Great Throughts Treasury

"Government seems to operate on the principle that if even one individual is incapable of using his freedom competently, no one can be allowed to be free."

"Gun control laws inconvenience the innocent while providing no deterrent to criminals. The latter rarely patronize gun shops, endure waiting periods, or register their firearms. They buy their guns in the underworld, or they simply steal them. But innocent citizens who obey the laws are left defenseless-and become safe targets for criminals. Gun control laws don’t reduce crime, but passing them gives politicians another soap-box opportunity to pose as crime-fighters. Conservative politicians act tough by repealing the Bill of Rights, while liberal politicians act tough by outlawing weapons. Neither action reduces the crime rate. But both undermine our freedoms. If guns kill people, so do knives, cars, baseball bats, and icicles. None of these things should be outlawed. But more of the people who misuse them would be prosecuted if the police, the courts, and the prisons weren’t overloaded dealing with victimless crimes-including gun control violations."

"I say that the Second Amendment doesn't allow for exceptions - or else it would have read that the right "to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, unless Congress chooses otherwise." And because there are no exceptions, I disagree with my fellow panelists who say the existing gun laws should be enforced. Those laws are unconstitutional [and] wrong - because they put you at a disadvantage to armed criminals, to whom the laws are no inconvenience."

"I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution."

"I don’t know what’s right for you. I don’t know how you should raise your children or how to run your child’s school or how your family should approach any of the complicated challenges you face. But I respect your intelligence and your ability to choose and act on your own values, to work with other families and your community to achieve the goals you set for yourselves. I respect your ability to handle these tasks because the only alternative is to let politicians handle them for you, and they will never care as much about your future as you do yourself. Politicians claim moral authority by implying that their decisions are dictated by moral principle-and by assuming that we can’t let everyone decide for himself what is moral and what isn’t. That leaves only the politicians to decide what is right and what is wrong. So they claim a license to use government to compel us to do everything that’s right and to forbid us to do everything that’s wrong."

"I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions."

"If important things [like education] must be handled by government, why doesn’t government provide free food-as it provides free schooling? One could live without knowing how to read, but no one can live without food. So why doesn’t government operate the supermarkets? Imagine what it would be like. The food stores would become what the schools have become. Political battles would decide which foods are available. If you don’t like the choices, you’d have to attend “food board” meetings. Food would become more and more expensive, even as the quality deteriorated. And don’t get caught praying in a supermarket. Now let’s reverse the picture. Imagine instead that schools were operated like today’s supermarkets. Most school systems would offer a variety of approaches to any one subject-just as a supermarket offers a variety of brands for any one food item. And if you didn’t like what one school offered, or if you didn’t like the way your child was treated, you could patronize another school."

"If we shrink our government from its current yearly budget of $1.5 trillion down to just its constitutional functions, we could get by with a budget of only $100 billion a year plus the interest that has to be paid on the national debt (about $285 billion in 1995). Does $100 billion seem to little? Consider this: In 1950, the total budget of the federal government, excluding interest, was only $241 billion (inflation-adjusted). In 1950 there were no Departments of Education, Energy, Housing, or Health and Human Services, no EPA, no War on Drugs, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no Equal Opportunity Commission. There were very few of the thousands of federal programs that today regulate our lives and monitor our every activity-and cost so much."

"If younger people see older people who haven't planned ahead and have to rely on charity, the young will be more likely to provide for the future. Today when someone plans poorly, the only consequence people see is a demand for more government."

"I'm for a flat tax -- as long as the flat rate is zero. The object is to get rid of big government, not find a new way of financing it."

"I'm sorry that I can't snap my fingers and undo 50 years of bad American foreign policy."

"In 1999, politicians pushed for a “Patients’ Bill of Rights,” supposedly to give patients certain privileges in dealing with HMOs. No one was pushing for a “Bill of Rights” to protect patients against doctors-or against druggists, appliance stores, computer makers, or gardeners. So how did HMOs become so powerful and dictatorial that their customers need protection? In 1973 Congress passed the HMO Act-which subsidized HMOs and forced any company providing employee health insurance to offer an HMO as an option. This requirement was finally repealed in 1995, but by that time the government’s favored treatment had made HMOs the centerpiece of employer-sponsored health programs. Once again, the politicians are seizing the opportunity to rescue us from their own handiwork."

