Over the weekend, I happened to watch the 1944 film about Mark Twain starring Fredric March and by coincidence today I come across this essay on Twain’s liberalism (in the old sense, of course) by Jeff Tucker.

What would Twain think of what has become of the United States in the century since he died in 1910? He’d be aghast. Here’s just one good line I pulled from Tucker’s essay: “The mania for giving the Government power to meddle with the private affairs of cities or citizens is likely to cause endless trouble… and there is great danger that our people will lose that independence of thought and action which is the cause of much of our greatness, and sink into the helplessness of the Frenchman of German who expects his government to feed him when hungry, clothe him when naked … and in time, to regulate every act of humanity from the cradle to the tomb, including the manner in which he may seek future admission to paradise.”