The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.
– H L Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949.
The average man, whatever his errors otherwise, at least sees clearly that government is something lying outside him and outside the generality of his fellow men—that it is a separate, independent, and hostile power, only partly under his control, and capable of doing him great harm.
Is it a fact of no significance that robbing the government is everywhere regarded as a crime of less magnitude than robbing an individual, or even a corporation?…
What lies behind all this, I believe, is a deep sense of the fundamental antagonism between the government and the people it governs. It is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members…
When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained; to most sensible men it would seem ludicrous.
– H L Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949.
The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively ”peaceful” the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society. Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State.
The State has never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation.
The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.
– Murray Rothbard, Anatomy of the State, 1974.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
To highlight the offensiveness to liberty that democracy and majority rule is, just ask yourself how many decisions in your life would you like to be made democratically. How about what car you drive, where you live, whom you marry, whether you have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving dinner?
If those decisions were made through a democratic process, the average person would see it as tyranny and not personal liberty. Is it no less tyranny for the democratic process to determine whether you purchase health insurance or set aside money for retirement?
Both for ourselves, and our fellow man around the globe, we should be advocating liberty, not the democracy that we’ve become where a roguish Congress does anything upon which they can muster a majority vote.
– Walter E Williams, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, 2011.
There is a difference between democracy and freedom. Freedom cannot be measured by the opportunity to vote. It can be measured by the scope of what we do not vote about.
– John T Wenders (1935-2006), Professor of Economics, University of Idaho.
The fact is that people usually don’t get what they want in a democracy. The democratic one-size-fit-all principle, leads to centralization, bureaucracy and monopolization (the characteristics of socialism). It inevitably leads to poor quality and high costs.
If you need proof that democracy does not live up to it promises, consider that at every election politicans admit that government has made a mess of things. Every time they promise they will change everything – education, safety, health care, and so on – for the better.
But they always offer the same solution: Give us more money and more power and we will fix the problems. This never happens, of course, because the problems are caused by the money and the power of those same politicans.
– Frank Karsten & Karel Beckman, Beyond Democracy, 2012.
Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay—that ”someone else” is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.
– Margaret Thatcher, tal vid Torypartiets konferens i Blackpool, 14/10 1983.
Politics has always been the institutionalized and established way in which some men have exercised the power to live off the output of other men. But even in a world made docile to these demands, men do not need to live by devouring other men.
Politics does devour men. A laissez-faire world would liberate men. And it is in that sort of liberation that the most profound revolution of all may be just beginning to stir. It will not happen overnight, just as the lamps of rationalism were not quickly lighted and have not yet burned brightly.
But it will happen – because it must happen. 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.
– Karl Hess, liberal frihetsaktivist och talskrivare i Barry Goldwaters presidentvalskampanj, 1969.
Och jag vill till sist än en gång upprepa att det måste vara den enskilda medborgarens frihet som skall stå i centrum för samhällsarbetet.
– Gösta Bohman, tal i riksdagen, 4 juni 1976.
Christian Dahlgrens Blogg 