The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.

Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

One of the most basic and pervasive social processes is the sorting and labeling of things, activities, and people... Sorting and labeling processes involve a trade-off of costs and benefits. In general, the more finely the sorting is done, the greater the benefits - and the costs... Sorting and labeling, whether of people or of things, is a sorting and labeling of probabilities rather than of certainties.

The big problem in the long process of dumbing down the schools is that you can reach a point of no return. How are parents who never received a decent education themselves to recognize that their children are not getting a decent education?

Cheap medical care is one of the most expensive things there is. So long as politicians can create the illusion of something for nothing, that gets them votes, which is what it is all about, as far as they are concerned.