Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, October 06 2009 @ 10:05 AM CST
From the book Power in the People by Felix Morley, as linked by Gary Galles at the Ludwig von Mises Institute[*1] :
The American tradition is of course completely opposed to authoritarian government … The American conviction is that the ‘Safety and Happiness’ of the governed takes precedence over every governmental prerogative and that deference is not necessarily owing to those temporarily in a position of political command.