Yesterday I picked up a copy of Milton and Rose Friedman's book Free to Choose. On the page in between the Preface and Intro was this quote by Justice Louis Brandeis from a 1928 ruling:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
How bone-chillingly prophetic.
The only part of this quote I take issue with here is the second sentence. I don't think men (or in our PC age, people) born to freedom are naturally alert to threats to their liberty. I think too many Americans are too complacent and uninvolved to know what plans "men of zeal" have for them. Not all Americans, but too many. Otherwise, why would Barack Obama still have a nearly 50% job approval rating?
To be sure, there are Americans who are, as Brandeis said it, alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers: constitutional originalists, Reaganesque conservatives, and libertarians, and others. It's gratifying to know that audiences of Fox News' commentary/analysis shows and conservative talk radio keep growing. It's heartwarming to know that a sleeping giant has awoken in the form of the Tea Party movement.
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