"What we should work toward, however, is abolishing...."

"What we should work toward, however, is abolishing the income tax and replacing it not with a national sales tax, but with nothing.  Right now the federal government is funded by excise taxes, corporate income tax, payroll taxes, the individual income tax, and miscellaneous other sources.  Abolishing the income tax on individuals would cut government revenue by about 40 percent.  I have heard the breathless claims about how radical that is - and compared to the trivial changes we are accustomed to seeing in the government, I suppose it is.  But in absolute terms, is it really so radical?  In order to imagine what it would be like to live in a country with a federal budget 40% lower than the federal budget of 2007, it would be necessary to go all the way back to.... 1997.

Would it really be so hard to imagine living in 1997 again?  In return, we would have an economy so robust and dynamic that it would doubtless shatter even my own optimistic expectations.  And we would once and for all have repudiated the totalitarian assumptions at the heart of the income tax." -Pages 79 & 80 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Some people claim that the doctrine of states' rights..."

"Some people claim that the doctrine of states' rights, one of Thomas Jefferson's central principles, has been responsible for racism.  But racism, a disorder of the heart, can become trenched in any political environment, whether highly centralized like Hitler's Germany or highly decentralized like our own country.  In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke with delight of the process by which governments around the world were becoming more centralized, with states and local governments having less and less power.  It was a trend  he wanted to see continue in Germany, in order to build "a powerful national Reich" in which the central government could impose its will without having to worry about recalcitrant states.  Hitler wrote:  "National Socialism as a matter of principle, must lay claim to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous federated state boundaries, and to educate in its ideas and conceptions.  Just as the churches do not feel bound and limited by political boundaries, no more does the National Socialist idea feel limited by the individual state territories of our fatherland.  The National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual federated states, but shall some day become the master of the German nation."

No form of political organization, therefore is immune to cruel abuses like the Jim Crow laws, whereby government sets out to legislate on how groups of human beings are allowed to interact with one another.  Peaceful civil disobedience to unjust laws, which I support with every fiber of my being, can sometimes be necessary at any level of government.  It falls upon the people, in the last resort, to stand against injustice no matter where it occurs.

In the long run, the only way racism can be overcome is through the philosophy of individualism, which I have promoted throughout my life.  Our rights come to us not because we belong to some group, but our rights come to us as individuals.  And it is as individuals that we should judge one another.  Racism is a particularly odious form of collectivism whereby individuals are treated not on their merits but on the basis of group identity.  Nothing in my political philosophy, which is the exact opposite of the racial totalitarianism of the twentieth century, gives aid or comfort to such thinking.  To the contrary, my philosophy of individualism is the most radical intellectual challenge to racism ever posed." Pages 63 & 64 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The Founding Fathers did not intend for every American neighborhood...."

"The Founding Fathers did not intend for every American neighborhood to be exactly the same - a totalitarian impulse if there ever was one- or that disputes over competing values should be decided by federal judges. This is the constitutional approach to deciding all issues that are not spelled out explicitly in our founding document: let neighbors and localities govern themselves.

The Founding Fathers would be astonished to observe how politicized our society has become, with every matter on which people differ becoming a federal issue to be resolved in Washington. Jefferson warned, "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." Are we listening?

In short, just as we should reject empire abroad, we should also reject it at home. One-size-fits-all social policy, dictated by unelected judges from an imperial capital, is not the system Americans signed on for when they ratified the Constitution, and they have never formally sanctioned such a thing." -Pages 62 & 63 of The Revolution, A Manifesto