Sunday, July 3, 2011

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Many people still think it is OK to join together to make up rules for other people to obey, or to impose ‘taxes’ for them to pay. This, unfortunately, makes it necessary for the rest of us, if we care about paying and obeying, to sometimes band together to try to stop the rules from changing so that we don’t become criminals or to prevent having more of our life, liberty, and property stolen from us in the name of ‘the common good.’ It is politics in self defense and it is a tragic waste.”
Kent McManigal

“To make sense of drones, we probably have to stop thinking about 'war' and start envisaging other models — for example, that of the executioner who carries out a death sentence on another human being at no danger to himself. If a pilotless drone is actually an executioner’s weapon, a modern airborne version of the guillotine, the hangman’s noose, or the electric chair, the death sentence it carries with it is not decreed by a judge and certainly not by a jury of peers.
It’s assembled by intelligence agents based on fragmentary (and often self-interested) evidence, organized by targeteers, and given the thumbs-up sign by military or CIA lawyers. All of them are scores, hundreds, thousands of miles away from their victims, people they don’t know, and may not faintly understand or share a culture with. In addition, the capital offenses are often not established, still to be carried out, never to be carried out, or nonexistent. The fact that drones, despite their ‘precision’ weaponry, regularly take out innocent civilians as well as prospective or actual terrorists reminds us that, if this is our model, Washington is a drunken executioner.”
Tom Engelhardt

“Just as the War on Terror, with its prying military imperialism, functions to galvanize potential terrorists, the War on Drugs makes cocaine and marijuana, for example, far more expensive than they would otherwise be. The result is to hand a quasi-monopoly to networks of murderous thugs who want nothing more than an ironclad legal framework for prohibition, stringent drug laws to consolidate profits in a few cartels.”
David S. D'Amato

“It is bemusing that people believe their freedom is dependent upon certain other people whom they've never met—and never will meet—solemnly navigating their way through sets of sanctified procedures in a building built by slaves located as many as a few thousand miles away from them.

Dancing around the volcano, the legislative priests—if they get all their steps correct—can channel superhuman power and ethically bind their subjects to whatever commandments they invoke. Perhaps they may deign to give the people a bit of their innate freedom back? The populace cowers and hopes. Some even take action and vote—the offering of slaughtered chickens to appease the legislative clerics so that they may look down favorably upon, and not be overly harsh with, their charges.”
Tzo

“Battles such as between the U.S. and Qaddafi are 'all in the family.' They are not the battles mythically depicted as a sharply-defined struggle of freedom vs. dictatorship. They are battles between two unclean ruling clans, neither of which has clean hands."
Michael S. Rozeff

“If we have a government, it will be human beings who will be hired to restrain the evil in others. Who are these persons who will be hired, either by popularity contests or by direct application? They will be just as human and as much disposed toward evil as those to be restrained.
If people are capable of committing evil deeds, then the people occupying the offices of government will be cut from the same cloth. They are evildoers, too. There is not a single shred of evidence that they will be otherwise.”
Robert LeFevre

“Almost any kind of legislative knavery can be justified in most people's minds if it's ‘for the children.’ Involving the state to defend the children makes about as much sense as involving a particularly stupid and unpredictable Tyrannosaurus rex to defend the children. It's a sign of how degraded our culture has become that people look to an instrument of institutionalized coercion as the first solution to any problem. People's private lives should be their private business.”
Doug Casey

"When it comes to forcing others to do what you want, the ballot box is just an indirect form of the cartridge box."
Louis James, International Speculator

“Zealots and policymakers alike need to shift away from any obsession with the concept of a Holy Land and recognize that thousands of years of worshiping real estate has only produced several millenniums of war and shameful bloodshed. If there remains any constituency for peace, then the angels of humanity’s better nature – charity, tolerance, and simple decency – must supersede the religious triumphalism that seems to be too much in evidence today.”
Walter Rodgers

“There is nothing left of the American character. Only a people who have lost their soul could tolerate the evil that emanates from Washington.”
Paul Craig Roberts

“The army is nothing more than a factory which trains once-ordinary people that it is okay for them to kill people.”
Jaime Poole

“Where this individual [Obama] was born pales to almost total insignificance, in fact, when contrasted against from whence he allegedly derives his authority? This is to say, where is the individually signed and consented to contract that supposedly allows him to control and wage war on the lives, liberty, and property of 305 million or so Americans . . . much less those of people overseas who are having an ever-increasing series of wars and police actions waged against them? Who explicitly consented to this obscene arrangement? Any takers?”
Alex R. Knight III

“The Fourth is certainly a day to celebrate the Declaration of Independence but the flag waving and celebration of patriotic gore both here and abroad is, in truth, a macabre glorification and salute to  the Gulag State. America is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave, it is instead the land of the caged and home of the collaborator. Most Americans not only are scared witless of liberty and freedom but endlessly cheer-lead the depredations of the state on their neighbors through taxation, regulation and the maintenance of a ferocious police state.”
Bill Buppert
****************************************************************************
From the Darkness:
“The TSA works with passengers to resolve any security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner.”
Sari Koshetz, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration in Miami, responding to reports of a 95 year old woman in a wheelchair forced to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search

"Hope Baptist [Church of Toledo, OH] has always emphasized the importance of patriotism and an appreciation for those who have given so much to defend our liberty. Their willingness to sacrifice for American values is in perfect alignment with Biblical teachings. The World War II veterans gave us the freedoms that we have enjoyed for the past sixty-five years.”
Pastor Rick Sowell

"Last week, President Obama, such great news, he delivered on 500 million dollars for innovative early learning programs. I was proud to fight for this funding with Save the Children alongside our allies like the First Five Fund, It’s a fabulous accomplishment but it’s only a down payment. It’s still not enough to ensure that every toddler is prepared for a lifetime of success; that’s why all of this – the passage of this bill is so important.”
Actress Jennifer Garner, pleading for The Emperor to steal and borrow even more

“We're going to see an escalation of conflict in the area [of Syria]”
Queen Hillary, looking for more bloodletting

"Marijuana use and distribution is prohibited under federal law because it has a high potential for abuse and does not have an accepted medical use in the U.S. Decriminalizing marijuana will only lead to millions more Americans becoming addicted to drugs and greater profits for drug cartels who fund violence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Allowing states to determine their own marijuana policy flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent."
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, objecting to a bill introduced by Ron Paul and Barney Frank to remove marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances while allowing states to decide how they will regulate it.

"What is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world. History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we'll save in a budget line item."
Tim Pawlenty

“The Fed's intervention is not driving food and energy prices. Moreover, the current levels of inflation are not nearly approaching levels where U.S. dollars will soon be worthless. To be sure, prices had been rising, but Americans aren't going to be pushing around wheelbarrows of dollars anytime soon to purchase a quart of milk.”
Daniel Indiviglio, The Atlantic

“I don’t even have to get to the Constitutional question.”
B. Obama, reacting to Congress’ criticism of his illegal war in Libya

"As an American citizen and governor of one of its largest states, I write to applaud your recent efforts to warn and discourage those who have supported or plan to support a flotilla intended to interfere with Israel's maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. I write to encourage you to aggressively pursue all available legal remedies to enjoin and prevent these illegal actions, and to prosecute any who may elect to engage in them in spite of your preemptive efforts."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder [He’s not even president yet, and he’s already looking to shed blood.]
"We need an honest debate on how much is needed to preserve our security, but let me say this -- we can only substantially cut these programs at our nation's peril."
Senator Daniel Inouye, voicing his own concerns about defense cuts [The “nation” will do just fine. Only the war whore’s bottom line might be at “peril.”]

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