Quotes of the Week

From the Light:

“The corruption and abusive nature of “law enforcement” can’t be handled through minor reform; it’s a symptom, not the cause, and it is so intertwined with the nature of the state itself that the two cannot be separated. The political class’s attack dogs have gained a taste for power, and so long as we allow that class to rule us, those dogs will be fed.”
Thomas L. Knapp

"Like Paris, foreign travel used to be seen as romantic, or at least as interesting and enjoyable. Gone are the days. Today’s world traveler is little more than a guinea pig in a diabolical experiment designed to determine how much abuse the masses will take before either lapsing into complete madness or taking up pitchforks and torches and coming after the Dr. Frankensteins who created these “security” monstrosities."
Robert Higgs

“Desertion is a moral imperative when continued service implicates a soldier in crimes against God and mankind. Indeed, there are times when desertion is a moral duty.
At some point, if liberty is to have a fighting chance, American military personnel are going to have to experience an epiphany and decide that they're no longer going to fight on behalf of the bastards running the Regime.”
Will Grigg

“The economy is croaking. So what we need to do is have a lot of expensive foreign wars. Anybody can see it. You can’t run your own country? Then kill a bunch of thirteenth-century peasants. That’ll fix it.”
Fred Reed

"President Barack Obama is taking the practice of naming czars to new heights. It took those old Russkies 300 years to produce 18 czars. It took Obama less than 100 days."
Katherine Mangu-Ward

“War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.”
Chris Hedges

“Foreign policy is the personality of the state, and the personality of the modern American state is schizoid, defective, in need of a strong straitjacket and a padded room.”
Karen Kwiatkowski

“The habit of getting something for nothing is one of them. Spending money someone else earned is like eating a big slice of Black Forest cake and watching someone across the table get fat. You're likely to ask for seconds.”
Bill Bonner

From the Darkness:

"We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region — or on us."
Robert Gates [But it’s OK if the USG has the “capability to wreak destruction” on any target it chooses, eh, Billy?]

“The rapid expansion and global dependence upon cyberspace required the defense department to evolve its war fighting doctrine to include cyberspace as a viable domain on par with the domains of land, sea, air and space.”
Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency (NSA).

"No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are, As we recover from this unprecedented crisis, we will cut our fiscal deficit [and] we will eliminate the extraordinary government support that we have put in place to overcome the crisis."

US Treasury Secretary Geithner, conning his Chinese creditors.

"I am comfortable with the policy action the Federal Reserve has taken. We are comfortable we can exit from those policies at the appropriate time without inflationary consequences."

Ben Bernanke