[Adam] Smith’s chief concern was not so much with what man might occasionally achieve when he was at his best but that he should have as little opportunity as possible to do harm when he was at his worst. It would scarcely be too much to claim that the main merit of individualism which he and his contemporaries advocated is that it is a system under which bad men can do least harm. It is a social system which does not depend for its functioning on our finding good men for running it, or on all men becoming better than they now are, but which makes use of men in all their given variety and complexity, sometimes good and sometimes bad, sometimes intelligent and more often stupid.
– F.A. Hayek (economist, author, Professor)
The Founders were similar in their……”defensive political programming” when drawing up the Constitution – a document that is not so much about setting up a government as it is about partitioning the power inherent in a government so as to minimize the need for “finding good men” to make it work because they knew that in order to be successful, the levers of power had to be divided so as to “have as little opportunity as possible to do harm when he was at his worst“.
And when is that? When men decide that they have the right to force “men becoming better than they now are“. Those are the worst of all.
We call them “Progressives“
