Another good list from John Hawkins:
“And what physicians say about disease is applicable here: that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to diagnose; but as time passes, not having been treated or recognized at the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes them, there is no longer any cure.” ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
One of the biggest mistakes people make in politics is believing that if we can just “get the right people” in office, all of America’s problems will disappear. Unfortunately, that’s not the case because many of the biggest problems we have as a nation are structural and unless we start to address those underlying issues, we’re not going to be able to get our country back on track for the long haul. So, yes, we should still keep trying to elect “the right people,” but as the late, great Milton Friedman said, “The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”
