Honest opinion about government from Pat Buchanan:

When one reflects upon conditions in those societies where government controls four-fifths of the economy, and government devotes itself to the material and moral uplift of the people, it is not difficult to conclude with Dr. [Samuel] Johnson that "a man is never more innocently involved than in the making of money."

Consider the minimum wage. For many years, conservative economists have argued that the correlation between a high minimum wage and high unemployment among the unskilled is absolute. Others contend that increasing the minimum wage not only prices the least able out of the job market, but threatens others, because of the incentive it provides to automation. Still others view rapid advances in the minimum wage as socially devastating in the inner city, especially to black teenagers who need work experience infinitely more than they need the higher wage few employers will pay a seventeen-year-old.
   In brief, the minimum wage is anything but a simple issue. Yet, what comes across the networks is that, "Senator Kennedy and the Democrats called today for a 20-cent increase in the minimum wage; the Republican Administration, however, is opposed, arguing that raising the income of the poorest-paid workers will mean added unemployment."
   Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories, 1975

Pat Buchanan, who has an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, has been an editorial writer, a political speech writer, a special assistant (and executive assistant) to President Richard Nixon, a columnist, and a 1992 Republican presidential candidate. He has regularly appeared on cable-TV political shows, including "Crossfire," "The McLaughlin Group," and "Capital Gang." Besides his columns, he is known for his books, such as The New Majority (1973), Conservative Votes, Liberal Victories (1975), Right from the Beginning (1988, 1990), and America Asleep (1991).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.

Honest opinion about government from James G. Watt:

As laws mandating higher minimum wages have been passed, black youth unemployment has risen from 25.3 percent in 1966 to 47.3 percent in the 1980s….
   Conservatives are so sure that a reduced minimum wage would give jobs to millions of untrained, nonunion black workers that they have even tried to get a summer experimental program through the Congress. This would give the country one summer to see if the conservative theorists are right. And with black youth unemployment so staggeringly high, it would certainly be worth the try.
   Not so, says the liberal Establishment. Out of one corner of its mouth, it tells blacks that they don't have to settle for lower wages. Meanwhile, almost half of black youth get no wages at all. Out of the other corner of its mouth, it tells white union workers not to worry. Their jobs are protected. Frustrated conservatives point out that this is the very rationalization used in South Africa to keep blacks out of the white work force, but the irony is conveniently ignored. Carlton Pearson points out this cruel discriminatory cycle: "You can't get work without a union card, and you can't get a union card if you have no work experience."

Another possible answer to the problems of black economic inequality is enterprise zones. By lowering the tax rates and, in some cases, eliminating them altogether, inner-city ghettos could be transformed. Restaurants, shops, businesses, and factories would pour in, and with them, thousands of jobs.
   At first, liberals were dubious and warned that the value of land would increase. Renters would be forced out. One of their studies worried that life in the inner cities would be "disrupted."
   Conservatives did their homework, however, on this issue. Our think tanks show convincingly that jobs would multiply at a much faster rate than prices. A few city governments have made the concept work, reviving their inner cities…. Conservatives are offended at the sanctimonious way that liberals refer to "disruption of life" in the ghettos, as if crime-ridden and firetrap tenement houses were historic landmarks in need of preservation in their present state.

There was a tragic reason why the black divorce rate had reached twice that of whites, and why 55 percent of the nation's illegitimate births were to black mothers. Quite simply, it was the fault of the well-intended but often distorted federal program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children. This program literally induced fathers of poor families to leave home. If the head of a household with children would simply disappear, the federal government would provide his wife with monthly checks, based on the number of those dependent children. In other instances, the program had the effect of encouraging young girls to get pregnant out of wedlock so that they could secure public housing and AFDC payments.
   Within one generation, the black family unit, which had survived slavery and ugly racial discrimination, was nearly decimated. Many black fathers, who wanted to be strong role models for their children and wanted to spend their lives with the women they loved, were at a loss. The government had shut them out of most small business enterprises with excessive regulations and licensing procedures that favored already established businesses. White labor unions, with powerful Washington lobbies and hypocritical protection by liberal politicians, shut them out. With the rising minimum wage, even menial jobs began disappearing. For many, welfare was the only real alternative, and it was a trap. Regulations required that savings must be spent. It was difficult, if not impossible, to gather the capital to launch any kind of enterprise to break free of government dependency.
   The Courage of a Conservative, 1985

After having earned business and law degrees from the University of Wyoming, James Watt served in various governmental and political positions during several presidential administrations. He served three years as Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan administration. Watt is the author (with Doug Wead) of The Courage of a Conservative (1985).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.

Honest opinion about government from James Buchanan:

If we rule out default for the time being, the primary economic consequence of debt-financed spending by government is the guaranteed necessity that we must, as citizens-taxpayers-program beneficiaries, give up some part of our incomes in future periods in order to meet interest and amortization charges on debt. A share of our future incomes is obligated to meet the legitimate claims held by creditors of the government. And it makes no difference whatsoever whether these creditors are themselves citizens or foreigners.

The financing of current government spending by debt is equivalent to an "eating up" of our national capital value…. By financing current public outlay by debt, we are, in effect, chopping up the apple trees for firewood, thereby reducing the yield of the orchard forever.

The person who is faced with a tax bill to finance interest charges…will reckon only on the simply observed fact that income that he or she might otherwise use is being taken away in taxes. The result is precisely analogous to the apple orchard example introduced earlier. If the yield of three trees under a person's nominal ownership is committed to debt service, it is fully equivalent to having an orchard with three fewer trees.
   Essays on the Political Economy, 1989

Economist and educator, James Buchanan holds a doctorate from the University of Chicago as well as the Nobel Prize in Economics (1986). He has taught at numerous universities and written numerous books, including Public Principles of Public Debt (1958), The Calculus of Consent (1962), The Limits of Liberty (1975), and Explorations in Constitutional Economics (1989).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.

Honest opinion about government from Daniel Webster:

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.
   argument in McCullough v. Maryland, Supreme Court, 1819

In the nature of things, those who have no property and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it becomes clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at times, for violence and revolution.
   address, Massachusetts Convention, 1820

Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.
   speech, Aug. 25, 1825

A lawyer and politician famous for his oratory, Daniel Webster won national recognition in the Supreme Court case McCullough v. Maryland (1819). He was a Federalist and represented New Hampshire in the House of Representatives (1813-1817). After he moved to Boston, he served in the House (1823-1827) and Senate (1827-1841, 1845-1850). Webster was Secretary of State under Presidents Harrison (1841-1843) and Fillmore (1850-1852).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.

Honest opinion about government from Edmund Burke:

It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

Your literary men and your politicians, and so do the whole clan of the enlightened among us, essentially differ in these points. They have no respect for the wisdom of others, but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste, because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery. They conceive, very systematically, that all things which give perpetuity are mischievous, and therefore they are at inexpiable war with all establishments. They think that government may vary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect; that there needs no principle of attachment, except a sense of present convenience, to any constitution of the state. They always speak as if they were of opinion that there is a singular species of compact between them and their magistrates which binds the magistrate, but which has nothing reciprocal in it, but that the majesty of the people has a right to dissolve it without any reason but its will. Their attachment to their country itself is only so far as it agrees with some of their fleeting projects; it begins and ends with that scheme of polity which falls in with their momentary opinion.
   Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790

A British statesman, orator, and excellent and prolific writer, Edmund Burke is commonly viewed as the father of modern Conservatism. He is best known for his critique of the French Revolution, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.