"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
On Revolution: The Right to Smash the State
"Let's do like economists and assume a country. Imagine, for a moment, that you are living in a land...where a fine net of detailed regulations controls virtually everything you do in the course of everyday life, from driving a car to hiring employees to building a house; where for a host of purposes you have to fill in forms and answer personal questions from bureaucrats; where, say, a third of what the people produce and earn is seized in taxes, and you have to file and sign periodic income reports; where people are conceived of as 'human resources' the state can draw upon; where there is a very powerful permanent army; where the people have been disarmed; where you need permits to engage in many economic activities; where the authorities decide what you may consume and even, in some cases, read; where your identity is basically defined by official identification papers, and the government even issues you a number that defines you as a citizen; where the state circumvents the rule of law with complicated and abstruse legislation that most citizens do not know and cannot understand; where the majority apparently assents to all this in formal elections, but a large bureaucracy and an entrenched political class actually rule. Obviously, you would call for, or even start, a libertarian revolution. Or would you?" A thought-provoking classic from Pierre Lemieux.
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