Thinking of Obamacare, the Iraq war authorization, Chinese Walmart slaves, the myth of the “invisible hand,” and the “jobs Americans won’t do,” I stumbled upon this, from The Idler:

Forms of government are seldom the result of much deliberation; they are framed by chance in popular assemblies, or in conquered countries by despotic authority.  Laws are often occasional, often capricious, made always by a few, and sometimes by a single voice.  Nations have changed their characters; slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

—from Samuel Johnson’s The Idler, No. 11, June 24, 1758