The New Right and public policy

‘Once the principle is admitted that the government undertakes responsibility for the status and position of particular groups, it is inevitable that this control will be extended to satisfy the aspirations and prejudices of the great masses. … in the existing state of public opinion nothing else would be practicable. But what to the politicians are fixed limits of practicability imposed by public opinion need not be similar limits to us. Public opinion on these matters is the work of men like ourselves. …’F.A. Hayek, speaking at the founding conference of the New Eight at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, in 1947, reproduced in F.A. Hayek, Individualism and economic order, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1948, pp. 107–108.