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.

No state empowered to do what is supposedly necessary will restrain itself to those things. It will expand as much as public opinion will tolerate.

Americans are coming to their senses, and the libertarian theory of society and government is pointing the way. The times change, but the enduring principles that help us to interpret and understand the world do not. It remains true now, as then, as in the future, saecula saeculorum, that government provides neither an effective nor a moral means for solving any human problem.

To centralize power in the name of freedom is akin to putting a crime syndicate in charge of rooting out corruption. It is the normal state of politics that the more centralized it is, the more damage it does. Fast-track authority [for government-to-government trade agreements] centralizes power and is therefore part of the problem.

What the American worker needs is more of what WalMart offers and less of what the government offers.

The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters.

It's not as if socialism is a new idea. It was tried in the 20th century. It produced economic stagnation and despair. In its purest form, it extinguished more than one hundred million people.