Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"We are oppressed by government and most people are unaware of it because they themselves have assumed government morality from childhood. It is impossible to change what you believe in your heart. If you are taught that democracy means freedom of political choices, you never question it, and the façade of politics serves for reality. Any challenge to this paradigm is written off as nuttery or conspiracy"
Bob Livingston
“Don't equate being passionate about the truth with being psychologically dependent on everyone else agreeing with you.
If you want to help cure the world of its madness, you have to find a way to maintain your own sanity even when others react to you as if you've gone mad."
T.K. Coleman
“Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators, and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.”
Albert J. Nock
“It is not the enemy that is essential to war and that forces war upon us, but the imagination. Imagination is the driving force, especially when imagination has been preconditioned by the media, education, and religion, and fed with aggressive boosterism and pathetic pieties by the state’s need for enemies. The imagined phantom swells and clouds the horizon, we cannot see beyond enmity. The archetypal idea gains a face. Once the enemy is imagined, one is already in a state of war. Once the enemy has been named, war has already been declared and the actual declaration becomes inconsequential, only legalistic.”
James Hillman
“If you are forbidden to do what you have a right to do, you are being enslaved. If someone claims to have a right to tell you where you can live, what you are allowed to put into your bloodstream, how you use you property, can take your property from you against your will, and says they can forbid your right to carry tools, they are trying to enslave you. If they kidnap and cage you for doing what you have a right to do, the slavery has gone from the abstract to the concrete.”
Kent McManigal
“The entire human race, wherever situated, is the ‘enemy’ of the institutionally-structured political establishment. Our make-believe “choice” between being ruled and destroyed by either the Trump or Hillary franchises, is as meaningless to our well-being as choosing between emphysema or lung-cancer!”
Butler Shaffer
“The so-called ‘social contract’ is a crock of shit. There is no contract if I did not choose to sign it. The society does not have a right to impose its will on me, even if it is purported to be for ‘the greater good.’ I must have choice to opt-in to any system. I must have choice where my tax dollars go. I must have choice what I do with my own body, including both sex and drugs. I must have choice in what is public and what is private. I must have choice in everything, not orders from ‘authority figures.’”
Mike Margolies
“The free-market solution to the migrant situation is quite simple. If all the property of a country is privately owned, anyone can come and stay as long as he can pay for his accommodations. When even the streets and parks are privately owned, trespassers, beggars, squatters, migrants, vagrants, and the like have a problem. A country with 100% private property, and zero welfare, would only attract people who like those conditions. And they’d undoubtedly be welcome as individuals. But 'migration' would be impossible.
So, again, I'm all for open borders. Anybody should be able to go anywhere if they can support themselves. In a free market society, however, nobody's going to give you money just for existing. You have to produce goods and services in order to be able to buy food, shelter, and clothing.”
Doug Casey
“What’s the psychology behind America’s support of its government’s evil wars? The scar and shame of 9/11 loom large. That was a defeat. More generally, Americans won’t accept defeat. They fear it. They fear not being numero uno. They fear even a loss of prestige, and politicians even use that as an excuse for maintaining losing commitments and interventions. Americans fear a loss of control, even if such control is counterproductive. Their psychology demands winning and being on top, being the big honcho, the world’s policeman.”
Michael Rozeff
“The entire world has now learned a new lesson about the putrid, cynically corrupt, criminal nature of American ‘democracy’ with its vote rigging, orchestrated acts of violence, censorship, and the creation of a de facto state-run media with its never-ending avalanche of lies in support of the regime, little different from the ‘media’ of the Soviet Union. No one in the world wants to import this! Which of course is why the U.S. government is not ‘the world’s policeman’ but the world’s bully that invades, conquers, and instigates revolutions, all in the name of ‘American exceptionalism’ and ‘bringing democracy’ to other part of the world.”
Tom DiLorenzo
“People accuse me of being overly cynical about America. To that I say: Guilty as charged! When some hipster wraps his brand-new McMuscle car around a power pole because his face was buried in a cell phone screen trying to ‘capture’ some Pokémon critter that exists in McLa-La Land, I fail to see how this society can function much longer.”
Jack Perry
“Politicians are like celebrities getting ready to release a new album or film:
When you hate them they win.
When you love them, they win.
When you fear them, they win.
When you praise them, they win.
When you spread lies about them, they win.
When you tell the truth about them, they win.
As long as you believe they are the primary ones worth talking about, they win.”
T.K. Coleman
“The more we exist outside the system, the more creative we are.”
Beatrice Wood
Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
“If everyone relied less on political celebrities, if everyone stopped waiting for a knight on a white horse, or a feminist icon, a crusade to fight or a social justice mob to join and started determining their own futures; if everyone began looking far more carefully at the people behind the curtain, then perhaps we could finally see a change in humanity not seen in thousands of years. Not a collectivist change, but an individualist change, which is the only kind of change everlasting or worth a damn.”
