At the bottom of all totalitarian doctrines lies the belief that the rulers are wiser and loftier than their subjects and that they therefore know better what benefits those ruled than they themselves. Werner Sombart, for many years a fanatical champion of Marxism and later a no less fanatical advocate of Nazism, was bold enough to assert frankly that the Führer gets his orders from God, the supreme Führer of the universe, and that Führertum is a permanent revelation. Whoever admits this, must, of course, stop questioning the expediency of government omnipotence.
--Ludwig von Mises, preface to Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2011), xv.
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