“Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.”

Max Beerbohm quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #5 (March 2006)

“Economic systems come and go like fashions in surgery and in the clothes of women, and during the nineteenth century the Mercantile System was discarded in favour of a system of free and open competition. At least, so I have been told.”

Hendrick Van Loon The Story of Mankind

In my latest National Post column I ask on what scientific principle man-made global warming will supposedly cause every cute or useful species to go into terminal decline while everything loathsome flourishes.

“The beneficial effect of State intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and, so to speak, visible, whilst its evil effects are gradual and indirect, and lie out of sight.... Nor… do most people keep in mind that State inspectors may be incompetent, careless, or even occasionally corrupt… Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favour upon governmental intervention. This natural bias can be counteracted only by the existence, in a given society, as in England between 1830 and 1860, of a presumption or prejudice in favour of individual liberty—that is, of laissez faire. The mere decline, therefore, of faith in self-help… is of itself sufficient to account for the growth of legislation tending towards socialism.”

Albert Venn Dicey Law & Public Opinion

“Laissez faire has never been more than a slogan in defense of the proposition that every extension of state activity should be examined under a presumption of error.”

Aaron Director, quoted by Robert Bork in The Tempting of America