Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The USA looks like a Third World resource-rich backwater ruled by inbred cannibals wearing uniforms who are busy stuffing their Swiss bank accounts.
John Q. Public worries about paying the mortgage while the political elite strip-mine the nation they manage. After all, we expect it.”
David Calderwood

“It is striking that the war on terror has spoken so strongly about democracy and had so little to say about liberty. This must partly be because the alleged war required a suspension, even abolition, of many of the rules of liberty and demanded a new relationship between the individual and the state—perfectly symbolized by the illogical persecution of airline passengers, a scheme whose chief purpose seems to be to accustom as many people as possible to a future in which they will spend more of their lives being ordered about by unquestionable state functionaries.”
Peter Hitchens

“We live under a class state, a system of class rule, and the machinery of the corporate state serves the interests of that class rule. “Moderates” and “centrists,” by definition, are those who accept that system as fundamentally legitimate in all its essentials, and just want to tinker around the edges of corporate rule without altering its fundamental nature.”
Kevin Carson

“The State tries to convince us that it is exempt from the Laws of God and Nature – in other words, to the effect that IT is the God which we must obey, and not the God which speaks to us through our personal conscience. In this attempted divorce of man from conscience lies proof that the State is a non-human machine-entity, and thus truly beyond the influence of the human conscience.”
Jeff Knaebel

“We verge ever closer on the condition in which everything that is not prohibited is required. Yet the average American will declare loudly that he is a free man and that the United States is the freest country in the world.
As the state seeks to control virtually everything and crushes all real opposition, Americans now inhabit a country that would be completely unrecognizable to its founders. Indeed, it bears only faint resemblance to the country it was just 50 years ago.
More and more, 'Land of the Free' is becoming nothing but an empty, pathetic boast.”
Robert Higgs

"The main function of national elections in this country is to give the people the illusion that they are in charge and can change policy whenever necessary. However, the basic policies never seem to change. Elections allow people to blow off steam and thus serve as a safety valve for the regime that allows them to rule us for another four years."
James Ostrowski

“From a pragmatic point of view, the space program is nothing more than a massive socialist spending program with militaristic intent, but which benefits handsomely from hysterical and maudlin appeals to hope in the government’s ability to accomplish anything, provided enough time and taxpayers’ loot.”
Ryan McMaken

“The state – an institution that is defined in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence – is particularly attractive to men and women whose "dark sides" are closer to the surface than those of more tolerant and peaceful persons.”
Butler Shaffer

“A government cannot be created unless there is at least one person who has a strong enough desire to control the outcome of what others say or do. Furthermore, that one person must be smart enough to sell his idea to others, which will most likely mean (if bribes don’t work) preying upon their fears….”
B.R. Merrick

“Statism makes the claim that since the State makes the rules- defines the ‘sins‘, if you will- the State can do things that would be evil if done by you or me, yet maintain its holiness in the eyes of its followers. While individual priests of Statism (politicians and state apologists) can sin, the State as a concept remains unquestioned, as does its sacredness.”
Kent McManigal

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From the Darkness:

“Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here. We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card.”
Senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer describing their plan to require biometric national ID cards for every American worker.

"We know that organizations like al Qaeda are in the process of trying to secure a nuclear weapon -- a weapon of mass destruction that they have no compunction at using."
B. Obama

"It's unfortunate. It's clearly not helpful. But by the same token, I think -- think it should not have any lasting consequences."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, commenting on the video showing U.S. Apache helicopters killing 12 people, including two Reuters news staff.

“The problem with Ron Paul, Joe Wilson and the many neo-confederates who support or work in the Republican party is that you can not separate slavery and the Confederacy, once you defend one, you defend the other. That is like separating Nazis and the holocaust.”
Casey Gane-McCalla

“As a State, nothing we do is more important than protecting the lives of our children."
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley

"I've been a little amused over the past couple of days when people have been having these [Tea Party] rallies. You would think they'd be saying, 'Thank you.'"
B. Obama

“[Andrew] Napolitano has joined other conspiracy theorists in falsely claiming that efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act were responsible for the crash of the economy in 2008.”
From the Southern Poverty Law Center website. [So, claiming A causes B makes you a “conspiracy theorist?”]

"The [second world] war revealed what might be called ‘the dirty little secret’ of American capitalism. The myth of capitalism is that the free market is the most efficient economic system. But it is not. Governmentally sponsored and regulated production is far more efficient. It was the war, not the New Deal, that finally reversed the Great Depression."
Garry Wills