“Campaign finance reform was the subject of..."

“Campaign finance reform was the subject of fierce debate in America not long ago.  Yet the debate missed the point.  As long as we have a government that can exploit peaceful, hardworking Americans on behalf of special interests, as long as it can make or break any American business with (for example) tax policy, politically motivated antitrust prosecutions, and ill-considered regulation, and in general as long as economic winners and losers can be determined in Washington, people will want to assure their share of the loot by influencing the political process through money.  Campaign finance reform focuses on the system rather than the cause. 

This is one reason I was so skeptical when friends urged me to run for president.  There are fore more interest groups lobbying in Washington for special benefits and privileges than most Americans can imagine.  I do not oppose just this one or that one.  I oppose the whole apparatus, the whole immoral system by which we use government to exploit our fellow citizens on behalf of our own interests.  For someone like me to win, there would have to be enough Americans who believed in freedom to be able to offset the combined power of interest groups that have grown accustomed to treating the people as a resource to be drained for private gain.  Were there really enough people for that task?” -Pages 106 & 107 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Do our leaders in Washington believe in liberty?"

"Do our leaders in Washington believe in liberty? They sometimes say they do. I don't think they are telling the truth. The existence of the wealth-extracting leviathan state in Washington, DC, a cartoonishly massive machinery that no one can control and yet few ever seriously challenge, a monster that is a constant presence in every aspect of our lives, is proof enough that our leaders do not believe. Neither party is truly dedicated to the classical, fundamental ideals that gave rise to the American Revolution." -Page XII of Liberty Defined

"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