Lysander Spooner Quotes
… no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support
In the 19th century, most people, like Spooner, saw the combination of money and politics as per se corrupting—much like the view of John McCain in the 21st century. Howver, by then all of politics had been dependent on money. However, distrust of government and politicians prevailed, with money paying a large part of the distrust. Spooner was against the government levying taxes and thought that governments should be financed by the voluntary contributions of money or labor of the citizens. His idea was something like a religious and biblical tithing.
Lysander Spooner, 1808-1887, Libertarian, No Treason, No. 6
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For many people the implication of this quotation is that there should be no government secrets withheld from the citizens who have the right to examine. Others argue that government may have temporary secrets to protect against foreign enemies for example, but that these must be declassified very promptly so that the citizens can examine the actions of their government in time to replace the government if they are not satisfied. Almost all government officials tend to reject the first implication out of hand, and grudgingly accept the second with their discretion controlling when declassification should take place. The problem of America is twofold. There is much over-classification (material kept secret that should not be at all), and the time till declassification is long in general and truly absurd in many cases. For example, there are documents from WWII that by 2013 had still not been declassified. See {591444}, {641317}, and {589105} for exemplar views. William Jennings Bryan introduced this principle into the American political dialogue. See {641027}.
See Charles James Fox, John Milton, Grover Cleveland, George Mason, Henry Clay, Benjamin Disraeli and Woodrow Wilson for similar expressions of this idea.
This quotation did not appear in the first edition, but did in later editions.
What makes this quotation even more meaningful was the fact that Truman had very little money, He didn’t own his own home, and his only income was a $ 13,507.72 a year Army pension. There was no presidential pension then, so forgoing the offer that has been customary for retired high office holders, was truly a great sacrifice.
The irony of this quotation is that he is the architect and controller of the Russian system that he is criticizing.
Lysander Spooner was an American individualist anarchist. He was also an abolitionist, entrepreneur, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian, writer and a member of the First International.
