The Road to Hell Is Paved, John Baden notes, with good intentions. To get a good handle on how the world really works, he recommends three books:
- Modernization and the Structure of Societies, by Marion J. Levy
- Knowledge And Decisions, by Thomas Sowell
- How Societies Change, by Daniel Chirot
For a taste of Levy’s thought, enjoy his Nine Laws of the Disillusionment of the True Liberal:
- Large numbers of things are determined, and therefore not subject to change.
- Anticipated events never live up to expectations.
- That segment of the community with which one has the greatest sympathy as a liberal inevitably turns out to be one of the most narrow-minded and bigoted segments of the community. (Marion Stanley Kelley, Jr.’s Reformulation: Last guys don’t finish nice.)
- Always pray that your opposition be wicked. In wickedness there is a strong strain toward rationality. Therefore there is always the possibility, in theory, of handling the wicked by outthinking them.
- Corollary One: Good intentions randomize behavior.
- Subcorollary One: Good intentions are far more difficult to cope with than malicious behavior.
- Corollary Two: If good intentions are combined with stupidity, it is impossible to outthink them.
- In unanimity there is cowardice and uncritical thinking.
- To have a sense of humor is to be a tragic figure.
- To know thyself is the ultimate form of aggression.
- No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
- Only God can make a random selection.