to try for it. This relates with the second passage I quote:

> Man can survive in an inclement universe only through the use of his mind. His thumbs, his nails, his muscles and his mysticism will not be enough to keep him alive without it.

It's inescapable. The universe, and everything it, is indifferent to me and what I hope for. I'm not more deserving just because I happen to be here now. But I can try to make the most of it while I can. If anything, I have the right to try to find that. But I most definitely have no right to have that granted to me just because.

Today, when majority of populace in the west is demanding/calling for more government, more totalitarian control and decision making of bureaucrats over all aspects of their lifes .... (I broadly refer to the government mandates and all these and their tangents: race, etnicity, sex, energy, wages, etc)...from the concluding paragraphs of the article (I to a large degree see how this is a valid summary):

"Ultimately, this must mean that politics denies the rational nature of man. Ultimately, it means that politics is just another form of residual magic in our culture — a belief that somehow things come from nothing; that things may be given to some without first taking them from others; that all the tools of man's survival are his by accident or divine right and not by pure and simple inventiveness and work. "