It Cannot Happen Here

Over at Cafe Hayek, they commemorate the anniversary of F. A. Hayek's birth by recalling the opening paragraph of one of his chapters, "Totalitarians in Our Midst," published in 1944:

"Probably it is true that the very magnitude of the outrages committed by the totalitarian governments, instead of increasing the fear that such a system might one day arise in more enlightened countries, has rather strengthened the assurance that it cannot happen here....  But let us not forget that fifteen years ago the possibility of such a thing happening in Germany would have appeared just as fantastic, not only to nine-tenths of the Germans themselves, but also to the most hostile foreign observers (however wise they may now pretend to have been)."

From The Road to Serfdom.  View an illustrated version here.