Posted on 10/17/2011 1:48:13 PM PDT by Patrick1
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. — H. L. Mencken
Great quote! I’ll use it in my “indoctrination” talks to “kids” (17-18-19 year olds) at work. I ask them to describe what government is and when they falter, I relay a similar idea, though much more clumsily than Menkin!
“Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal.”
Frederic Bastiat
One of the two best political quotes of all time, the other being “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
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