GOVERNMENT & THE STATE
POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
ACTON, LORD JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton 1887
If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
The state in which the rulers are the most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed; and the state in which they are the most eager, the worst.
[M]oved by the profits to be derived from office and the handling of private property, men want to hold office continuously. It is as if the holders of office were sick men, who get the benefit of permanent health.
Every workman, whether agriculturist, manufacturer, merchant, soldier, writer or philosopher, debates the strength of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically,--in a word, to do more with less. The opposite doctrine is in use with legislators, editors, statesmen, men whose business is to make experiments upon society.
BASTIAT, M. FREDERIC, Sophisms of Protection (First Series)
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good?
[N]othing is madder than to build so many hopes on the State; that is to say, to assume a collective science and foresight, after having established individual folly and short-sightedness.
BASTIAT, M. FREDERIC, Sophisms of Protection (Second Series), Little Arsenal of the Free Trader
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
BENN, SIR ERNEST, quoted in NY Times Magazine, 1946
The politicians always put forward the best possible intentions. They didn't intend to ruin the best health-care system in the world when they created Medicare, Medicaid, the HMO Act, the Kennedy-Kassenbaum Act, the Kennedy-Hatch Act and all their other grand health-care projects - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to dumb down education and make the schools unsafe when they intervened in local education - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to create gang warfare, police corruption and unsafe drugs with their insane War on Drugs - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to leave Panama defenseless against the drug cartels when they invaded Panama, kidnapped Manuel Noriega and destroyed the Panamanian army - but that's what happened. They didn't intend to make the world a more dangerous place when they sent your money to the Taliban, the Shah of Iran, and Saddam Hussein - as well as Syrian, Saudi and Indonesian dictators - but that's what happened. When politicians enact new laws, they don't say, "We're doing this to enrich our friends, punish our enemies and wreck some important part of American life" - but that's what inevitably happens. Politicians always claim the best of intentions. But when have they ever delivered anything but the worst results?
BROWNE, HARRY, Beware of Politicians with Good Intentions, May 16, 2002
When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities.
CLINTON, PRESIDENT WILLIAM J., MTV's "Enough is Enough," April 19, 1994
If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.
CLINTON, PRESIDENT WILLIAM J., August 12, 1993
We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.
CLINTON, PRESIDENT WILLIAM J., USA TODAY, March 11, 1993, page 2A
[C]ontact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed.
COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE, The American Democrat (1838)
All people are not equally driven, but when it comes to the use of power, those who have excessive amounts of self-interest are apt to be the most influential - and most dangerous.
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
HAZLITT, WILLIAM, Political Essays
The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
HEINLEIN, ROBERT A., Time Enough for Love
Put not your faith in Princes, Ira; since they don't produce, they always steal.
HEINLEIN, ROBERT A., Time Enough for Love
When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual- the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker- and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable "animated instrument" which is Aristotle's definition of a slave.
HOFFER, ERIC, The Ordeal of Change
Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep.
HOFFER, ERIC, The True Believer
The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to Colonel Yancy, 1816
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, First Inaugural Speech, March 4, 1801
No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, Letter to Alexander Hamilton, 1787
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS, To John Melish, 1813
Politics is a herd mentality. Politicians don’t really lead. Politicians reflect what they think is consensus opinion.
JOHNSON, NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR GARY, America’s Most Dangerous Politician, Reason, January 2001
Of course, politicians do not understand economics or how incentives work so they would never think that ending drug (and gun) prohibition, welfare, taxes, zoning and licenses, rent control and compulsory education would radically lower crime across the board.
LORA, MANUAL, Super-Statists Love the Super State, September 5, 2011
There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.
LEDRU-ROLLIN, ALEXANDRE, During the Paris revolt of 1848
Under all systems of government, under Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy alike, it is a mere chance whether the individual called to the direction of public affairs will be qualified for the undertaking.
MAINE, SIR HENRY SUMNER, The Age of Progress
It is not at all easy to bring home to the men of the present day how low the credit of Republics had sunk before the establishment of the United States.
