The Misesian Vision

If the role of the state is to ferret out evil thoughts and bad ideas, it must necessarily become totalitarian. If the goal of the state is that all citizens must come to hold the same values as the great leader, whether economic, moral, or cultural, the state must necessarily become totalitarian. If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

On the face of it, many people today do not necessarily reject these premises. No longer is the idea of a state-planned society seen as frightening. What scares people more today is the prospect of a society without a plan, which is to say a society of freedom. But here is the key difference between authority in everyday life – such as that exercised by a parent or a teacher or a pastor or a boss – and the power of the state: the state's edicts are always and everywhere enforced at the point of a gun.

As we surrender freedom to the demands of the state, we surrender our autonomy to its succor until we no longer remember that we once did not require it nor desire it.