Liberalism is really piecemeal socialism, and socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property. Religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state; the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state; and property, because it means material independence of the state.

I call the present system 'Post-Constitutional America.' As I sometimes put it, the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.

Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.

There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants; it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.

Man is the only creature disposed to kill huge numbers of members of his own species, and his instrument is usually the state.

If Communism was liberalism in a hurry, liberalism is Communism in slow motion.

Even if we are all doomed to live under the state, it doesn't follow that there is, or even can be, such a thing as a good state.