by Matthew Bransgrove | Sep 29, 2015 | The Legislature
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power: that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Sep 29, 2015 | The Legislature
Truth has ever originated from the conflict of mind with mind; it is the bright spark that emanates from the collision of opposing ideas. —Herbert Spencer. The Proper Sphere of Government, 1842–1843. When people are required to articulate their thinking, it forces...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Sep 29, 2015 | The Legislature
I argued the case for the ideological clash of opposing political parties as essential to the effective functioning of democracy. The pursuit of consensus, therefore, was fundamentally subversive of popular choice. It was wrong to talk of taking the big issues ‘out of...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Sep 29, 2015 | The Legislature
Parties encourage their members to abandon principle in favor of faction. For example, in America the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of low taxes, respect for property and fiscal restraint, yet during the period 2003–2005, when they controlled both the...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Sep 29, 2015 | The Legislature
By parliaments therefore liberty is preserved; and whoever has the honour to sit in those assemblies, accepts of a most sacred and important trust; to the discharge of which all his vigilance, all his application, all his virtue, and all his faculties, are necessary;...
