A Quote by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The first sign of tyranny is government's complicity in privatizing the commons for private gain.
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To rail and rant against tyranny is to manifest inferiority, for there is no tyranny but ignorance; to be conscious of one's powers is to lose consciousness of tyranny. Self government is not a remote aim. It is an intimate and inescapable fact. To govern oneself is a natural imperative, and all tyranny is the miscarriage of self government. The first requisite of freedom is to accept responsibility for the lack of it.
In almost every enterprise, government has provided business with opportunities for private gain at public expense. Government nurtures private capital accumulation through a process of subsidies, supports, and deficit spending and an increasingly inequitable tax system.
A rich and diverse commons lowers the cost of living for those who use it. And throughout history, it has been those on low incomes who gain most from the commons.
What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the “quiet enjoyment” of one’s private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property “owner” faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and “go to auction” at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as “fascism.”
It is the job of government to prevent a tragedy of the commons. That includes the commons of shared values and norms on which democracy depends.
We gain nothing by trading the tyranny of capital for the tyranny of labor.
It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed ... The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny.
In World War II, the government went to the private sector. The government asked the private sector for help in doing things that the government could not do. The private sector complied. That is what I am suggesting.
Why consider debates in the English House of Commons in 1628 along with documents on American developments in the late eighteenth century? The juxtaposition is not capricious, because the Commons during this period generated many of the ideas that were later embodied in the government of the United States.
The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.
Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
A world in which government is burdened by historic debt, philanthropy has limited resources, and the private sector is only interested in its own personal gain is simply unsustainable.
Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all.
The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals ... it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government ... it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government.
Obama recently warned some college graduates against being all worried about government tyranny, and Obama has good reason to warn you against that because worrying about government tyranny is the exact sort of thing that will get you audited. Or, when Obamacare is in full force, it will be the attitude that gets you denied life saving health care. So have faith in government. Or it will get you.
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