The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.
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China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.
China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.
Government is beating into submission, imprisoning, and killing...The authority of man-made law is entirely due to weapons of the constables read more
Government is beating into submission, imprisoning, and killing...The authority of man-made law is entirely due to weapons of the constables who enforce obedience to its provisions.
So far as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a successful war, even though that war read more
So far as business and money are concerned, a country gains nothing by a successful war, even though that war involves the acquisition of immense new provinces.
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be read more
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict which each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
He has been called a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery. He was a politician of monumental littleness.
He has been called a mediocre man; but this is unwarranted flattery. He was a politician of monumental littleness.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all read more
The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.
Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend read more
Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.
