Hayek's Echo

It's amazing how accurately Friedrich Hayek grasps the underpinnings of totalitarianism. His observations are all the more relevant today. Some excerpts from The Road to Serfdom:

We must here return for a moment to the position which precedes the suppression of democratic institutions and the creation of a totalitarian regime. In this stage it is the general demand for quick and determined government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic procuedure which makes action for action's sake the goal.

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program--on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off--than on any positive task.