Notable Quote - John Hayward - Granite Grok

Notable Quote – John Hayward

There is nothing more pernicious than the illusion of liberty surviving, or even flourishing, alongside growing government power. It doesn’t work that way, not once you get past the transition from anarchy to lawful government. Personal liberty does not exist in a state of anarchy, because individuals can be defrauded, robbed, and killed at will by lone predators and organized gangs. Some degree of government power must clearly be exercised to secure liberty.

But when a government the size of America’s federal system grows larger, it occurs only at the expense of liberty, and the contraction of the private sector. Law is meaningless without the exercise of force to compel obedience. More government means more laws, more force, more punishment for disobedience… more things you must do, more things you cannot do.

…Big Government is often sold to the dupes as a guarantor of personal freedom. For example, Nancy Pelosi once gushed that ObamaCare would enhance the freedom of artists by relieving them of the need to worry about providing for their health care. Presumably, under this line of thinking, the state of maximum freedom is achieved when the government feeds, clothes, and houses its child-citizens, who would be liberated to frolic in the green pastures of self-actualization once they didn’t have to spend so much of their lives working to earn the money it takes to purchase those necessities through voluntary commerce. Just remove “voluntary commerce” from the equation, and everyone will be truly free at last!

Concealed by these glowing promises is the enormous amount of compulsion necessary to secure obedience. The people who portray voluntary commerce as a frightening, soul-crushing business of working a thankless job to earn filthy money, which is then siphoned away by predatory capitalists, want you to forget about the unpleasantness of political command, which absolutely requires punishment for disobedience.

As Senator Ted Cruz likes to observe, if ObamaCare is so wonderful, why do people have to be punished (by the IRS!) for refusing to purchase its policies?

…If you want a big government, then you want less freedom, and more compulsion. If we gain nothing else from the shutdown drama and the ObamaCare fiasco, let it mark the end of all pretense to the contrary.

– John Hayward

Go read the whole thing!

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