Two Good Quotes

I came across these two quotes recently. I think in many ways, they sum of the thought processes of Liberals and Conservatives alike.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." [H. L. Mencken]

"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" [Dosteovsky's 'Grand Inquisitor']

(In the second quote, instead of "feed", you could substitute the word "protect", and you would peg the typical Conservative.)

But the larger point is that people who support the State and its programs...be it Social Security, government schooling, NSA wiretapping/data-mining, torturing of enemy captives, etc....have a tendency to justify these things because the see the State, not as a organized racket which provokes and stirs up trouble where none existed before, but as their personal savior, who will protect them from all sorts of bad things - impoverished senior citizens, ignorant people, or terrorists, for example.

When you point out that most of the problems we face in our lives can be traced back, somewhere, to unnecessary government action in the first place, the argument falls on deaf ears. For some reason, the idea that the State CAUSES problems, instead of solves them, is avoided almost to the degree of religious conviction.