… is from Robert Higgs’s profound 1987 volume, Crisis and Leviathan; Bryan Caplan recently shared this quotation over at EconLog:
[W]e do know something – at least abstractly – about the future. We know that other great crises will come. Whether they will be occasioned by foreign wars, economic collapse, or rampant terrorism, no one can predict with assurance. Yet in one form of another, great crises will surely come again… When they do, governments almost certainly will gain new powers over economic and social affairs… For those who cherish individual liberty and a free society, the prospect is deeply disheartening.
