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2019 February 15
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"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. The taint
inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity." |
"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the
beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would
otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified?
Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to
them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong.
See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing
what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then
abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the
principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic." |
"The physical capacity to coerce others can never generate a moral obligation to obey the dictates of [government] power." |
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2019 February 14
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"First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word 'liberty'. For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death nor maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone's right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they or their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is more compatible with their inclinations or whims. Finally, it is everyone's right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this liberty with that of the ancients. The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community." |
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2019 February 13
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"If the States were not left to leave the Union
when their rights were interfered with,
the government would have been National,
but the Convention refused to baptize it by that name." |
"Each state enjoys sovereign power." |
"[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was
that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government
of the people, by the people and for the people." |
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2019 February 12
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"Individualism regards man -- every man -- as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights -- and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members." |
"Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern,
to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty
to everything that is valid in Americanism." |
"We have plenty of freedom in this country
but not a great deal of independence." |
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2019 February 11
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, ...
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." |
"Over himself, over his own body and mind,
the individual is sovereign." |
"Liberty means that a man is recognized as free
and treated as free by those who surround him." |
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