I am not a big fan of politicians becoming celebrities, because it seems to me that our politicians are there to do a job. . . . I think that politicians should be treated basically like DMV workers except with more scorn.
Ben Shapiro, The Ben Shapiro Show, February 6, 2017.
The column of society must have its capital as well as its base. It is only perfect while each part is entire, and discharges its proper duty.
James Fenimore Cooper, The Chainbearer; Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts, 1845.
The capital error is becoming prevalent, which holds the pernicious doctrine that this is a government of men, instead of one of principles. Whenever this error shall so far come to a head as to get to be paramount in action, the well-disposed may sit down and mourn over, not only the liberties of their country, but over its justice and its morals, even should men be nominally so free as to do just what they please.
James Fenimore Cooper, The Chainbearer; Or, The Littlepage Manuscripts, 1845.
History shows how the human mind, which, at the dawn of civilisation, was a lyre of three chords, became in the progress of civilisation a lyre of seven chords. . . .
G. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind (Third Series) Problem the First — The Study of Psychology: Its Object, Scope, and Method (1879), p. 157.
The American people are paying for employees they can’t even control. Federal bureaucrats enjoy ludicrous protections that far exceed what average Americans can expect in their own jobs and thus isolate the bureaucracy from the will of the American people. To correct this, Congress should pass a law to make all federal employees serve at will — just like Americans in the private sector. If a bureaucrat underperforms, undermines policy, or is no longer needed, he should be dismissed.
Grant Starrett, “Make All Federal Employees Fireable, National Review (February 2, 2017).
We should be more worried about the government taking away our free speech rather than us taking it away from ourselves.
Dave Rubin, Rubin Report transcript.
Another major source of stop-gap revenues to fund Hitler’s popular tax and rearmament policies was Germany’s — and later much of Europe’s — Jewish population. By late 1937, civil servants in the Finance Ministry had pushed the state’s credit limit as far as it would go. Forced to come up with ever more creative ways of refinancing the national debt, they urged their attention to property owned by German Jews, which was soon confiscated and added to the so-called Volksvermögen, or the collective assets of the German people.
Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2005), Jefferson Chase, trans., p. 41.
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism (1898).
Reich officials often justified their policies toward Jews with arguments about economic necessity. For example, one German bureaucrat stationed abroad during the war made the reasonable-sounding — if morally abhorrent — assertion that the sale of Jewish assets was ‘an effective means of price regulation.’
Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2005), Jefferson Chase, trans., p. 199.