By this logic, draining the country of all goods and accepting none from abroad would be the best possible trade news. We wouldn’t be able to celebrate, however, because we’d all starve. But at least the government’s books would register one heck of a trade surplus.

Don't expect Washington to fix the fundamentals when it's time horizon ends with the next election. In the perverse world of politics, problems don't get solved as much as they get perpetuated. 

There’s nothing about government that makes it less “greedy” than the average guy or the average institution. Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that adding political power to natural self-interest is a surefire recipe for magnifying the harm that greed can do. 

Coercive measures that aim to redistribute wealth prompt the smart or politically well-connected “haves” to seek refuge in havens here or abroad, while the hapless “have-nots” bear the full brunt of economic decline. 

Which is better for business, a friendly overall environment with no special favors or an unfriendly environment offset by “incentives” for particular firms or certain activities?

Statism can be summed up and slapped on the back of a car. Can the freedom philosophy?

Whoever warned us to beware of Greeks bearing gifts apparently never met a congressman.

The history of progress in ideas provides few examples of wrong-on-everything transforming into right-on-everything in a momentary leap. We must be patient, inviting, and understanding.

You don’t check your character at the door when you go to work for the government. That means that the legal-political system is itself a reflection of the character of those who made the laws and those who are employed to carry them out.

How about just getting a few basics right, like protecting the peace and punishing wrongdoers, and stopping this business of creating special privileges aimed at a select few?

If you declare at a party, "Guzzle with glee, you'll feel great!" but fail to say a word about tomorrow's hangover, in what subject are you an "expert"? You're not even tuned in to the long-run consequences of your own advice.

I think the original Little Red Hen story was just fine the way it was. 

Whatever your assessment of his presidency might be, you will likely appreciate the sentiments he expressed in a long-forgotten letter he wrote to his stepbrother John D. Johnston on January 2, 1851.

If not for a bullet, the man who least wanted to be President may well have become widely known as one of our better ones. 

If you've supported the monstrous expansion of the federal government in recent decades, or if you've got a laundry list of things you want it to do because you think it's not yet big enough, then don't blow smoke about clean and honest politics. You're part of the problem.

It turns out that 1813 was such a ho-hum year that triskaidekaphobians would have a tough time making a fuss of it.

The future world we are creating will surely be shaped by the incentives and disincentives we are putting in place today. 

Time and again he refused to do the politically expedient. For example, as a mayor, governor, and president, he rejected the spoils of victory and appointed the best people he could find—often earning the wrath of friends and party bigwigs because they didn’t get the nod.

Why is it that you statists never seem to learn anything about government? You see almost any shortcoming in the marketplace as a reason for government to get bigger, but you rarely see any shortcoming in government as a reason for it to get smaller.

It is a telling conclusion that statists have no successful model to point to, no omelet they can hold up as the pièce de résistance of their cuisine. Not so for those of us who believe in freedom.