Some wise words to ponder as the summer season ends and “governing season” returns:
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people,” reminded Alan Moore, the contrarian English author.
“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them,” said Thomas Jefferson.
Said Carl Sagan: “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
And it was Plato who reminded thusly: “The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”
Laurence J. Peter (of “The Peter Principle” fame) wondered “whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Per Edward R. Murrow: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
Or to put it another way, as author James Bovard did: “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
“I am for doing good to the poor, but … I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it,” reminded Benjamin Franklin. “I observed …that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
Observed great thinker Euripides: “When one with honeyed words but evil mind persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.”
It was cantankerous scribe H.L. Mencken who pulled no punches in saying that “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable … .”
And it was great Roman orator Tacitus who cautioned that “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
A tip of the hat to goodreads.com for compiling these quotes and many more on the malady that too often is government.
The summer effectively is over and those governing us soon will be plying their trade again, for well or for ill.
So, dear readers, please keep your antennae up and pointed in the right direction of crystal-clear reception. Because, too often, your governors are hoping you’ve fallen asleep in your easy chairs.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
