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Thomas Jefferson “believed that the sole function of government was to protect citizens in the enjoyment of their lawfully acquired rights and goods, and that when it had gone so far it should shut down. But today its field of operation has been immensely widened, and its principal aim, in nearly all the great countries of the world, is to maintain itself in power by transferring rights and goods from those who oppose it to those who support it. The object vended is always somebody else’s property. The consideration is votes.”

H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe