Today’s quote also comes from Auberon Herbert: Selected Writings from a Reluctant Anarachist. I find the title to be a bit of a misnomer as Herbert wasn’t an anarchist but rather was a firm believer in a limited form of government. In his view a proper government would not try to do everything for the citizens, but rather protect the rights of the citizens to act as reason dictated. That is the sense that comes across in today’s quote.

We need not have great state departments, or great state systems, however splendid in their external appearance, we need not each of us be enlisted in a great army called Conservative or Liberal. But what is needful is that man should be a free soul in a free body; that he should hate the creeds of force and of regulation, that he should ever be striving to make his mind independent of the opinions of others, that he should ever be training it to form its own judgments and to respect its own sense of right. For a nation whose units are determined to keep their bodies and minds free, all progress is possible. For a nation whose units are willing to place their bodies and their minds in the keeping of others, there are no hopes of growth and movement. It is only reserved to them to fall from one depth to another depth of state slavery, while they live in the mocking dream that they are moving onward and upward.

Given that we live in a world where the government uses force not to protect our rights but to violate them in a thousand ways and to regulate businesses within an inch of their lives can there be much doubt that we are living in the mocking dream that Herbert speaks of? Our rights are being eroded daily all around us while the statists cry, “Progress! Hope! Change!”

I only hope that we wake up before it is too late to reclaim the liberty that makes all progress possible.