We must acknowledge, of course, that what looks like failure to us Americans outside the privileged elite may not actually be failure for our overlords.

Those who create the wealth naturally want to keep it and devote it to their own purposes. Those who wish to expropriate it look for ever more-clever ways to acquire it without inciting resistance. One of those ways is the spreading of an elaborate ideology of statism, which teaches that the people are the state and that therefore they are only paying themselves when they pay taxes.

Americans live under the delusion that enterprise here is both private and free. It may be nominally private, but it's anything but free. Unfortunately, most people don't know what freedom is. So they are unfazed when they hear that before you can do anything of a commercial nature, you need government permission.

Government interference with the economic process represents a substitution of political for consumer objectives.

The housing and financial crisis could not have occurred in the absence of government housing and monetary policies.

We must acknowledge, of course, that what looks like failure to us Americans outside the privileged elite may not actually be failure for our overlords.

The state is an organization of mere mortals who, by one dubious method or another, have been allowed to don the mantle of political legitimacy and to command obedience on pain of imprisonment even of those who never consented to the preposterous arrangement.