{"id":12,"date":"2009-02-21T20:59:18","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T03:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeutah.org\/?p=12"},"modified":"2009-02-23T13:04:57","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T20:04:57","slug":"understanding-modern-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Modern Government"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As tedious as it is, Atlas Shrugged has something to teach us. Don&#8217;t bother to read the book though, all you need to know is in the following quote:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?&#8221; said Dr. Ferris. &#8220;We want them broken. You&#8217;d better get it straight that it&#8217;s not a bunch of boy scouts you&#8217;re up against&#8211;then you&#8217;ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We&#8217;re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you&#8217;d better get wise to it. There&#8217;s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren&#8217;t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What&#8217;s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted&#8211;and you create a nation of law-breakers&#8211;and then you cash in on guilt. Now that&#8217;s the system, Mr. Rearden, that&#8217;s the game, and once you understand it, you&#8217;ll be much easier to deal with.&#8221;><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As tedious as it is, Atlas Shrugged has something to teach us. Don&#8217;t bother to read the book though, all you need to know is in the following quote: &#8220;Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?&#8221; said Dr. Ferris. &#8220;We want them broken. You&#8217;d better get it straight that it&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24,"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeutah.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}