“Nothing is more permanent than a temporary program.”
- David Frum, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as stated on Marketplace, 29 Oct 2008.
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“Nothing is more permanent than a temporary program.”
Someone else said that before him (Mencken?), but it was:
Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program.
Robert Higgs book “Crisis and Leviathan” illustrates the phenomenon with the world wars and depression.
This sentiment explains the main rationale behind the non-interventionist antiwar libertarian school of thought. As Randolph Bourne wrote: “War is the health of the State.” This goes for “War on Foreclosures,” “War on Poverty” and almost every other gov’t program that seeks to solve a problem.