Wealth is not a given or an accident of history. It is not bestowed on us like rain from above. It is the product of human creativity in an environment of freedom. The freedom to own, to make contracts, to save, to invest, to associate, and to trade: these are the key to prosperity.

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.

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.

The fact is that the New Deal did not work. It prolonged what might have been a troubling two-year downturn into a horrifying blow to world prosperity that ended up in a war that killed countless millions. It was one of the greatest acts of wreckage in world history.

It is not caving in to the bees to stop poking a stick into their hive.

One ironic legacy of the Clinton administration is the rearming of the American citizenry. Each time Clinton and his friends in Congress threaten another round of anti-gun regulations, the American people respond by stocking up.

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.