This is the "teaser" version of a speech that Lew Rockwell delivered to the Future of Freedom Foundation as put together by a most unworthy editor (me). The link to the talk is at bottom, and I give a very poor summery as the space here is very limited for this sort of thing. I share it only to show a few things that really piss off big government types covering the full political spectrum.

There are two clear and present dangers to liberty in America. One is known as the left, and the other is known as the right. They are dangerous because they seek to use government to mold society into a form they seek, rather than the form that liberty achieves if society is left on its own.

I'm going to assume that the left and the right come to their views sincerely, that their passion for using government is driven by some fear that the absence of government would yield catastrophe. So the burden of my talk today will be to identify and explain the common thread that connects the worldview of the left and the right, and suggest that they are both wrong about the capacity of society, whether it is defined locally or internationally, to manage itself.

After that little shot across the bow of government lovers everywhere he looks to explain why one need not fear unbridled society. The following is my pick as the "money quote".

This event was the product of the liberal idea, as held by most all sectors of society. Liberalism did not seek utopia. It sought liberty under the conviction that society had a built-in mechanism that permitted individual members to achieve a harmony of interests. They believed it to be true because they lived it. The belief in this harmony of interests was the great passion of the old liberal intellectuals, of which Thomas Jefferson was a leading exponent.

This little tease from the section on why the left loves government power and the dangers involved in using the leviathan the "solve all the world's woes".

In contrast, writes Hayek, there is another tradition of law that sees all rules in society as rising from the state, and always and everywhere must amount to a restriction on the liberty of individuals. The exponents of this view include the tyrants and despots of the ancient world, and, in modern times, Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx. The writings of the latter two are the preeminent influence over what we today call the right and the left.

It is impossible to understand this view of government without first understanding the illiberal view of society. The illiberal view regards society as essentially unworkable on its own because it is riddled with conflicting interests.

Let us begin with the left. They believe society has fundamental flaws and deep-rooted conflicts that keep it in some sort of structural imbalance. All these conflicts and disequilibria cry out for government fixes, for leftists are certain that there is no social problem that a good dose of power can't solve.

After he goes on to give the right hell, we find this near the end. I love this part as it shows the Rovian "win by fear mongering" of the modern "right".

Many Republicans by contrast live intellectually in a world long past, a world of warring states and societies made up of fixed classes that fought over ever-dwindling resources, a world unleavened by enterprise and individual initiative. They imagine themselves to be the class of rulers, the aristocrats, the philosopher kings, the high clerics, the landowners, and to keep that power, they gladly fuel the basest of human instincts: nationalism, jingoism, and hate. Keeping them at bay means keeping the world of their imaginations at bay, and that is a very good and important thing for the sake of civilization.

The whole speech is well worth a read. You can take the word of hate mongers here on Lew (and Rothbard), or listen to the issues by the man himself.

http://www.fff.org/

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/conflict-or-cooperation.html