Albert Jay Nock on power and politics

Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things FOR you carries with it the equivalent power to do things TO you.

~ Albert Jay Nock, "The Criminality of the State," The American Mercury, March, 1939