Situational Totalitarianism by Anthony Gregory
As Robert Higgs has explained, most famously in his brilliant work Crisis and Leviathan, crises and especially wars lead to a "ratchet effect": Government grows in size and power, ostensibly as it "responds to existential threats" (as Krauthammer would put it), but then it does not retract all the way when the crisis ends. Instead, government is more powerful than it was before the crisis began, although not quite as tyrannical as it was during the hysterical, crisis-induced stampede toward collectivism.


- posted by SARTRE @ 6:14 AM