Retreating from Freedom

When I was reading End the Fed by Ron Paul, he mentioned one of the first books he had read that had really gotten him to thinking about economics and government, to my surprise it was one of the first books I read! It is called The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek. I highly recommend this book. Hayek wrote this book from 1940 to 1943 while in England. I believe these quotes offered from it, are fitting for the times today.

"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it." -Adam Smith from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

"the generation to which we belong is now learning from experience what happens when men retreat from freedom to a coercive organization of their affairs. Though they promise themselves a more abundant life, they must in practice renounce it; as the organized direction increases, the variety of ends must give way to uniformity. That is the nemesis of the planned society and the authoritarian principle in human affairs." -Walter Lippmann,"The Government of Posterity," The Atlantic, vol.158, November 1936.

"We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past. Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism." -F.A. Hayek

"It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian." -F.A. Hayek