"I'm old enough to remember the end of World War II. On Aug. 14, 1946, a year after the Japanese were defeated, most newspapers and magazines had single articles commemorating the end of the war."

"Immigrants used to come to America seeking freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom from government. Now they come looking for free health care, free education, and a free lunch."

"In almost all matters, the real question should be: why are we letting government handle this?"

"In the late 1920s, the Federal Reserve System put new money into circulation in the US as part of a misguided scheme to bail the British government out of its fiscal problems. When the monetary increase threatened to bring on price inflation, the Federal Reserve stomped on the brakes and pulled money out of circulation--bringing on the crash of 1929 and starting a recession. The Federal Reserve persisted in its policy, allowing the nation’s money supply to shrink by 30% between 1929 and 1933. Meanwhile, President Hoover increased government spending, raised income taxes, and pressured large companies to keep prices and wages high, producing a glut of unsold products and mass unemployment. Previous recessions lasted only a year or so, because the government always stood aside and let the economy recover its balance. But this time, government actively intruded--and transformed the recession into a prolonged depression."

"In the health care debate of 1992-4, words like compassion, right, need, and fairness showed up frequently. But a number of relevant words were ignored. For example, I never heard the words force or coercion in public discussion about the issue. Yet the Health Security Act, the President’s 1993 proposal for universal health insurance, had a great deal to do with force. There are some revealing terms in the proposal--such as prison (which shows up 7 times), penalty (111 times), fine (6), enforce (83), prohibit (47), mandatory (24), limit (231), obligation (51), require (901), and so on. But coercion is nothing new in government-run health care, Medicare already has plenty of fines and penalties. The health care debate has ignored the most important factor: government involvement in health care means forcing people and institutions to do what they don’t want to do. And such plans never work out as promised."

"In the 1880s, people all over the world looked to America for inspiration. Its very existence was proof that it was possible to have a relatively free and peaceful country. No income tax, no foreign wars, no welfare state, no intrusions on civil liberties."

"It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda."

"It has long been apparent that many people in the media don't believe you're competent to make your own decisions."

"It’s easy to ignore [past government] failures all about us as we imagine that the next scheme will operate efficiently and fairly. This blindness afflicts people still hoping to make the world safe for democracy. WWI didn’t convince them otherwise. Nor did WWII. One can support the newest foreign military adventure only by ignoring the wreckage left by all previous military adventures."

"Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free."

"Libertarians know that a free country has nothing to fear from anyone coming in or going out - while a welfare state is scared to death of poor people coming in and rich people getting out."

"It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that "compassion.""

"It’s important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want."

"Learning, as measured by Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, steadily declined throughout the 1960s and 1970s. [I attribute this to] the federal government’s heavy hand transforming the public schools and the private schools as they became dependent on it. Yesterday’s schools focused on reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and geography. Today’s schools spend much more time teaching children: To be citizens of the world. To be sensitive to people who are different than themselves. To pester their parents to recycle cans and bottles. To understand how western civilization destroyed a peaceful North American continent. To report their parents if they catch them using drugs. To practice safe sex. Since none of those subjects shows up on the SAT tests, it’s not surprising that SAT scores declined so much."

"Libertarians understand a very simple fact of life: Government doesn't work. It can't deliver the mail on time, it doesn't keep our cities safe, it doesn't educate our children properly."

"Libertarians want you to be free-free to live your own life as you think best. We want you to keep every dollar you earn-to spend it, save it, or give it away as you think best, not as the politicians decide. We want you to be free to raise your children by your values, not those of faraway bureaucrats who see your child as a little soldier in their crusade for a better world. We want your privacy to be airtight-so that you’re not exposed to politicians and bureaucrats who think the “greater good” gives them the right to snoop into your bank account, read your letters or e-mails, and monitor your life. We want you to be free to say “no” to busybodies who are sure they know better than you how to run your life-or who believe that just one more law will solve some social problem, even if it turns your life upside down."

