The average family pays more in taxes than it spends on food, clothing, and shelter combined.
Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.
The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments.
Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private.
In the United States we have, in effect, two governments ... We have the duly constituted Government ... Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution.
It ain't so much what a man doesn't know that causes him so many problems, but what he knows that ain't so.
Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.
On the conservative side, today's libertarianism is far more dogmatic and devoid of qualification than the liberalism of Adam Smith or J.S. Mill. Like Marxism, libertarianism is a utopian worldview based on an economic-determinist vision of history. Unlike Marxism, libertarianism is highly specific in its predictions about the transition to the utopian world order, rendering it vulnerable to fact.
No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.
The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.
A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
Few things are more commonly misunderstood than the nature and meaning of theocracy. It is commonly assumed to be a dictatorial rule by self-appointed men who claim to rule for God. In reality, theocracy in Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had.
Libertarianism and communism are equally crazy in opposite ways. Libertarians believe that it is possible to privatize everything without anarchy, while communists believe that it is possible to socialize everything without tyranny.
The same government that brought you urban renewal is likely to make an even worse mess of suburban renewal.
While the feds ... leave Social Security off their books, the government's obligation to make benefit payments to current and near-term Social Security recipients is certainly no less real than its obligation to pay interest on its Treasury bonds.
Given man's nature, freedom will always be in jeopardy, and the only question that need concern each of us is if and how well we took our stand in its defense during the short period of time when we were potentially a part of the struggle.
The most fundamental challenge of the anthropocene concerns agency. For those who lived the Enlightenment dream (always a minority but an influential one), agency was taken for granted. There were existential threats to agency (e.g., determinism) but philosophy mobilized to refute these threats (e.g., by defending libertarianism) or to defuse them (e.g., by showing that they were compatible with agency).
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
Let the people decide through the marketplace mechanism what they wish to see and hear. Why is there this national obsession to tamper with this box of transistors and tubes when we don't do the same for Time magazine?
When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.
How ever sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, religion or all four.
Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence.
There is only one way to kill capitalism - by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse.
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