The Function of Protectionism

The main function of tariffs and other protectionist devices today is to disguise the real effects of interventionist policies designed to raise the standard of living of the masses. Economic nationalism is the necessary complement of these popular policies which pretend to improve the wage earners’ material well-being while they are in fact impairing it.

Source: Ludwig von Mises
Human Action

Topics: Taxes

Blue Eagles and Déjà Vu

If the proponents of central planning came right out and said they wanted to create an economic police state, their cause would never get off the ground. So, they resort to “doublespeak,” as Mario Pei so aptly called it, the usual camouflage for the ultimate use of force against the individual. Ludwig von Mises summed it up when he wrote: “All this talk: the state should do this or that ultimately means: the police should force consumers to behave otherwise than they would behave spontaneously. In such proposals as: let us raise farm prices, let us raise wage rates, let us lower profits . . . the us ultimately refers to the police. Yet, the authors of these projects protest that they are planning for freedom and industrial democracy.”

Perhaps the oldest lesson of history is that an assault on one aspect of freedom is an attack on the whole, as the framers of the Constitution were well aware. To think that the bell that tolls for economic freedom does not toll for academic freedom or for freedom of the press is a delusion, and a dangerous one . . . .

All current proposals for a managed economy rest on an underestimation of the intelligence of the American people. They assume that you and I are just not smart enough to decide how to spend the money we earn.

Source: Walter Wriston
The Freeman, September 1975

Topics: Free Agency; Government

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.

Source: Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Dissenting in Olmstead v. United States
277 U.S. 438 (1928)

Topics: Government

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the indulgence of one class of the people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that those who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it, on all occasions, their effectual support.

Source: George Washington
on Religious Toleration
A letter to the congregation of Touro Synagogue
Newport, Rhode Island, 1790

Topics: Government

Brethren, if we had done our homework and were faithful, we could step forward at this time and help save this country. The fact that most of us are unprepared to do it is an indictment we will have to bear. The longer we wait, the heavier the chains, the deeper the blood, the more the persecution and the less we can carry out our God-given mandate and world-wide mission. The war in heaven is raging on earth today. Are you being neutralized in the battle?

“Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

“For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. . . .” (D&C 58:27-28.)

Source: Elder Ezra Taft Benson
General Conference, April 1965

Topics: Duty

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.

There may be even a worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

Source: Winston Churchill

Topics: Duty; Public Duty

Freedom is a natural condition; each individual controls himself.

It is also a condition of total risk. Each individual has the ability to impose cruelty and even death upon his fellows. This ability conceals a two-way street. Each individual is vulnerable to the thoughts and actions of others of his own kind. A free society is a society in which anyone could do as he pleases with himself or with others. Given a “society” of only one person, risk between all persons disappears. In such a society, the word freedom could not possibly have a social context.

But now we imagine a society in which total freedom reigns yet there are many persons in it. Each individual can think and act as he pleases; at the same time, any other person has the ability to impose upon him by a little or a lot.

Take one further step. Imagine a free society in which the capacity for man’s inhumanity to man is not impeded by any human organization . . . but yet the violation of one’s person or property does not occur.

Such would be a free society, and only such. A society in which free men interact, retaining all their natural capacity to be free, and yet do nothing to limit the freedom of their fellows, ah, that is the goal yet to be achieved.

Source: Robert LeFevre
Thinking About Freedom, The Freeman, February 1983, p120-121

Topics: Free Agency

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance... Should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work for them.

Source: A letter written by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams in 1812

Topics: America, Destiny; America, Example

“Wherefore, honest men, and wise men, should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil.”

The question in my mind is this: Who is to judge who are the good men and the wise men? If you leave me to judge, I say one man; if you leave Brother Brigham to judge, he may say another man; or, if we leave it to the people to judge, one says this is the wise man, and another says that is the wise man. The question with me is: Am I in a frame of mind, that when I get the word of the Lord as to who is the right man, will I obey it, no matter if it does come contrary to my convictions or predilections? If I feel that I can obey the word of God on this matter, then I am in harmony with the spirit of the work of God. If I cannot do it, I am not in harmony with that spirit.”

Source: President Joseph F. Smith
General Conferece, October 1900

Topics: Politics; Voting

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