A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from March 08, 2014
“The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen”

“The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen” is a popular bumper sticker slogan. Conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager wrote “The Bigger the Government, the Smaller the Citizen” for Townhall.com on September 1, 2009. The YouTube video The Bigger the Government… was published by Prager University on March 3, 2014.
 
“The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases”—a popular quotation that is incorrectly attributed to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)—is very similar to Prager’s saying.  “As government expands, liberty contracts” is a similar saying that dates from the 1940s and was popularly used by Ronald Reagan (1911-2004).
     
 
Wikipedia: Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager (born August 2, 1948) is an American nationally syndicated radio talk show host, syndicated columnist, author, and public speaker. He is noted for his conservative political and social views grounded in “Judeo-Christian” values. He holds that there is an “American Trinity” of essential principles, which he lists as E Pluribus Unum, In God We Trust, and Liberty.
 
Monticello.org (Thomas Jefferson)
Government big enough to give you everything you want…(Quotation)
(...)
This quotation was not attributed to Jefferson until relatively recently.  It is sometimes followed by, “The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases,” which is most likely a misquotation of Jefferson’s comment, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground.”
- Anna Berkes, 2007; revised 1/21/13
   
Townhall.com
Real Clear Politics
The Bigger the Government, the Smaller the Citizen
By Dennis Prager - September 1, 2009
Those of us who oppose a massive increase in the role the national government plays in health care (“ObamaCare”) do so because we fear the immense and unsustainable national debt it would incur and because we are certain that medical care in America would deteriorate. But there is a bigger reason most of us oppose it: We believe that the bigger the government becomes, the smaller the individual citizen becomes.
     
Here are five reasons why bigger government makes less impressive people.
(...)
Of course, there are fine idealistic individuals on the left, and selfish individuals on the right. But as a rule, bigger government increases the number of angry, ungrateful, lazy, spoiled and self-centered individuals. Which is why some of us believe that increased nationalization of health care is worth shouting about. And even crying over.
 
Zazzle
The bigger the government,the smaller the citizen bumper sticker
Product ID: 128232099233002122
Made on: 9/24/2009 7:26 AM
 
Google Books
Still the Best Hope:
Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph

By Dennis Prager
New York, NY: Broadside Books
2012
Pg. ?:
In sum, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
 
YouTube
The Bigger the Government…
PragerUniversity
Published on Mar 3, 2014
In every society throughout human history the following relationship has held true: as government grows, human freedom and happiness shrinks. Best selling author, Dennis Prager puts it this way: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” This has been true in Europe for decades and is becoming ever more so in the United States. But it’s not the kind of nation, the Founding Fathers had in mind. Can we get back to the principles of liberty and individual responsibility? It’s a big challenge. But first we have to recognize the problem.
 
Prager University
The Bigger the Government the Smaller the Citizen
The bigger the state, the bigger the government - the smaller the citizen. If I’ve come to any realizations about life, or about society and life that I think can change the way a person views society that is one of them. Yep, the bigger the state the smaller the citizen, and that has been the core, the secret to America’s great success.
 
We know that the citizen needs to be big, important, individual, autonomous, strong. The land of the free, the home of the brave, that’s impossible as the state gets bigger. Everything gets smaller. Liberty gets smaller, individuality gets smaller, goodness gets smaller, human character gets smaller, and our importance becomes smaller. Everything about us becomes smaller as the government gets bigger. This is not a political point that I want to make on behalf of one party.
 
There are different ways in which government can do things. You can differ if you’re the left or you’re the right, of course, but on this issue Americans have been virtually unanimous, until the modern period when we started taking in European ideas, such as the bigger the government the better it is for people. But it isn’t better for people. It doesn’t make people more important and people get, generally speaking, worse.
 
Moonbattery
March 7, 2014
The Bigger the Government
“Political science” only seems like an oxymoron. Actual natural laws dictate some aspects of politics, as immutable as the laws of physics. For example:
 
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen, in terms of goodness, character, and liberty.
 
Dennis Prager expounds: ...
(Video follows.—ed.)

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityGovernment/Law/Military/Religion /Health • Saturday, March 08, 2014 • Permalink


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