The Future Through the Past

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand_the_nature_of_government

I was reading this Ayn Rand essay from 1963 and struck by how relevant it is today:

...Consider the extent of the moral and political inversion in today’s prevalent view of government. Instead of being a protector of man’s rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim—so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

Think of the power of Obama's "Czars". Think of House leader Pelosi's recent response, when asked if the Congress had the authority to enact Health Care legislation ("Are you serious? Are you serious?"). Think of the doctors and insurance companies and automobile manufacturers and dealerships and banks and business executives or ordinary Americans who are being enslaved in uncertainty and fear to what the arbitrary and unbridled power of Washington will do next.

For two centuries, the United States was the last hope for the anyone in this world who wished to escape despotism in their own land. No more. The despots and thugs have now reached our shores. Unless limits are soon put on what Washington is doing, this planet will soon be entering the darkest period of human history.