Quotes of the Week

From the Light:

"Ask yourself: With the government firmly in the pockets of giant businesses, whom would we trust to oversee a central bank?
No one.
And what would prevent it from becoming anything more than an instrument of private interest, with the power and the purse of the public added?
Nothing."
Lila Rajiva

"When we talk about nation-building, we are talking Obama's language: the language of moral uplift, of misplaced idealism, and soaring rhetoric. We are talking the language of the social and economic planners, who think that government – the US government, specifically – is the answer to all the world's problems."
Justin Raimondo

“Our national catechism tells us that America is Good -- and that America's murders are Good Murders. You may not say otherwise.”
Arthur Silber

“Government power is the root of the problem; everything else is a leaf, a twig, or at most a branch.”
Glen Allport

"Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age."
Richard Lindzen, Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT

“The role of government is commonly misunderstood. It is thought to be an impartial judge...an objective arbiter between competing interests, always asserting the common interest over the narrow interests of the competitors themselves. It is nothing of the sort. It has its own interests...its own delusions of competence...its own lusts for power and money.”
Bill Bonner

“American foreign policy has gotten off onto a tangent that I think our own Founding Fathers never envisioned and would be horrified to see. We’ve decided there is only one way everyone in the world should live, and it’s the way we tell them they should live. This is the essence of the policy and the face that the United States is presenting to the outside world. We’ve decided that we’ve discovered something that other people can never discover and we’re going to force them to do it. This creates a kind of resentment that deeply undermines our security.”
Stephen Kinzer

“In point of fact, statism is a form of paganism, for it is worship of an idol, something made by man. Its base is pure dogma. Like all dogmas this one is subject to interpretations and rationales, each with its coterie of devotees. But, whether one calls oneself a Communist, Socialist, New Dealer, or just plain "democrat," one begins with the premise that the individual is of consequence only as a servant of the mass idol. Its will be done.”
Frank Chodorov

“I rather think “predatory lending” is when the taxpayer lends the government money to finance the clean-up of a malady that government policy caused.”
Wilt Alston

“Now who is opposed to liberty or progress or any of the various other desirable ideals that government officials claim will result from their "unselfish programs for the people"? Probably no one. Thus do the people tend to accept almost any idea — communism, socialism, imperialism, or whatever — if those ideas are advanced under attractive labels such as freedom from want, defense against aggression, welfare, equality, liberty, fellowship, and security.”
Dean Russell

“You have to take the bad with the good in life. There's no going to Heaven without dying. And you can't rebuild a house without tearing down the old one. Mistakes must be corrected. Old, worn-out businesses have to go out of business so that new ones can take their places. Bad investments need to be deflated...liquidated. Failed managers and failed business models must be eliminated. Bubble delenda est.”
Bill Bonner

"Evolution writ large is the belief that a cloud of hydrogen will spontaneously invent extreme-ultraviolet lithography, perform Swan Lake, and write all the books in the British Museum.”
Fred Reed

From the Darkness:

"The fundamental truth that the challenges of the 21st century are increasingly unconventional and transnational, and therefore demand a response that effectively integrates all aspects of American power."

Emperor Obama, commenting on merging the domestic and foreign sides of the White House national-security team while also creating positions at the National Security Council focused on cybersecurity, energy, the environment and the threat of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction.

"One hundred days ago, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in half a century, we passed the most sweeping economic recovery act in history: a plan designed to save jobs, create new ones and put money in people's pockets. One hundred days later, we're already seeing results."
Master Obama

"We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our pride would rise accordingly."
William James, The Moral Equivalent of War

"If you're going to have people live in a car bomb-prone place, your are driven to not have a light footprint."
Ronald Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on Obama’s plans to spend $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.

"There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform. I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table."
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)

"People are beginning to recognize that the mathematics of the current system are just unsustainable. You have to do something. And a VAT has got to be on the table if you want to do something big and serious."
Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz

"Climate change is a silent human crisis. Yet it is the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time."
Kofi Annan

"Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates [This from a state immoral enough to actually use nuclear weapons.]

"The first thing you do is ask what's legal? What do the lawyers say is possible?”
George W. Bush, explaining how he decided torture was cool. [Hey, W- What would JESUS say?]