Quote of the Day

“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

~ Barry Goldwater

Quote of the Day

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

~ Robert Heinlein

Quote of the Day

“It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”

~ David Hume

Quote of the Day

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

~ Frederic Bastiat

Quote of the Day

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
- Thomas Jefferson

Conservative Contradictions

Peter Berkowitz writing in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review:

Both the quest for purity and the quest for unity [among conservatives] are misguided. This is because modern conservatism in general and certainly American conservatism in particular is a paradoxical orientation. The central paradox pervades the writing of Edmund Burke. Rightly recognized as having informally and unofficially but powerfully launched modern conservatism in 1790 with his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke cherished two fundamental goods, liberty and tradition, that do not obviously cohere and sometimes obviously conflict. Constitutional government in America intensifies the paradox. Insofar as American conservatism involves the conservation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and how could it not?—it puts a revolutionary doctrine and a founding document, forged by men in the heat of the political moment and constructed with numerous painful compromises, at the heart of the conservative mission.

I think this phenomenon is, in large part, a symptom of the problem that many conservatives – though claiming to advocate individual liberty – have not rejected certain collectivist principles. Many still argue for free market capitalism on practical grounds (i.e. it produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people). Conservatives must return to a principled stance in defense of the individual rights, for the sake of the individual (no practical arguments for the “common good” needed). Only when conservatives once again stand on principle, can the various factions of the conservative movement be reconciled and their policy conflicts resolved.

Prosperity linked to economic freedom

Yaron Brook Discusses President Obama’s “Czars”

Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, is scheduled to appear on Glenn Beck on Fox News Channel today, Wednesday, July 22. The program starts at 5 p.m. Eastern time (2 p.m. Pacific). Dr. Brook will discuss President Obama’s “Czars.”

For anyone who has not listened to Dr. Brook speak or read his publications, I urge you to do so. I would consider this man to be one of today’s most eloquent and principled advocates for liberty.

UPDATE: Here is the video of Yaron Brook’s interview (Dr. Brook begins at 7:00)

If only

In 1963 Barry Goldwater wrote the following:

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

I strongly doubt that a major presidential candidate will proclaim anything even close to Goldwater’s message in the near or distant future. If only liberty was among their chief concerns. If only.