Consider all. Test All. Hold on to the good.

tagnanny state

Alexis De Tocqueville on Despotism

Alexis De Tocqueville, “What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear”, Democracy In America, Chapter VI (1835). At Project Gutenberg.
Go The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Alexis de Tocqueville on Big Government and Freedom

Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, Volume I, trans. Henry Reeve (G. Adlard: 1839, orig. 1835), p. 87.
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What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?