… is from page 283 of the late Richard Pipes’s excellent 1999 book, Property and Freedom:
The main threat to freedom today comes not from tyranny but from equality – equality defined as identity of reward. Related to it is the quest for security.
DBx: Of course, to artificially attempt to bring about the material or monetary equality demanded by the political left – and, increasingly, by some on the political right – requires at least some measure of tyranny, even if it is less beastly than that which stalked the Soviet Union, and China beneath the heel of Chairman Mao.