Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.

Wartime always brings expansions of state power, together with erosions of moral and constitutional standards.

Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.

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

By today's standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today's U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.

It's a curious fact about Americans that in their most fiercely patriotic moods they are willing to set aside their Constitution, the guarantor of their freedom, in order to prosecute war -- yet they insist that the war is for 'freedom'.