Sublime

The United States must expect hostile attacks. Its power will generate hatred, and it should expect neither sympathy nor gratitude. Great, global powers don’t get either. The expectation that the United States will be loved as it was after World War I is the expectation of an immature power.

Liberals speak as if they believe in government and then pass policy after policy hamstringing what it can actually do. Conservatives talk as if they want a small state but support a national security and surveillance apparatus of terrifying scope and power.

What distinguished libertarians from mainstream pro-business Republicans—Mailer’s parade of delegates in Miami Beach—was their pure and uncompromising idea. What was it? Hayek: “Planning leads to dictatorship.” The purpose of government is to secure individual rights, little else.

he cautioned me ‘never to confuse energy with strength’.