When it becomes more profitable to make fun of someone or berate them for their beliefs than it is to offer a constructive alternative, intellectual discourse is threatened. And, when a people can no longer rely on intellectual discourse, the society is bound to fall.

It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.

Government action causes special interest reaction.

Everyone knows that it is irrational to get involved in politics, so, as a matter of course, the rational stay away and only the irrational get involved, thus making government more and more irrational and making it more and more necessary for rational people to get involved to save it.

Communal ownership means that all benefit for a short time; private ownership means that few people benefit over the course of an extended period of time.

It is not a leap to suggest that all of the distinctive advances made between 1500 and today, for better or worse, were directly or indirectly brought about by the dissolution of feudal bonds and the rise of individual autonomy.