«Freedom has cost the blood of millions in obscure places and in historic sites ranging from Gettysburg to the Gulag Archipelago. A frontal assault on freedom is still impossible in America and in most of Western civilization. Perhaps nowhere in the world is anyone frankly against it, though everywhere there are those prepared to scrap it for other things that shine more brightly in the moment. That something that cost so much in human lives should be surrendered piecemeal in exchange for visions or rhetoric seems grotesque. Freedom is not simply the right of intellectuals to circulate their merchandise. It is, above all, the right of ordinary people to find elbow room for themselves and a refuge from the rampaging presumptions of their ‘betters’.» (T. Sowell)
«For the libertarian, the lives of individual people are the trees, and the danger of political life is to be so busy looking at the forest that one fails to notice those trees of which, after all, it ultimately consists. But people are not in fact trees, and one cannot go thinning out a few over here so as to improve the look of that lot over there. Many and sometimes all trees will do better if we have an occasional look at the forest, to be sure. The necessity to do so is increasingly frequent in modern times. Nevertheless, those who undertake to be the forest rangers do so at the behest of and for the sake of the particular maples, spruces, and the rest of it. […] One might even recall that forests flourished from time immemorial with no caretakers at all! Fundamentally, trees take care of themselves. People are even better equipped for this, being rational animals. Turning them loose and wishing them good luck may be the best prescription for any number of ills.» (J. Narveson)
