Michael Joseph Sobran (1946 – 2010) was an American political journalist and writer. For most of his career, Sobran was affiliated with Old Right and paleoconservative elements of the American conservative movement. Eventually, Sobran evolved into a Rothbardian libertarian anarchist. Sobran wrote heavily about the tendency of the welfare/warfare state to destroy civil culture.
1. “War nearly always serves as an occasion for serious expansions of state power and the destruction of legal protections.”
2. “Politicians never accuse you of ‘greed’ for wanting other people’s money - only for wanting to keep your own money.”
3. “In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in college.”
4. “Freedom is coming to mean little more than the right to ask permission.”
5. “If the welfare state is here to welcome them, the solution is to get rid of it, as should have been done long ago. Overpopulation is a problem for socialist systems, not for free societies. In fact, the welfare system may be more destructive [to] the immigrants’ families than to the natives.”
6. “The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself.”
7. “At the end of a century [the 20th] that has seen the evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies, the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.”
8. “Most Americans aren’t the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.”
9. “If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.”
10. “Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn’t authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don’t understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.”
And lastly, Sobran’s argument for anarchy:
11. “By a very conservative estimate, a hundred million people have died at the hands of their own governments in this century [the 20th]. Given that record, how bad could anarchy be?”