Custodial Government: The Legacy of a Complacent Citizenry

I once received a coffee mug from an organization to which I had made a small contribution. I can’t remember now which organization, but the mug is a gem, inscribed with incisive quotes warning against overreaching government and the resulting threat to individual freedoms.

The quotes also remind us that, without the perspective of history – preserved as objective record rather than re-written in movie scripts, or in charming if inaccurate little memoirs tainted by the author’s current idealistic prejudices – we are doomed to suffer unnecessarily from repeated mistakes.  Case in point:  A Nanny State mentality is what has crippled the economy of Greece, yet international sentiment is to pour more money down that black hole and hope that the gravitational collapse will somehow consume itself into nonexistence, as if the laws of nature only applied in outer space.

Today, saddled by unsustainable debt and unfulfillable promises, our own ever-expanding government is becoming a greater threat to its own citizens than it has ever been to our enemies.  Perhaps it’s a good time for future leaders of this once-proud nation of self-sufficient individualists to review the proclamations uttered by these wise men of decades past…before it’s too late.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. Milton Friedman

Liberty of thought is a mockery if liberty of speech and action is denied. Sidney Holmes

If you protect a man from folly, you will find you have a nation of fools.  William Penn

We must remember that a right lost to one is lost to all. William Reece Smith, Jr.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. George Washington

That government is best which governs the least. Thomas Jefferson

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom. Charles Peguy

When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will. Fredric Bastiat

Liberty is the breath of progress. Robert Ingersoll

Liberty is the best of all things. William Wallace

I must have liberty. William Shakespeare