"Many Americans understandably worry about Israel’s security, fearing that without American aid Israel will be overrun by its neighbors. But the most effective thing our government could do to help Israel would be to stop arming Israel’s neighbors. Our government’s eagerness to take sides in Middle East disputes has put billions of dollars of weapons in the hands of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Small wonder that it seems necessary to rush to Israel’s defense when hostile governments can use American weapons to intimidate Israel. Every American should be free to send money or weapons to Israel or any other government in the world. But our government has no business taxing you for the benefit of any foreign government. The politicians no longer try to justify giving your money to foreign governments. They just do it."

"Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources."

"Marijuana is very effective in relieving chronic pain; alleviating nausea for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy; and treating glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and other medical conditions. No one has ever been known to die from smoking marijuana, and no scientific study has indicated that smoking marijuana leads inevitably to heavier drugs. But the Drug Warriors prefer to let patients suffer, rather than acknowledge that marijuana isn’t an unconditional evil."

"Medicare provides a good example [of how government doesn’t work]. It was created in 1965 to make it easier for the elderly to get health care. But by reducing the patient’s out-of-pocket costs, it increased the demand for doctors and hospitals. And it reduced the supply of those services by requiring doctors and other medical personnel to use their time and attention handling paperwork and complying with regulations. So the price of medical care rose sharply as the demand soared and the supply diminished."

"No one should be in prison for prostitution, gambling, buying or selling handguns, pornography, or selling drugs. As much as you may disapprove of these activities, all of government’s high-cost huffing and puffing hasn’t slowed them, and it won’t. Government is incapable of stopping these enterprises. People who are guilty of fraud, embezzlement, or other white-collar crimes shouldn’t be locked up either, if there is any reasonable prospect that they can make restitution-to their victims, not the government. Prison time should be reserved for repeat offenders who don’t make restitution. Possession of a weapon (of any kind) should be considered a crime only if it’s used to injure or threaten someone. We should clear the prisons of non-violent offenders. They are no threat to society, but locking them up diverts prison cells, police resources, and court time from the violent thugs who are threatening us."

"On my first day in office, by Executive Order I will: Pardon everyone who has been convicted on a federal, non-violent drug charge, order the immediate release of those in prison, reunite them with their families, and restore all their civil rights. Pardon everyone who has been convicted on any federal gun-control charge, order the immediate release of those in prison, and restore all their civil rights. Pardon everyone who has been convicted of a federal tax-evasion charge, order the immediate release of those in prison, and restore all their civil rights. Pardon everyone else who has been convicted of a victimless federal crime, order the immediate release of those in prison, and restore all their civil rights. I will make it clear to federal law enforcement agents and prosecutors that we want the violent criminals off the streets. Every member of the federal criminal justice system should understand that prison space is only for criminals who have hurt someone."

"More and more Americans say they want government to be smaller. For example, recent polls have found that: 73% believe “the federal government is much too large and has too much power. 67% believe “big government is the biggest threat to the country in the future. 63% think “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good. 60% “favor a smaller government with fewer services. Only 22% “trust the government in Washington to do what is right most of the time. People everywhere recognize the simple truth that government doesn’t work. It is failing at everything it tries to do-even as politicians propose new worlds for it to conquer. The direction that most of us want is toward less government- a lot less government."

"As a result, the elderly now pay from their own pockets over twice as much for health care (after adjusting for inflation) than they did before Medicare began. And most older people now find it harder to get adequate medical service. Naturally, the government points to the higher costs and shortages as proof that the elderly would be lost without Medicare--and that government should be even more deeply involved."

"Once upon a time, government budgets were balanced, our money was sound, the streets were safe, and taxes imposed by all levels of government took less than 10% of our income."

"Our government, taxes, and ideas of freedom are already duplicates of the Old World. Our politicians determine how we should live our lives - and our individual liberties are sacrificed for the benefit of the Fatherland."

"Only free people have an incentive to be virtuous. Only people who bear the consequences of their own acts will care about those consequences and try to learn from their mistakes."

