Quotes of the Week

From the Light:

“It's a very telling fallacy: the collectivist's concept of the national economy is represented by a single pie while capitalists envision a vibrant economy of unlimited pies.”
Garry Reed

"If a government is not legitimate, can it command your obedience? Were the victims of Al Capone’s extortion efforts in any way obligated to yield to his demands? True, those demands were not backed by any law save that of the gun, but how does that differ from demands made by an organizations which has thousands of laws, but pays no heed to those which might impair it, and makes new “laws” to justify itself."
Paul Hein

“Central planning does not work. Larger entities that use force and coercion to make others do the right thing lead to national prison camps disguised as nation-states.”
William Buppert

“The statist political agenda, if implemented, would logically lead to total control of the economy and to a far lower standard of living for us and our children; yet somehow we are expected to treat statist theft demands with honest and reasoned debate under the rules. We often pretend that statist positions are simply "mistaken" and that they actually can be persuaded from their ultimate mission by some fact-based argument or clever journal article citation. Given recent public policy events (bailouts, stimulus bills), however, that belief seems extremely naïve.”
Dom Armentano

“It's not compassion to steal from some to give to others. It is using violence to accomplish your ends, which, in this case, only delays necessary pain. No new wealth is created. It is merely shuffled around from spot to spot by force.”
Lew Rockwell

“In the name of stamping out racism or sexism in people’s minds, or eliminating poverty or violence, people ardently demand statism and poverty-inducing taxation/regulation, all enforced by violence. Only the abstraction, the state, allows them the means to rationalize acting upon these dark fantasies by creating a collective morality that is an inversion of the neighbor-to-neighbor kind.”
David Calderwood

“War is more than merely the health of the state — it’s the original template for how government “works.” The incentives are all geared toward doubling down on hubris, throwing good money after bad, and sacrificing blood and treasure — others’ blood and treasure, of course — without end to the cause of holding on to domestic political power.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“When justifications for war become almost endless – oil, hegemony, women's rights, democracy, revenge for 9/11, denying bases to al Qaeda, and protecting against terrorists – war becomes the path to peace.”
Paul Craig Roberts

“The Nobel peace committee should retire, and turn over its huge funds to some international peace organization which is not awed by stardom and rhetoric, and which has some understanding of history.”
Howard Zinn

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From the Darkness:

“We know we still have a lot to do, in conjunction with nations around the world, to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that we never again find ourselves in the precarious situation we found ourselves in just one year ago.”
Barry Obama [The rules already in place didn’t work. Why would more make any difference?]

"Private markets for goods, services, labor and securities do mostly self-correct; but panic, driven by the acute fear of the unknown, feeds on itself and disarms these stabilizing tendencies. In this situation, only government can protect the economy as a whole, because most individuals and companies are involved in the self-defeating behavior of self-protection."
Christina Romer

“The new Elders will have to rescue America from the precipice. They’ll have to be mature, think of the collective, of the country as a whole.”
Peggy Noonan

“In today's world a central bank is an essential economic tool. Without the Fed's power to lend, to pump in and pull money from the banking system, to control the commercial paper market and inflation, and to influence the currency, this nation would be at a serious disadvantage.”
David Weidner's. Market Watch

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”
DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse

“I cannot think of anyone today more deserving of this honour. In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself.”
Mohamed ElBaradei, commenting on Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize