Category: Thought

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does not control me. It can not even make me read Spengler, if I’d rather read a pulp magazine.

Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom (1943), p. 18.

In the complete separation of government from the bank and credit system consists the chief hope of renovating our prosperity, and restoring to the people those equal rights, which have so long been exposed to the grossest violations. Leave credit to its own laws. It is an affair between man and man, which does not need special government protection and regulation. Leave banking to be conducted on the same footing with any other private business, and leave the banker to be trusted or not, precisely as he shall have means to satisfy those who deal with him of his responsibility and integrity. All this is a matter for men to manage with each other in the transaction of private affairs.

William Leggett (1801–1839), Plaindealer (July 22, 1837).

This same passage was published here a few days ago. But we repeat because the image snips out an even juicier two sentences from the passage than before!

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book Three, Chapter XXI

In the complete separation of government from the bank and credit system consists the chief hope of renovating our prosperity, and restoring to the people those equal rights, which have so long been exposed to the grossest violations. Leave credit to its own laws. It is an affair between man and man, which does not need special government protection and regulation. Leave banking to be conducted on the same footing with any other private business, and leave the banker to be trusted or not, precisely as he shall have means to satisfy those who deal with him of his responsibility and integrity. All this is a matter for men to manage with each other in the transaction of private affairs.

William Leggett (1801–1839), Plaindealer (July 22, 1837).

Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.

The bank, Mr. Van Buren, is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.

President Andrew Jackson, to Vice President Martin Van Buren, July 8, 1832

This conversation was a key moment in the “Bank War” over re-chartering the Second Bank of the United States.

Eighteen-thirty-two was an election year, and Jackson, having vetoed the renewal of the bank’s charter in his first administration, was set on destroying it in his second. His unilateral removal of federal government funds from the bank and placing them into separate state banks precipitated the formation of the opposition Whig Party.

He won a second term, and Van Buren followed him with a single term.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him: every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him: and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. [W]hen the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural right.

Thomas Jefferson to Francis W. Gilmore, June 7, 1816.

We should never doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Kenneth Minogue, The Servile Mind (2010), Encounter Books, pp. 2-3.

[O]ur legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their powers: that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, & to take none of them from us.

Thomas Jefferson to Francis W. Gilmore, June 7, 1816.