Hayek the Jeffersonian (and Anti-Lincolnite)

From F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1994 50th anniversary edition), p. 257, commenting on the appropriate size of European governments after World War II:

“We shall not rebuild civilization on the large scale. It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralization. . .Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government. . .Where the scope of the political measures becomes so large that the necessary knowledge is almost exclusively possessed by the bureaucracy, the creative impulses of the private person must flag. I believe that here the experience of the small countries like Holland and Switzerland contains much from which even the most fortunate larger countries like Great Britain can learn.  We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in.”

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3:58 pm on July 20, 2011