Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Next to sex, the strongest human instinct seems to be to form groups and hate other groups. I have long suspected that the bulk of humanity has more glands than neurons.”
Fred Reed

“Much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word 'obedience' from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human.”
Arthur Silber

“I prefer a world without wars, without taxes, without the systematic injustice that comes from any body of persons insisting that they are sovereign, that is, that they are above the laws. I prefer a world of ordered liberty, the rule of law, and peace. And in that world, there are no states.”
Tom G. Palmer

“Government is structured so those who are most able to access the top levels of policy-making wield political power. Because of this, government responds primarily to the most powerful groups in society, who create solutions that everyone will be forced to follow. Government answers to the political demand of power, not to the diverse demands of individual actors.”
Darian Worden

“Elites may have more brilliance, but those who make decisions for society as a whole cannot possibly have as much experience as the millions of people whose decisions they preempt. The education and intellects of the elites may lead them to have more sweeping presumptions, but that just makes them more dangerous to the freedom, as well as the well-being, of the people as a whole.”
Thomas Sowell

“As the state had no existence prior to the appearance of humans who either created it, or who were conquered by it, it is hard to grasp an argument that would recognize this entity as having any interests that preceded its creation, and that did not derive either by contract or by violence. No evidence exists for any political system having arisen through mutual agreement of those to be bound, and with a fairly universal rejection of the idea that one can legitimately acquire the interests of some through their forcible usurpation, the state has no claim to the exercise of 'rights' that any libertarian would be bound to respect.”
Butler Shaffer

“It is simply not possible to stop all acts of terrorism if potential terrorists have been given a sufficient grievance to motivate their wreaking some form of havoc against Americans. However, it is silly to make the prevention of all terrorist acts the goal. What can’t be done won’t be done, regardless of how many people and how much money one devotes to doing it. We can, though, endure some losses from terrorism in the same way that we routinely endure some losses from accidents, diseases, and ordinary crime.”
Robert Higgs

“The major threat to the modern state isn’t foreign invasion or even armed native insurrection — it’s the increasing ease with which its opponents can disseminate the truth about what government is and what government does. Government withers and dies under the harsh light of disclosure, exposure, transparency.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and from their Israeli equivalents), it's this: victory is a chimera. Counting on today's enemy to yield in the face of superior force makes about as much sense as buying lottery tickets to pay the mortgage: you better be really lucky.”
Andrew J. Bacevich

“As Voluntaryists we reject the Libertarian Party on the same level and for the same reason we reject any other political party. The rejection is not based on incidental evasions or corruption of principle which inevitably occur within politics. It is based on the conviction that to oppose the State one must oppose the specific instances of the State or else one's opposition is toward a vague, floating abstraction and never has practical application. Political offices are the State. By becoming politicians libertarians legitimize and perpetuate the office. They legitimize and perpetuate the State.”
Wendy McElroy

“The underlying condition that has caused the corruption, ineptness and the State’s ever-expanding collusions with private businesses is the U.S. government’s monopoly in territorial protection, in which the State monopolist has no competitive incentive to actually provide quality of protection services.
Only a monopolist of territorial protection would do the stupid things that the socialist/fascist U.S. government officials have been doing for these past many decades. The alternative to such counter-productive policies and redistribution parasitism is to outlaw the State’s protection racket and legalize competitive protection agencies.”
Scott Lazarowitz

“American liberty does not depend upon other nations embracing democracy—and never has, even during the Cold War. Nor does American prosperity require bases around the world and military leverage over friend and foe alike. Yet despite their patent falsity, these political orthodoxies continue to be invoked by the American empire to justify its global force projection, endless wars, and national security state.”
Bruce Fein

“Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims.”
Juilian Assange

“The camera is the new gun, and Wikileaks is a howitzer.”
Ross Kenyon

“Peer pressure and social opprobrium are what really hold societies together, not execution squads chasing those who don’t believe in a war.”
Doug Casey

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From the Darkness:

"Now if you ask me, in conclusion, ‘Well, what, then should properly be done?’ Obviously war, but I mean in regard to this issue I would say: Any way possible permission should be refused and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity."
Leonard Peikoff, founder of the Ayn Rand Institute, hysterical over the proposed Muslim center near New York’s Ground Zero.

"I would really like to see President Obama to move to ask the government of Iceland to shut that [WikiLeaks] website down. I would like to see him move to shut it down ourselves if Iceland won't do it. I would like to see them move aggressively to prosecute Mr. [Julian] Assange and certainly ensure that he never again gets a visa to enter the United States. What he's done is very clearly aiding and abetting al Qaeda. And as I said, he may very well be responsible for the deaths of American soldiers Afghanistan."
Liz Cheney

"There are two areas of culpability. One is legal culpability. And that's up to the Justice Department and others. That's not my arena. But there's also a moral culpability. And that's where I think the verdict is guilty on WikiLeaks. They have put this out without any regard whatsoever for the consequences."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates. [Hey Bobby, make sure you remember that part about “moral culpability” when you’re on trial for war crimes.]

"[G]enerally speaking, this time next summer, we're still going to be engaged in one hell of a fight. We're going to need every troop we have today, I think, still in Afghanistan next year."
Sen. Lindsey Graham

"The hard truth is we have not seen the end of American sacrifice in Iraq."
B. Obama, looking forward to more bloodletting.

"The fact that there are competing parties and individuals who want to lead this [Iraqi] democracy is a sign of the kind of progress they've made."
B. Obama [Translated: There are plenty of gangsters and despot wannabe’s who want to fight and kill each other for the power to rule others.]

"And it is men -- not to be too gender specific here -- but there, there is a male factor here. I've we seen it in our own recent history. What is it about testosterone that gets us into war?"

Andrea Mitchell [Gosh, I don’t know- why not ask Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Condi Rice, Nancy Pelosi…..]

"The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over."
Newt Gingrich, continuing his bigoted rant against all Muslims.

"Your country is going to take care of you when you come home."
B, Obama, lying to soldier boys returning from Iraq.

“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
Bloody Max Boot

“They will be called advisory and assistance brigades. They won’t be called combat brigades.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates blessing the remaining US assassins in Iraq with a new, Orwellian name.

"If they don't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder."
Rep. Mike Rogers commenting on Bradley Manning

“My father was in World War II and when he got home he got the services that he needed.”
B. Obama, lying about both his fathers. [Both his biological and step-father were between the ages of two and nine during that period.]

"[Julian] Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice [sic] and put his criminal syndicate out of business."

Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institute

"We are making a demand of them, We are asking them to do the right thing. We hope they will honor our demands."
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, demanding that Wikileaks hand over classified Afghanistan war documents leaked to the website [Too late, soldier boy. They already did the right thing.]