"One sign of a government run amok is that many Congressional bills are hundreds of pages long-and they often include dozens of provisions that are irrelevant to the bills’ topics. Congressmen rarely read the bills they vote for, and Presidents almost never read them before signing them. Everyone relies on aides and “experts” to assess the bills-and even the latter can’t read a bill that is rushed through to a vote or altered at the last minute. But the regulators read all these bills thoroughly and enforce every provision. I will not sign any bill I haven’t read. I will consult with advisors, but I will always make the final decision myself, based on what a bill actually says. If a bill is too long for me to read during the ten days the Constitution give the President to make a decision, I will veto it automatically. If a bill is ambiguous or too complicated to understand, I will veto it-even if I think it might be aimed in the right direction."

"Politicians describe foreign trade as though it were a war between countries-with winners and losers. But, for example, every one of millions of Japanese cars was bought by an American who wanted it. Providing what someone wants isn’t aggression. Barring Japanese companies from selling cars is forcibly preventing Americans from getting what they want-which is aggression. Most politicians miss the whole point of international trade. It isn’t a game or a war. Each transaction benefits both sides."

"Repealing the income tax will leave an extra trillion dollars a year in the hands of individual Americans-money now being poured down government rat holes. That trillion dollars will buy a job for everyone who can work and charity for everyone who can’t. Can you envision the jobs that will be created? Can you imagine the increase in charity? Whatever the problem, the people most interested in solving it will have the means to do so."

"Raising children is a moral challenge. But it’s a practical one, too. Your chances of success would be much greater if government left more money in your pocket. If the income tax were abolished from your life: You could send your child to a private school that teaches the kind of values you cherish-or at least doesn’t oppose those values. You could afford to have one parent remain home as the children grow up, so that most of their moral education comes from you. You could afford more leisure time and longer vacations-during which the family could do things together. If you can imagine how much repealing the income tax would do for your family, imagine as well what it would do for other families-how much it would help children everywhere to grow up to be decent, peace-loving citizens."

"Republicans campaign like Libertarians and govern like Democrats."

"Since no one but you can know what's best for you, government control can't make your life better."

"Some people believe progress must come slowly, a little each year in a gradual restoration of constitutional government. But I don’t believe we can succeed by trying to phase out government programs a little at a time. There are many reasons gradualism won’t work. Here are some of them: There will be interminable argument over which programs will be eliminated first. Politicians won’t stick very long to any plan that leads to smaller government. A program that is immediate and complete is the only way we can assure Americans that we aren’t just looking for government jobs like other politicians-that we intend to minimize government and maximize liberty. Only a big reward will motivate people to actively support our plan. The Great Libertarian Offer, with its complete elimination of the income tax, is such a reward. Politicians will never willingly give up what they’ve taken from us. We must recover it swiftly, decisively, and completely."

"So long as Social Security remains in the politicians’ hands, it will be unsafe. We can’t leave our retirement money lying on the table for them to grab and spend. The only way to make Social Security safe is by getting the government out of it. And the only way to get government out of it is to do so now-completely and forever. Millions of Americans have paid into Social Security. But since the politicians have already spent that money, they now tax you to make good on what they promised to others."

"Some people say I go too far in wanting to cut the government. They say I want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. But here's what they don't understand: It's Rosemary's baby."

"Some people object to libertarian ideas because there are too many irresponsible people in the world - people who will cause trouble if the government doesn't restrain them."

"Some people believe the space program is one of the federal government’s greatest hits. They remember the remarkable moon landing in 1969. But the moon landing is yet to yield any tangible benefit to the taxpayers who paid for it. And the space program has consisted since then of an unbroken string of promises and failures. In the 1970s several private companies wanted to build their own rocket launchers and send satellites into space. But the government wouldn’t use their services. And by offering cheap, subsidized rates for launching satellites, the government effectively killed all private competition. It took the Challenger crash to change the rules; now government agencies use private launch services, instead of driving them out of the market. Unburden private companies from subsidized competition and they will provide the money to do what is truly worth doing. Usually they will succeed. But if they fail, it won’t cost the taxpayers anything."