… is from pages 29-30 of the 1999 Liberty Fund edition of my late Nobel-laureate colleague Jim Buchanan’s first book – namely, his great if sadly neglected 1958 volume, Public Principles of Public Debt:
In an individualistic society which governs itself through the use of democratic political forms, the idea of the “group” or the “whole” as a sentient being is contrary to the fundamental principle of social organization. The individual or the family is, and must be, the basic philosophical entity in this society.
DBx: Jim died, at the age of 93, seven years ago today.