From time to time, I send myself emails. I do this, not in order to boost my inbox count and self-confidence, but to remind myself of certain things that I deem important.
Today, unusually, I sent myself two emails. The first was a selection of quotations, copied from a thread on the Guardian's Comment is Free board, concerning the importance of personal freedom and the self-serving hypocrisy of Big Government. You can read them here:
"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all." Jacob Hornberger
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." H.L. Mencken
"It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve." Henry George
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." C. S. Lewis
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any 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 to live without breaking laws." Ayn Rand
"It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself." Justice Casey Percell
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." Robert A. Heinlein
The other email I sent myself was to remind me to put this on my Christmas list. Pity those who feel the need to be consistently highbrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment