Quotes About Government

In 2015, during a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Rasmussen noted, "Some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear: Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."3

great civilization arises. The state encroaches on freedom and demands more power. People take less responsibility for themselves and want more handouts from the government. Taxes go up to pay for the handouts. The size of government explodes and economic growth slows.

Sure, you can raise your speed limit to 80, but we'll just hold on to that highway grant money next year. The states almost always cave; they can't afford not to.

Of course, figuring out what actually works in reducing childhood obesity is not really the point of these programs. (If it were, then the government might finally stop categorizing french fries as "vegetables.") The real point is the same thing it always is: conformity, control, and eventually fundamental transformation.

Economist Robert Higgs wrote a book about this phenomenon titled Crisis and Leviathan, in which he argues that government intervention inevitably creates future problems, which results in the government's intervening even more in an attempt to correct them.)

Our Founders explicitly designed our system so that all powers not delegated to the federal government (education included) fell to the states or the people; they believed that parents, not government officials, have the moral right to decide what their children are taught.

The controllists sometimes get angry when critics suggest that "state led" is a bit of a fabrication.

If you're forcing and mandating people to act in a certain way, then it's not really "benevolence" or "charity"; it's effectively nothing more than tyranny, and tyranny never produces a well-functioning, happy society.

In fact, our government has been all too eager to encourage the continued deterioration of the family structure by assuming more and more responsibilities that should be dealt with at home. That's particularly true when it comes to government schools.

The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.

Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.

I know it's a really hard concept to process, but the fact that Govt accuses someone of being a Terrorist doesn't mean they are.

For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election.

To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination.

Through a carefully cultivated display of intimidation to anyone who contemplated a meaningful challenge, the government had striven to show people around the world that its power was constrained by neither law nor ethics, neither morality nor the Constitution: look what we can do and will do to those who impede our agenda.

Bush violated FISA [...] because he wanted to violate the law in order to establish the general 'principle' that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law.

No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country's dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune.

US journalists, for years overwhelmingly enamored of Barack Obama, were now commonly speaking of him in these terms: as some sort of grave menace to press freedoms, the most repressive leader in this regard since Richard Nixon. That was quite a remarkable turn for a politician who was ushered into power vowing "the most transparent administration in US history.

the presumption is that the government, with rare exception, will not know anything that law-abiding citizens are doing. That is why we are called private individuals, functioning in our private capacity. Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.

I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.

A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we've had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we've had to learn what our government is doing.

The ability to eavesdrop on people's communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused. Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature.

Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.