America's Forgotten History, Part Three Quotes

“A regulated society is always paradise for lawyers - lawyers and bureaucrats.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“(*Liberalism then, unlike now, stood for small government, low taxes, free trade, and anti-militarism.)”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Classical liberals had no horse in this race. Or rather, they had a divided horse. Democrats represented them with free trade and anti-imperialism; Republicans represented them with the gold standard. Bimetallism (i.e. inflationist monetary policy), free trade (i.e. low tariffs), and anti-imperialism were the Democrats’ core issues, countered by the Republicans’ gold standard (hard money), protectionism (high tariffs, though also reciprocity), and imperialism.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“For most people, then, collusion between business and government is capitalism while for the Austrian school collusion is, by definition, not capitalism.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“The nature of power, being what it is, you cannot give governments a loophole to the 'only self defense' rule. They will use the loophole to find a pretext for wars that they actually desire for other reasons. The American wars against Spain and the Philippines confirm Vattel's insight.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Though forgotten in modern America, what followed calls to mind the worst of the genocidal massacres of the Indian wars. The American army killed over 800 Moros, men, women, and children trapped at the bottom of the crater, leaving only six survivors.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“The Philadelphia Ledger, with a reporter on the scene, was more detailed.   Our men have been relentless; have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten and up, an idea prevailing was that the Filipino, as such, was little better than a dog... Our soldiers have pumped saltwater into men to "make them talk," have taken prisoner people who hold up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the shallow water below and float down and serve as an example to those who found their bullet-riddled bodies.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“America had been founded in revolution against empire. Now it had become what it had rebelled against.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“For Roosevelt, greatness required the pursuit of war, not commerce, and if war were not at hand, greatness required going out and finding it. He concludes,   ...no triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Supporters of the war will be patriotic, those against it, unpatriotic. And the enemy will be demonized while the enemy's victims will be made  martyrs.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Once war is decided on, interests who see advantage in war - mostly business interests - must flock to Washington and "hasten to further" the war. This also is a virtually an absolute principle for any nation populated by humans rather than angels. War, as James Madison warned, will bring a growth in government and bring "interests" into government.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“As Vattel had warned Grotius, a nation must never engage in offensive war, no matter how heinous the crimes of a foreign government. The reason? War is war. No matter how nobly stated, reasons in the end become only pretexts for the expansion of national glory and power.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“A basic principle, perhaps the basic principle of Jeffersonianism, was that if people had liberty, they could take care of humanity on their own. They didn't need the help of government to do that. In fact, the very nature of government, with its monopoly on power, made it the greatest threat to both liberty and humanity.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“English common law provides for trial by jury. One important but long forgotten feature of trial by jury is the potential for Jury Nullification, sometimes called Jury Independence.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“When the government is parent, even adults are children. Maybe that’s why the shame of dependency evaporated when “welfare” became paternalistic. Once government has a parent-child relationship with you, why not work the ‘parent’ for all you can get?”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt, the three great war presidents in American history, have always been and still are the heroes even of those liberals who profess they support peace.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“As a result of a sometimes sincere desire to help them, the government turned the Sioux into mere billiard balls at the periphery a larger game of power. Sioux starved, had their families broken apart, saw treaty obligations ignored, and, for survival, had to grovel before whites in general and bureaucrats in particular.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“What happens within government institutions also happens within those private institutions which are protected by government. The UP could continue to get away with its gross inefficiencies and the resultant social damage because it was protected from bankruptcy. It was too big to fail, just like our modern banks, financial institutions, and carmakers. Health and education, too, suffer from the gross and costly inefficiencies inevitable to bureaucracies beholden to political rather than market forces.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“President Cleveland vetoed over 500 bills. It's safe to assume that most were vetoed because they involved spending or involved the federal government in an activity not enumerated by the Constitution. His most famous veto involved both.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Grover Cleveland had been sheriff of Erie County for two years, mayor of Buffalo for one year, and governor of New York for two years. Now he was president.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Chester Arthur, though one of the most forgotten presidents, managed government efficiently, left it more honest, put a stopper on its growth, and started no wars. These are not things that win a lot of fame, but America could do worse.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“In real wars, the civilian often suffers unspeakably. But in business wars? The civilian - called in this case the consumer - is almost always the recipient of great rewards, as giving the consumer what he wants is precisely what determines success in business wars. Rockefeller understood this. In fact, this was an explicit goal of his. It didn't have to be.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“The justification for the antitrust laws that would ultimately break up Standard Oil is that monopoly prevented competition. Preventing competition was bad because the monopoly could charge outrageous prices. Well, every single big company in American history that had gotten big through the free market rather than legislative largesse, got that way by keeping prices low and quality high. If it were to stay that way, assuming no helping hand from the legislature, it would have to keep prices low, quality and service high.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“With Marx rather than Carnegie dominating the formulation of the issue for modern society, the vast majority of that art shows sympathy not for all the victims of alienation but only for the lower class, and does so in a way that ridicules the concurrent advances in civilization.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“He means modern lower classes rise beyond the middle classes of old and modern middle classes rise beyond the upper classes of old.   The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the landlord had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, than the King could then obtain.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“Little Thomas had managed to suffer through only three months of formal education. After that, his parents took over, or rather the books they provided did.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“The most important thing a government can do is not what it does but what it doesn't.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“The American Republic invites nobody to come. We will keep out nobody. Arrivals will suffer no disadvantages as aliens. But they can expect no advantages either. Native-born and foreign-born face equal opportunities. What happens to them depends entirely on their individual ability and exertions, and on good fortune.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire

“For ten pounds, a person could board a ship in Liverpool and be supplied with water (but nothing else) for the crossing. Upon debarking in New York or Philadelphia, they were free. There were no passports, fees, restrictions, or red tape; no help or hindrance from government.”
― Mark David Ledbetter, America's Forgotten History, Part Three: A Progressive Empire