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Why does corruption in government always surprise us? Why do we expect anything else from it? Government is organized force. It takes our wealth and makes war. And we think honest men would do that work?

Joseph Sobran

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Joseph Sobran
Age: 64 †
Born: 1946
Born: February 23
Died: 2010
Died: September 30
Journalist
Writer
Ypsilanti
Michigan
Always
Force
Would
War
Corruption
Men
Makes
Organized
Think
Else
Surprise
Thinking
Doe
Expect
Government
Wealth
Anything
Honest
Work
Takes

More quotes by Joseph Sobran

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Liberalism is really piecemeal socialism, and socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property. Religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state and property, because it means material independence of the state.
Joseph Sobran
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Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked.
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Liberalism's fatal flaw,... is that it has no permanent norms, only a succession of enthusiasms espoused by minor prophets. Each of these seems like a hot new idea to liberals, but soon goes to irksome and destructive extremes.
Joseph Sobran
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If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.
Joseph Sobran
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Wartime always brings expansions of state power, together with erosions of moral and constitutional standards.
Joseph Sobran
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The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century.
Joseph Sobran
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Since outright slavery has been discredited, democracy is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.
Joseph Sobran
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The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.
Joseph Sobran
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Freedom is coming to mean little more than the right to ask permission.
Joseph Sobran
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Tyranny may creep in under the outward forms of traditional law.
Joseph Sobran
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Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election.
Joseph Sobran
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Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call minorities.
Joseph Sobran
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Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.
Joseph Sobran
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The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself.
Joseph Sobran
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I call the present system 'Post-Constitutional America.' As I sometimes put it, the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.
Joseph Sobran
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There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.
Joseph Sobran
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Even if we are all doomed to live under the state, it doesn't follow that there is, or even can be, such a thing as a good state.
Joseph Sobran
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It would be a healthy exercise for every politician to look in the mirror every morning and remind himself that he holds office only because, in a two-man race against another mediocrity, a modest majority of those half-informed people who imagined that their votes mattered reckoned that he was the lesser evil. And they weren't too sure about that.
Joseph Sobran
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Government has ceased to mean upholding and reinforcing the traditional rights and morals of the governed it now means compulsion in the service of social engineering.
Joseph Sobran
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It's a curious fact about Americans that in their most fiercely patriotic moods they are willing to set aside their Constitution, the guarantor of their freedom, in order to prosecute war -- yet they insist that the war is for 'freedom'.
Joseph Sobran