"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
Herbert Butterfield: History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics
"Kenneth McIntyre has given us a deeply thoughtful and erudite account of one of the greatest 20th-century historians, Hebert Butterfield. I should like to concentrate on an aspect of Butterfield's thought likely to be of considerable interest to libertarians, especially libertarians who follow Murray Rothbard. Butterfield, though not himself a libertarian, viewed with alarm the power of the state. He would have agreed with Burckhardt that "power is evil." Power, he thought, often disguises itself in self-righteousness: a powerful state will endeavor to portray itself as the champion of the good, locked in battle with the forces of evil."
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