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. And that's beginning to happen. More than six decades of hard work for American liberty beginning with the Old Right opposition to the Roosevelt Revolution and continuing with the Mises Institute, is beginning to bear fruit.

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.

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.

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.

The people and the warmakers are two distinct groups. We must never say 'we' when discussing the US government's foreign policy. For one thing, the warmakers do not care about the opinions of the majority of Americans. It is silly and embarrassing for Americans to speak of 'we' when discussing their government's foreign policy, as if their input were necessary to or desired by those who make war.

If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

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.