The government is always looking for something that appears more dangerous than itself, and these criminals seem to fit the bill. Never mind that it was the government that promised but failed to protect us. It was the government that prevented the airlines from protecting themselves. It was the government that so badly botched the rescue operations. It was the government that had stirred up the hate that led to the terrorism.

American federalism was the embodiment of political tolerance and decentralization - the expression of the liberal conviction that society can manage itself and needs no central plan.

To concede that there are social problems that cannot be corrected without the state is to give up the entire argument over the future of liberty itself.

In education, it is said that the state must impose schooling on all children, else the parents and communities will neglect it. Only the state can make sure that no child is left behind. The only question is the means: will we use the union and bureaucracies favored by the left, or the market incentives and vouchers favored by the right. I don't want to get into a debate about which means is better, but only to draw attention to the reality that these are both forms of planning that compromise the freedom of families to manage their own affairs.

Never forget that no government has wealth of its own to spend. The money has to come from taxation, monetary inflation, or debt expansion that must be paid later. And government's spending choices will always be uneconomic relative to how society would use that wealth. That is to say, the money will be wasted.

Socialized medicine must fail for the same reasons all socialism must fail: it offers no system for rationally allocating resources, and instead promotes the overutilization of all resources, ending in bankruptcy.

Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.