With its brutal excesses and reliance on snitches and finks as informants, I don't think it's far off-kilter to describe the modern-day drug war as oddly similar to the Salem witch trials.

Markets help people pursue their happiness more efficiently and effectively. Because they are so effective, markets provide benefits right here and right now, even while government is busy batching the protection of happiness.

Markets respond not to political pressures channeled through various committees, subcommittees, lobbies, and special interests but to the immediacies and exigencies of the economy - in other words, what's happening now.

Bureaucracies typically move slowly, clumsily, and without much regard for the wants and needs of the people they supposedly serve.

The more government does, the greater chance that its efforts will be tilted toward a particular group's good, instead of the common good.

As government increases in quantity, our lives decrease in quality.

The only way to effectively secure the common good is for the government to remain small.