The chances of your being harmed by terrorists are mathematically minute. The chance of your being robbed by your own government? That's easy: 100 per cent.

Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly.

We would be much worse without Christianity; but we wouldn't know it.

Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?

There can be no such thing as "limited government," because there is no way to control an entity that in principle enjoys a monopoly of power.

People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.

Too many voters are already bought -- not by corporate campaign donors, but by the government itself.