“All government, of course, is against liberty.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
Speech on the Emancipation of South America], House of Representatives (24 March 1818); The Life and Speeches of the Hon. Henry Clay, vol. I (1857), ed. Daniel Mallory
“All government, of course, is against liberty.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)
Speech at New York Press Club (9 September 1912), in The papers of Woodrow Wilson, 25:124
1910s
Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic
“Libertarianism, Violence within States, and the Polarity Principle,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Jul., 1984), pp. 443-462. Published by Comparative Politics, Ph.D. Programs in Political Science, City University of New York.
Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney
2018-08-01
Is The Second Civil War Coming?
The Ben Shapiro Show
593
38:35
https://soundcloud.com/benshapiroshow/ep593
2018
John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian
As quoted in England in the Eighteenth Century (1714 - 1815) (1964) by J. H. Plumb, p. 94
General sources
“The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency.”
Thomas D'Arcy McGee (1825–1868) Canadian politician
Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough - too much perhaps in some respects - but at all events, liberty to our hearts content.
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
Notes for an oration at Braintree (Spring 1772)
1770s
Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015). <br class="br">2010s <br class="br">Context: The Court's decision today is at odds not only with the constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The framers created our constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a 'liberty' that the framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.
James Burgh book Political Disquisitions
Political Disquisitions (1774)
Context: That government only can be pronounced consistent with the design of all government, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what, consistently with the general good, they may desire to do, and which only forbids their doing the contrary. Liberty does not exclude restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people. And the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensably necessary to every law, by which the whole people are to be bound; else the whole people are enslaved to the one, or the few, who frame the laws for them.
“As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)