Minarchy, the "smallest possible government", is a cruel idea. It means no pension for government employees, that's for certain.
Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." In other words, every generation or so, in order to keep government in check, and to keep liberty alive, those who love liberty need to kill off all the politicians.
Admit it. The idea made you smile. That would make it a lot less likely to have lifetime career parasites... uh.... politicians and bureaucrats. If they still wanted that power over the lives of others that badly, they would want to get in and out as quickly as possible. Maybe like a thrill-seeking thing. Still it is a very bad way to organize a society, especially since the bloodshed is unnecessary if you just keep tyrants from gaining power to begin with.
Government is a cancer. It is not possible to leave a small tumor inside and scold it into not growing. You must cut the thing out. If you leave a bit of it, you will need to repeat the surgery every time the tumor gets dangerously large. It is simpler, more effective, more realistic, and less painful, to get rid of ALL of the cancer at once.
.............................................
Where did you get that "from time to time" means "every generation or so", and that "tyrants" means "all the politicians"? I am not reading that into the quote, but perhaps you know something I don't.
ReplyDeleteWell, let's see... any politicain who proposes or supports or enforces any law that attempts to regulate or control anything other than actual initiation of force or fraud has stepped WAY out of his authority and is therefore a tyrant. As soon as this becomes a problem and they refuse to refrain from such activity and get back in line with what they are allowed to do, and it becomes difficult to rein them in in any other way, it has become time for "Jefferson's Tactic".
ReplyDeleteI feel it probably takes less than a "generation or so" to need to do this, but I was trying to be generous. Possibly if the Liberty Tree had been "watered" a few times in recent generations, it would take longer than a generation for tyrants to forget the lessons of the past, but I am not sure about that.