MAINE, SIR HENRY SUMNER, The Age of Progress
The lords of life, [Bentham] said, are pleasure and pain. Every man follows his own interest as he understands it, and the part of the community which has political power will use it for its own objects.
MAINE, SIR HENRY SUMNER, The Nature of Democracy
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
MENCKEN, H.L., Damn! A Book of Calumny
I am strongly in favor of common sense, honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect.
The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.
MENCKEN, H. L., quoted in Minority Report, H. L. Mencken's Notebooks
All persons who devote themselves to forcing virtue on their fellow men deserve nothing better than kicks in the pants.
The state consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of 10 that promise is worth nothing. The 10th time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
But those who worry about how smart or how dumb the various candidates for election are, or how smart or how dumb are the particular voters they are each trying to pander to, are, I think, missing a bigger point. If you think that you and people like you should control large swathes of society and large swathes of the economy, then you really had better be very - make that impossibly - smart, and you are not smart, if only because you believe in this seriously dumb idea. But if the notion that you keep repeating during your campaign is that neither you and people like you, nor your political opponents nor people like them, should have this kind of centralised power over everything, then provided you are sufficiently smart to make that one smart idea stick and have political consequences, it really doesn't matter how dumb you may be about anything or even everything else.
MICKLETHWAIT, BRIAN, October 21, 2010
It is said that Sarah Palin and ilk have many dumb opinions. Clearly Palin couldn't have got where she is, any more than Obama has got where he is, without being smart about some things. But yes, I'm sure Palin's fairly dumb about some things. But the difference is not merely that Palin is smart and dumb this much, while Obama is dumb and smart that much; it is that their dumbness or smartness have profoundly different consequences if Obama and friends think that President Obama and friends should boss lots and lots of things, while Palin and friends think that President Anyone and friends bossing lots and lots of things is dumb and are able to act on that notion.
MICKLETHWAIT, BRIAN, October 21, 2010
One of the arguments most insisted on by its opponents, is that the occupation of a permanent official servant of the State does not hold out sufficient prospects of emolument and importance to attract the highest talents, which will always be able to find a more inviting career in the professions, or in the service of companies and other public bodies...What is urged as an objection is the safety-valve of the proposed system. If indeed all the high talent of the country could be drawn into the service of the government...all the enlarged culture and practiced intelligence in the country, except the purely speculative, would be concentrated in a numerous bureaucracy...Under this regime, not only is the outside public ill-qualified, for want of practical experience, to criticize or check the mode of operation of the bureaucracy...no reform can be effected which is contrary to the interest of the bureaucracy.
MILL, JOHN STUART, On Liberty, Chapter 5
The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
MOYNIHAN, DANIEL PATRICK, New York Times, March 2, 1976
A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will be then run by . . . politicians.
O’ROURKE, P. J., All the Trouble in the World. The Lighter Side of Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death
Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit.
O’ROURKE, P. J., All the Trouble in the World. The Lighter Side of Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.
This is the secret dream of those advocates...who are not afraid to exchange the ‘tyranny’ of a private employer for the terrible chains of a government’s control. They do not intend to be under government control; they would be exempt; the government would guarantee their income, collect it, deliver it, and ask no questions; they would achieve liberation from material concerns, by the only means it can ever be attempted: by the slave labor of others.
RAND, AYN, To Dream the Noncommercial Dream
[T]his man-concocted system of forcibly controlling creative human action–interventionism, socialism, communism–presupposes all-knowing bureaucrats; but, to date, not a single one has been found.
READ, LEONARD, Anything That’s Peaceful
The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.
What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them?
ROBBINS, TOM, Skinny Legs and All
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty.
The appetites of men, especially of Great Men, are carefully to be observed and stayed, or else they will never stay themselves. The experience of every age convinces us, that we must not judge of men by what they ought to do, but what they will do; and all history affords but few instances of men trusted with great power without abusing it, when with security they could.
TRENCHARD, JOHN and GORDON, THOMAS, Cato’s Letters, quoted in ROTHBARD, MURRAY, Conceived in Liberty, Vol. II, The Growth of Libertarian Thought
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.