If we’ve allowed ourselves to become so wicked that the government has to control everything we do to “protect” us from ourselves, then we no longer are a free people. A truly free people are a moral people.
"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? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind.
"They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority." -- Frederick Bastiat, The Law (1850)
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In reality the legislators aren't superior to the rest of us. Mostly they're inferior. For they don't create or produce the values that working men and women do in order to sustain life and raise people's standard of living.. Rather, they destroy values
Interesting quote.
History is filled with elites who felt superior over everyone else. What is unique about our American “experiment” is that trust and responsiblity was placed in the hands of the people and not the elites.