A Christian will consider a tyrannical person bossing a city brutally a lesser evil than a whole city lynching one man. In the first case there is one sinner and thousands of sufferers, in the latter case thousands of sinners and one sufferer. The materialist will look at the problem the other way round. He is never interested in sin, but as a humanitarian only in suffering. His final logical conclusion is euthanasia and the sacrifice of individuals to the whim of the masses.

To follow Nock, what traits must a man of the Right have? He must be both fiercely independent and believe in the power of social authority; he must love tradition but hate the state and everything it does; he must believe in radical freedom while never doubting the immutability of human nature and natural laws; he must be antimaterialist in his own life while defending economic freedom without compromise; he must be an elitist and antidemocrat yet despise elites who hold illicit power; and he must be realistic about the dim prospects for change while still retaining a strong sense of hope and enthusiasm for life.

My land is bare of chattering folk;
     The clouds are low along the ridges.
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
     From all my burning bridges.

A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

A European finds that this phenomenon needs in its turn to be explained, for in the free countries of Europe brilliancy, be it eloquence in speech, or some striking achievement in war or administration, or the power through whatever means of somehow impressing the popular imagination, is what makes a leader triumphant. Why should it be otherwise in America? Because in America party loyalty and party organization have been hitherto so perfect that any one put forward by the party will get the full party vote if his character is good and his "record," as they call it, unstained. The safe candidate may not draw in quite so many votes from the moderate men of the other side as the brilliant one would, but he will not lose nearly so many from his own ranks. Even those who admit his mediocrity will vote straight when the moment for voting comes. Besides, the ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He has a lower conception of the qualities requisite to make a statesman than those who direct public opinion in Europe have. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls "magnetic," and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge.

The lie [Hillary Clinton's about "sniper fire" in Bosnia] tells us something important about American political culture. It shows, unfortunately, to what extent militarism has become the dominant political ethic in that country. No other democracy regularly apostrophises the head of its executive as "the commander in chief," and the rather primitive and exaggerated admiration for the capacity to inflict violence which is encapsulated by this phrase has become a decisive factor in the ups and downs of every American presidential campaign. John McCain, the real "Manchurian candidate," is campaigning heavily on the basis of his war record, and Hillary’s fantasies about her trip to Bosnia were presumably an attempt to counter this.

-- John Laughland, "The Art of Political Lying," Brussels Journal, March 26, 2008.

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy and liberals at bay. And the nation free.

-- William F. Buckley, Jr., Up from Liberalism, 1959.

War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery.

-- William F. Buckley, Jr., "On the Right," April 1, 1965.

Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.

I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university that refuses to accept any common premise. In the deliberations of two thousand citizens of Boston I think one would discern a respect for the laws of God and for the wisdom of our ancestors such as doesn't characterize the thought of Harvard professors -- who, to the extent that they believe in God at all, tend to believe He made some terrible mistakes which they would undertake to rectify; and, when they are paying homage to the wisdom of our ancestors, tend to do so with a kind of condescension toward those whose accomplishments we long since surpassed.

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by "our" side. ...

Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.

-- George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism," Polemic: A Magazine of Philosophy, October 1945, reprinted in Essays.

In fact, that growth in government that so many fans of cooperative bipartisanship so obviously favor may itself be a cause of the vitriol they profess to despise. Having expanded the state to the point that it reaches into every home, every wallet, every business and even personal relationships, political contests have become such high-stakes affairs that nobody can really afford to lose.

When the consequences of losing an election are that government may insert itself into your bedroom (bans on recognizing same-sex marriages), exert potentially ruinous control over your health care (calls for a single-payer system), criminalize your recreational pursuits (outlawing Internet gambling), regulate your menu choices (foie gras and trans fats) and send your kids off to die in foreign lands (do I have to say it?), how do you prevent political debate from turning into a cage match?

In fact, the best most of us can hope for is that government really will be paralyzed by partisanship.

I'll tell you what: If you really want people to play nice and let the political elites go about the important business of governing without all that unpleasant discord, the only way to get what you want is to make government so small that it really doesn't matter.

Until then, I'll be toasting partisanship and paralysis.

Liberalism [i.e., "classical liberalism" or libertarianism] is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or any group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society. It promises nothing that exceeds what can be accomplished in society and through society. It seeks to give men only one thing, the peaceful, undisturbed development of material well-being for all, in order thereby to shield them from the external causes of pain and suffering as far as it lies within the power of social institutions to do so at all. To diminish suffering, to increase happiness: that is its aim.

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity. ... We cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society's fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.