[T]he most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration of the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps one or two generations. The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means that … even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.
Categories