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This is extracted from a Mises article today. Bastiat is one of the fathers of Austrian philosophy, and one of Ron Paul's great inspirations....so I thought I'd bring it here.
Here we have the media constantly bashing Ron Paul as an "extremist".
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It is above all the moderation which plays a role in this army of sophisms.
Everyone wants moderates at any price; we fear extremists above all … since the center is definitely between the right and the left, we conclude that this is where moderation lies.
Were those who each year voted for more taxes than the nation could bear moderates? What about those who never found the contributions to be sufficiently heavy, emoluments sufficiently huge, and sinecures sufficiently numerous … the betrayal of the confidence of their constituents.…
And are those who want to prevent the return of such excesses extremists? I mean those who want to inject a dose of moderation into spending; those who want to moderate the action of the people in power … those who do not want the nation to be exploited by one party rather than another.…
[T]he government … tends strongly to … expand indefinitely its sphere of action. Left to itself, it soon exceeds the limits which circumscribe its mission. It increases beyond all reason … It no longer administers, it exploits.… It no longer protects, it oppresses.
This would be the way all governments operate … if the people did not place obstacles in the way of governmental encroachments.
[L]iberty should not be bargained over … it is an asset so precious that no price is too high for it.…
[P]rodigality and liberty … are incompatible.
But where can there be liberty when the government, in order to sustain enormous expenditures and forced to levy huge fiscal contributions, must resort to the most offensive and burdensome taxation … to invade the sphere of private industry, to narrow incessantly the circle of individual activity, to make itself merchant, manufacturer, postman and teacher.… Are we free if the government … subjects all its activities to the goal of enlarging its cohort of employees, hampers all businesses, constrains all faculties, interferes with all commercial exchanges in order to restrain some people, hinder others, and hold almost all of them to ransom?
Can we expect order from a regime that places millions of enticements to greed all around the country … increasingly spreading the mania for governing and a zeal for domination.
Do we want then to free government from the plotters who pursue it in order to share out the spoils, from factions who undermine it in order to capture it, and from the tyrants who strengthen it in order to control it? Do we want to achieve order, freedom and public peace?
Do we want the government to take more of an interest in us than we take in ourselves? Are we expecting it to restrain itself it we strengthen it and become less active if we send it reinforcements? Do we hope that the spoils it can take from us will be refused.… Should we expect a supernatural nobility of spirit or a chimerical impartiality in those who govern us, while for our part we are incapable of defending … our dearest interests!
Electors, be careful. We will not be able to retrieve the opportunity if we let it slip … we should not shut our eyes to the evidence … if there has been no material improvement, have we at least then been given any reason for hope? No.
Liberty … are we going to destroy its work with our votes?
Frederic Bastiat, 1830
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