The goal of the ‘liberals’ — as it emerges from the record of the past decades — was to smuggle the country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time. Never permitting their direction to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot — by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the ‘conservative’ was only to retard that process.)
Tag: Ayn Rand
(1905 – 1982) Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter.
Limits, not license
Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals — that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government — that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.
More laws for more control
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Don’t conflate capitalism and corporatism
There is a very important confusion. What we have to distinguish between are capitalist industrialists who operate on a free market and the kind of capitalists who operate with government help.
Continue reading “Don’t conflate capitalism and corporatism”Property rights = freedom
The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights …
There can be no compromise
There can be no compromise on basic principles.
There can be no compromise on moral issues.
There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
The nature of socialism
A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment … is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.
No compromise with evil
In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.
There is no ‘we’ without ‘I’
Any group or ‘collective,’ large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the ‘rights’ of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking … A group, as such, has no rights.
Rejecting ‘equality of outcome’
I refuse to apologize for my ability —
I refuse to apologize for my success —
I refuse to apologize for my money.
If this is evil, make the most of it.