John Marini > Quotes

“Post-modern intellectuals have pronounced their historical judgment on America's past, finding it to be morally indefensible. Every great human achievement of the past—whether in philosophy, religion, literature, or the humanities—came to be understood as a kind of exploitation of the powerless. Rather than allowing the past to be viewed in terms of its aspirations and accomplishments, it has been judged by its failures. The living part of the past is understood in terms slavery, racism, and identity politics. Political correctness arose as the practical and necessary means of enforcing this historical judgment. No public defense of past greatness could be allowed to live in the present. Public morality and public policy would come to be understood in terms of the formerly oppressed.”
― John Marini

“A written Constitution is meaningful only if its principles, those which authorize and legitimize governmental authority, are understood to be permanent and unchangeable, in contrast to the statute laws made by legislatures and governments that alter with changing circumstances and the political requirements of each generation. In other words, such a regime must have a theoretical or reasonable ground that distinguishes it from government. When the principles that establish the legitimacy of the Constitution are understood to be changeable, are forgotten, or are denied, the Constitution can no longer impose limits on the power of government. In that case, government itself will determine the conditions of the social compact and become the arbiter of the rights of individuals, as well as every other interest in society.1”
― John Marini, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century

“The modern rational, or administrative, state was established on the assumption of its theoretical and practical superiority over every earlier form of government. It rested on the view that constitutionalism was an historical anachronism.”
― John Marini, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century

“[I]t doesn’t require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? Such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.6 Reagan”
― John Marini, Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century