The Notes (18 page)

T
he Trees went forth to anoint a King over themselves. The olive tree, the fig tree, the vine—all declined to abandon their productive pursuits to become a King. So the trees then turned to the bramble and the bramble accepted.

Dr. Goebbels

W
hoever can conquer the street will conquer the state one day for every form of power politics & any dictatorially run state has its roots in the street. We cannot have enough of public demonstrations for that is far & away the most emphatic way of demonstrating ones will to govern. It means a sight more than elec. statistics. When we can see our men thousands of them marching up & down the streets that is nothing short of mobilization for power.

Judge Learned Hand

T
here is nothing sinister in so arranging ones affairs as to keep taxes just as low as possible. Nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands. Taxes are enforced exactions not vol. contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.

A
nyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible, he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to
increase
one’s taxes.

J. Edgar Hoover

T
he cure for crime is not the electric chair but the high chair.

Paul McCracken

I
t is interesting to speculate what would happen if a delegation from the Economic Dept. of U. of Outer Space were asked to fly around this planet & see if they could sort out the planned & unplanned economies. They would in fact probably get them sorted out; but they might as well have the labels on the 2 lists reversed. Of course the so-called unplanned economies aren’t unplanned at all. They rely on an extremely sophisticated system of planning reflected in the mechanisms of institutions of the market to organize ec. activity & to generate material progress.

Prof. Geo. Sternlieb

T
he billions of $ that are being spent on the urban poor by all levels of govt. go mainly to support a growing W.F. bureaucracy of teacher-aides, youth workers, clerks, supervisors, key punchers, & people’s lawyers. The bureauc. is sustained by the plight of the poor, the threat of the poor, the misery of the poor, but it yields little in the way of loaves & fishes to the poor.

John Ramsay McCulloch, Scotch Ec., More—100 Years Ago

T
he moment you abandon the cardinal principle of extracting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or their property you are at sea without rudder or compass & there is no amount of injustice or folly you may not commit.

A Florida Bus Attendant—Ralph Bradford

H
uman society is built & can only be built upon a foundation of citizenship accountability. The strength of a nation is not its legal machinery, but the moral stamina & courage of its people. The law is but the codification of their conscience. There are not enough laws & never will be, to keep a society stable if its members no longer will it. There are not enough policemen, courts, judges or prisons, nor ever can be to prevent the death of a civilization whose people no longer care. Law enforcement is for the criminal few; it collapses if it must be enforced against the many. When the sense of personal accountability is no longer present in majority strength, then no legal device known to man can hold the society together.
Freedom is a timely torch blazing in the dark
.

Herbert Spencer, Essay, Self-Defense and Paternalism

O
f the pauper—the more you assist him the more he wants. Of the busy man the more he has to do the more he can do. A whole nation must be so—that just in proportion as its members are little helped by extraneous power they will become self helping and in proportion as they are much helped they will become helpless.

Hiram Johnson, 1910, Los Angeles