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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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Joseph Sobran
Age: 64 †
Born: 1946
Born: February 23
Died: 2010
Died: September 30
Journalist
Writer
Ypsilanti
Michigan
State
Power
Wartime
Together
Erosion
States
Constitutional
Always
Expansion
Brings
Standards
Moral

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The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
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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'.
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Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money.
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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.
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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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Tyranny may creep in under the outward forms of traditional law.
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I realize that the New York Times probably not written for the express purpose of driving me mad I think of it as liberalism's daily bulletin board.
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Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly.
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Liberals see the Constitution itself as 'living' and 'evolving' that is, gradually turning into something that would have been unrecognizable to its authors.
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The liberal understanding of 'the separation of church and state' means that as the area of politics expands, the area of private freedom - religious and otherwise - shrinks.
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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.
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The purpose of a college education is to give you the correct view of minorities, and the means to live as far away from them as possible.
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Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?
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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.
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