Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Freedom is a true human value; the whiny emotion-driven mythology of 'social justice' rammed down everyone's throats at the point of a gun is not.”
Garry Reed

“The top of America’s political and economic hierarchy, those who depend on this system of war, cannot afford to see this for what it is. The murder of civilians thus becomes something to explain away rather than lament. The human cost is like all of the other costs, that is, not born by those who benefit from this enterprise of death.
Free market anarchism is constructed on the simple idea that no one ought have aggression at his disposal to achieve his ends, that voluntary interaction is the proper norm for human beings. War and the economic program that lives on it are the ultimate obverse of that idea, where the parameters of human relationships are determined by the continual need to assemble killing machines.”
David D'Amato

“The ugly truth of the matter is that we now have two authoritarian parties (or ‘wings’ of the same unitary party) vying for power. Power over anyone they can get their hands on. The reasons no longer matter much – only the effects. And the bottom line is if you are among the declining few who still believe in such strange and unusual notions as a government that protects your property rather than takes it, that defends your liberty rather than systematically destroying it – well, then you don’t have a dog in this fight – either as a motorist or citizen. Democrat or Republican – ‘left’ or ‘right‘– they’ve got us coming and going.”
Eric Peters

“One thing those of us who love liberty regardless of who attacks it can recognize is that the two statist coalitions in America, the left-liberals and the right-conservatives, are intellectually bankrupt to the core. This should give us hope, because there are limits to what even Americans can swallow in terms of cognitive dissonance.”
Anthony Gregory

“Why are soldiers treated so differently? Why do they get a pass on committing or supporting those who commit murder and mayhem?”
Laurence Vance

“At a time when the decentralization of social systems has taken on great importance, it is timely to consider the advantages that could arise from a more localized – perhaps even individualized – source of electrical power. A principal benefit arising from both a free market system and the private ownership of property – concepts that are corollary expressions of each other – is that both individual liberty and social order are maximized when decision-making authority diverges into independent persons, rather than converging into centralized elites. A major problem with institutionalized systems – particularly the state – is that the adverse consequences of their actions are multiplied, exponentially, as the range of their activities is increased.”
Butler Shaffer

“The genius of the state is that it gets us to voluntarily, without pay, to stand up for it, and to deter, damn, and defriend not just the people who challenge its presumed authority, but to heartily reject both ideas and factual information that challenge the state’s façade of moral certitude, and its mask of justness.”
Karen Kwiatkowski

“When humanity begins to understand that authority is an inalienable individual attribute—as is the self-responsibility that is the natural result of possessing such a natural endowment—only then will we finally emerge from the long dark age of government and begin the renaissance of human freedom.”
Tzo

“Hearing criticism, many people whose being is associated with the nation-state respond by asserting the value of the military and expressing support of it. A person indoctrinated into a supine patriotism of flag-waving and blind support of the state and its wars will naturally rally to its defense against criticism, because their person has been lost or diminished as a result of the indoctrination. They have submerged themselves into the state. Freeing them from these beliefs requires patience and continual exposure to ideas of freedom, peace, and government to which they are unaccustomed.”
Michael S. Rozeff

“Human nature and the structure of reality itself doesn't change. Only the gizmos we use change. We can become poorer or we can become richer. But the fundamental facts of how the world is built are immutable. Things are scarce but the possibilities for economic creation are infinite in a world of trade, boundaries, law, and private innovation.”
Jeffrey Tucker

“As the Hobbesian experiment we call ‘the state’ polarizes along the lines of its own contradictions of ‘left and ‘right’ authoritarianism (Hobbes, meet Hegel!), anarchism emerges not as antithesis, but as synthesis. When the state runs short of convincing fictions (‘constitutionalism,’ ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ ‘fuhrerprinzip‘) to disguise those contradictions and stands weakened, near collapse over the pit of its own digging, it is anarchism we invariably see approaching, shovel in hand, ready to bury the failed experiment and turn, with humanity, to new ones.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“In the real world countries that have a greater degree of economic freedom also tend to have more personal freedoms, progressive social values and gender equality. But this is not how liberals would like to see the world. They dislike reactionary social values, and they dislike capitalism and economic freedom. So naturally they put the two together to please themselves.”
Mike P.

“The only solution to the dangers of life on this little ball of dirt is vastly improved technology, and vastly increased wealth. You will arrive at those things most quickly through a completely free and unregulated society. Mankind’s destiny is – or should be – literally in the stars and on other planets. We’re not going to get there if fear and hysteria dominate on this insignificant little planet where we’re trapped right now.”
Doug Casey

“There is a brutal but inevitable and poetic symmetry to the fact that the people of the United States, who show little or no empathy for or even awareness of the intense suffering, mass murder and ecocide that their government visits upon other members of the human family, are now faced with the economic collapse of their own country due to 100 years of military imperialism, and the impoverishment of their own children as one of the fruits of their incessant violence against other human beings and the earth.”
Dana Visalli

"When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves."
Herbert Spencer

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From the Darkness:

“You have to recognize that I don’t think you win this [Afghanistan] war. I think you keep fighting. . . You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

Gen. David Petraeus

“We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely. In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates

"My personal view is that once you’re involved, you have to recognize that the prestige of the United States is at stake. If Gaddafi stays on, he will think he fought the mother of all battles — against the United States. It will be damaging to us just as our demeanor in Somalia was damaging, the situation in Lebanon was damaging and that will embolden others of his ilk.”
Donald Rumsfeld, promoting still another never ending war

"It's not America's role not to be out and about nation building [in Libya] and telling other countries how to live."
Sarah Palin, apparently forgetting “America’s role” of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan

“That’s how the international community should work – more nations (with) the United States right there at the centre of it, but not alone, everybody stepping up, bearing their responsibilities. We believe that the world is more secure and the interests of the United States are best advanced when we act collectively.”
B. Obama, promoting collectivist murder

"This bill is about fairness, it is about leveling the playing field. The bills are about removing the unfair competitive advantage that out-of-state e-retailers have over Texas retailers who comply with the law."
Texas State Rep. Elliott Naishtat, introducing a bill that would require Internet retailers to collect state sales tax if the company has a connection to Texas

"I think high-income earners would work well into the 50% tax rate. That would certainly help balance the books going forward."
Bill Gross, founder of PIMCO

“I’m interested in a vote authorizing military action [against Libya]. The president said he’d welcome it and I think it would be helpful. It’d show public support for the effort. And that’s always useful.”
Sen. Mark Levin, a week and a half after the Libyan war had already begun


“If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he’s smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust him, and I still do.”
Kevin Drum of Mother Jones