Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to “the public good” and the “general welfare.” But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be sup- ported and obeyed. Th e reason that ideology is so vital to the State is that it always rests, in essence, on the support of the majority of the public.
Murray N. Rothbard, Ph.D.
Ethics of Liberty, pp. 168–69
excerpt from A Republic, Not an Empire by Patrick J. Buchanan
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