Those who attack the rationale of the game, and not the players, are its most formidable adversaries.
Through an unwieldy combination of big government, big military, big business, big labor and big cities, we have created an unworkable mega-nation which defies central management and control. Not only is the United States too big, but it has also become too authoritarian and too undemocratic, and its states assume too little responsibility for the solution of their own social, economic, and political problems.
The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.
If 50 million people say a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.
Whenever there is some trouble in any area of the economy, the simplest solution to many people is "Let the government fix it." Yet ... every time the government uses its money or its power to favor this group or that ... the net result is such a web of supports, subsidies, interventions and controls that it is almost impossible for a nation to find its way back into a dynamic system of really free enterprise.
Tax reform means, "Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree."
No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.
It must be obvious that liberty necessarily means freedom to choose foolishly as well as wisely; freedom to choose evil as well as good; freedom to enjoy the rewards of good judgment, and freedom to suffer the penalties of bad judgment. If this is not true, the word "freedom" has no meaning.
... the American Colonists under King George III had it pretty good compared to us. They would wonder why we haven't taken up arms and seceded yet.
There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you."
The beneficial effect of state intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak, visible, while its evil effects are gradual and indirect and lay out of sight ... Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favor upon governmental intervention.
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
The liberty of the individual is the greatest thing of all, it is on this and this alone that the true will of the people can develop.
[During the 20th century] ... 170 million men, women, and children have been shot, beaten, tortured, knifed, burned, starved, frozen, crushed, or worked to death; buried alive, drowned, hung, bombed, or killed in any other of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners.
If you ruin your life, you will pay the price of rehabilitating yourself ... We are not punished for our sins, but by them. Liberty means responsibility.
I say one evil empire down...one to go.
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.
If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.
The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments.
The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave.
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.
The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.
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