" And how,” asked the fiery Joshua-bar-Abbas, “do we know at what point the character of a people weakens? It is not like a man who deteriorates through his thoughts and actions before your very eyes.” “When they give over to government,” said Nicodemus, “those duties which they should be pleased to perform themselves. When they are told they will be fed and sheltered even when they won’t work, when they are promised security from the cradle to the grave, when they are told the state will take over the supervision of their children and say what schooling they should receive and where. When they are told all these "

― Taylor Caldwell , I, Judas