The sheer number of government employees and welfare recipients effectively transforms the purpose of government from maintaining order to confiscating as much as possible from vulnerable taxpayers.

The first step in saving our liberty is to realize how much we have already lost, how we lost it, and how we will continue to lose it unless fundamental political changes occur.

Not only has the number of government employees multiplied in recent decades, but the rise of government unions further stacks the political odds against private citizens.

To blindly trust government is to automatically vest it with excessive power. To distrust government is simply to trust humanity - to trust in the ability of average people to peacefully, productively coexist without some official policing their every move. The State is merely another human institution - less creative than Microsoft, less reliable than Federal Express, less responsible than the average farmer husbanding his land, and less prudent than the average citizen spending his own paycheck.

Entire generations of Americans have come of age since the ancient time when the president's power was constrained by a duty of candor to the American people.

Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less coercive.

It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.