"The critics who propose replacing the market system by political decisions rarely address themselves to such crucial matters as the concentration of economic power in political hands, the implications of restriction of choice, the objectives of politicians and administrators, and the quality and extent of knowledge in a society and its methods of transmission."  Peter Bauer, Professor Emeritus - London School of Economics and Political Science

"In a time of universal deceit , telling the truth is a revolutionary act."   George Orwell

“Today, wanting someone else’s money is called ‘need,’ wanting to keep your own money is called ‘greed,’ and ‘compassion’ is when politicians arrange the transfer.”  Joseph Sobran

When you keep your own money, it’s called criminal tax evasion; when others want to own your money, they call it an "entitlement."   James Ostrowski

You’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.

The government is a blunt instrument: All it can do is prohibit, mandate, or bribe.

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude." Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."  George Washington

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.  Thomas Jefferson

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; For tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."   Voltarine de Cleyre

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival.  There may be a worse case.  You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -- Churchill

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.  History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so" -- Adolph Hitler

You and I are the truest experts in living our own lives. Nobody knows better than we what's good for us, our lives and our communities. On the day we all understand that -- and live among people who respect our self-knowledge -- we'll be free.   Claire Wolfe

The government 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 ten that promise is worth nothing.  The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B.  In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction

sale of stolen goods.   H.L. Mencken

We’ve come a long way from the Founders’ vision of a government whose purpose is to secure rights and assure liberty.  The purpose of 21st  century government is to secure comfort and security itself.   Charles Krauthammer

The law is the collective organization of the individual 's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property.  When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened.  Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy. -- Frederick Bastiat 

Thomas Sowell, when once confronted with an "argument" that he had an unreasoning faith in markets replied, "I do not have faith in markets.  I have evidence about markets."  Do markets always produce results that are perfectly satisfactory to everyone?  Of course not.  But the alternative, government coercion that allows some to dictate choices to others is so much worse that the market is clearly the better alternative.  Krugman seems oblivious to the conclusions of public choice theory, which strongly call into question the idea that setting up coercive decision making can ever do just the right thing and only the right thing. 

Response from George Leef to beliefs of MIT Economist, Mr. Krugman

Wherever is found paternal government, there is found state education.  It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. 

Benjamin Disraeli

Centralization easily succeeds, indeed, in subjecting the external actions of men to a certain uniformity, which we come at last to love for its own sake, independently of the objects to which it is applied.  Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Politicians cannot be "isolated from political pressures" any more than daylight can be isolated from the sun. As former U.S. Sen. William Proxmire (D., Wis.) stated during a 1983 Senate debate over federal industrial policy, if government is given the authority to allocate capital, "Money will go where the political power is ... It will go where the union power is mobilized. It will go where the campaign contributors want it to go. It will go where the mayors and governors as well as congressmen and senators have the power to push it. Anyone who thinks government funds will be allocated according to merit has not lived or served in Washington very long."

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship."  Author Unknown

"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.  A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."     Abraham Lincoln

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.  Barry Goldwater, 1964

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."   P. J. O'Rourke

"The society which tolerates shoddiness in philosophy, because it is an exalted activity, and scorns excellence in plumbing because it is a humble activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.  Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."  Ayn Rand, novelist and philosopher

"It's amazing to me that governments around the world will try every aspect of government control before, as a final last resort after everything else fails, they will try individual liberty.    -- Andre Marrou, Libertarian candidate for President '92, former Libertarian Alaska State Legislator

"They must believe in the existence of a substantial number of persons who are willing and able to  break serious  laws such  as those  prohibiting murder, assault, and robbery, yet who are not willing  or able to break gun control laws."  -- Dr. Gary Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America

None of what government pays for achieves anything worthwhile.  The schools don't teach what you want, the police can't make your  city safe, the courts don't dispense justice, the government puts you at risk by stirring up trouble in foreign countries, and political health-care programs are corrupt, inefficient, and run up the cost of every medical service you buy.  

Harry Browne, Libertarian Candidate for U.S. President 1996 & 2000

If we have learned anything from the collapse of Communism, the failure of our own big-government programs, and the tremendous success of America’s free enterprise system, it is that markets use scarce resources more efficiently than government programs do.  People spend their own money more carefully than politicians spend it for them.

David Boaz, Cato Institute

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.   Frederic Bastiat, French Essayist, 1848

Grace and Truth:  Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.  Ghandi

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that  it values more, it will lose that too."  Somerset Maugham

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.  In both instances there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight -lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."   Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouths of labor the bread it has earned.  This is the sum of good government."      Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address

“Policies pursued by governments -- even by democratic ones--do not reflect the will of the people so much as they reflect the people’s tolerance for being babied, bullied and browbeaten by arrogant rascals.  Governments always expand their powers to the outer limits of what people will tolerate.  Only if most of us deeply respect the property and peaceful choices of others, will we not only avoid asking government for favors, but also actively oppose government efforts to intrude into the lives and affairs of citizens.  Don Boudreaux, Former President of FEE

Try to comprehend the possibilities of a future radically different than the one we currently inhabit, one that is actually democratic, meritocratic, decentralized, libertarian. 

Louis Rossetto - Editor & Publisher, Wired

"I am only one, but I am still one; I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."

Edward Everett Hale

"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."  American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 442

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."  -- Barry Goldwater

“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801.

The political arena is where freedom is sold but never acquired.  Claire Wolfe

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