Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 195 of the original edition of Robert Higgs’s marvelous 1987 book, Crisis and Leviathan:

The commitment of both masses and elites to individualism, free markets, and limited government suffered a blow in the 1930s from which it is unlikely ever to recover fully. In place of the old beliefs there now prevails a greater toleration of, and even a positive demand for, collective schemes that promise social security, protection from the rigors of market competition, and very often – to be blunt – something for nothing.

DBx: Few persons have ever led so successful an attack on liberalism and the competitive market order as did Franklin Roosevelt. He was a textbook example of the sort of human being feared by all who warned of the abuse of power in democratic societies.