Brandon Smith
“As citizens of this nation, it’s important to understand that it was a group of states that came together to form a nation, not the other way around. This freedom is our baby, not the federal government’s. The people gave it life. The people saw it through tough times. We the people decide what options are on the table, and we don’t need permission from the government we created to ensure that it continues to serve us as we see fit.”
Dallas Brooks
“Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.”
Henry David Thoreau
“The well-being – even the survival – of our species itself, depends on upon the full expression of the life force that is found only within individuals. This importance is best served by social systems in which decision-making is diffused among individuals. Life belongs to the living, not to soulless abstractions to which we have conditioned ourselves to be subservient.”
Butler Shaffer
“If the flag is symbolic of the Constitution, that Constitution died long ago — destroyed by a crony railroad lawyer and mercantilist who made war on a sovereign people to benefit monied interests.
If the flag is symbolic of freedom, that freedom no longer exists — stolen long ago by crony corporations and globalist banksters and unaccountable oligarchical black-robed satanists and idol worshippers who usurped their authority created laws out of thin air under the guise of ‘interpreting the Constitution’ a dictate not granted them under the original document.”
Bob Livingston
“I prefer to think of mankind as having no preconceived fate, but as a species whose varied, individual interests combine with their spontaneous and self-directed characters to respond to nature’s continuing demand for success: to be a changing person in a changing world, for whom peace and the inviolability of individuals prevails.”
Butler Shaffer
“Don't place blind faith in politics. Learn to respect your own power. Your ability to change the world isn't defined by who you vote for. You have a much greater capacity for creating a freer society through innovation and individuality than what mainstream media would have you believe. To hell with sitting around waiting for politicians to save us. Have some vision. Have some creativity. Have some self-respect. Have some self-determination.”
T.K. Coleman
“Only to members of the military are we urged to say, ‘Thank you for your service.’ Toward the great entrepreneurs who extend our lives and make them more fulfilling, we are taught to be envious and resentful. They are most certainly not thanked for their service.”
Lew Rockwell
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
H.L. Mencken
Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
“As you may know, Texas’ relationship to the federal government is contractual, and a contract is only as good as the honor of the parties involved. If you were in a marriage where your spouse continually abused you and cheated on you, all while spending the money you had laid aside for your children, it is doubtful that a reasonable person would say to you, ‘Too bad! You have to stay married!’ Certainly the founders didn’t believe this, and the 10th amendment of the Constitution reserves all power not given the federal government for States, including the power the leave the union.”
Ryan Thorson
“Who, we ask, has the right to rule what ideas pass through your mind? Taken further, who has the right to regulate how you use your mind? The proper answer is nobody. Not the DEA. Not Congress. Not anyone.
Cognitive liberty, we find, is the cornerstone of individual liberty. Because if you’re not free to think for yourself or alter your consciousness on your own terms, how free are you actually? If you do not have autonomy over your own brain chemistry, how can you claim to have any autonomy at all?”
Chris Campbell
“I trust the businessman only when he’s out to make money – because then he’s going to want to do things my way. When he’s out to do me good, he is going to do it his way.”
Dwight Lee
“Where will we be led by the illusion that impels us to believe that the state is a person who has an inexhaustible fortune independent of ours?”
Frederick Bastiat
“Why does the world look to the most stupid, vile, arrogant, corrupt and murderous government on the planet for leadership?
War is the only destination to which Washington can lead.”
Paul Craig Roberts
"While no president is anywhere near as decent as his supporters want you to believe, neither is any president as bad as his opposition claims. Presidents are simply the gunk that floats to the top of the political soup, to be scooped up and held aloft as someone more noble than the rest of humanity.”
Kent McManigal
“Usually, the greater good is based on entirely arbitrary determinations rather than any inherent moral code, making it vaporous and easily changeable. A ‘greater good’ without principles based in inherent conscience or natural law can be shifted on a whim to suit any evil imaginable.”
Brandon Smith
"The political process (voting) is not a function of government or functional to government. The political process is a façade of government that satisfies the quest for political choices. It is an illusion unrelated to reality and political participation by the people. It is, however, the perfect system for keeping the people focused on empty nonsense year after year. People totally misunderstand the nature of government. Otherwise they would know that there is no such thing as political choices or political freedom."
Bob Livingston
"Are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump more fit national leaders than Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, our first four presidents who we are reminded were elected by a suffrage restricted to white male property holders? Is there any reason to think that by expanding our suffrage we have improved the quality of our leadership? Yes, we have become more egalitarian since the American Founding and some might argue, more just, but our march toward democratic equality looks grimmer and grimmer each passing day."
Paul Gottfried
“I used to joke that there was nothing wrong with Washington that 10 megatons on the capital couldn’t cure. But I don’t say that anymore. Partially because it’s too dangerous, but mainly because it’s now untrue. What’s now needed is 10 megatons on the capital, and four more bursts in a quadrant 10 miles out.”
Doug Casey
Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Today the law of natural selection is aiding the manmade laws of artificial selection. Under Socialism the unfit would survive. Under Socialism the efficient man would have a price upon his head."
H.L. Mencken
“In short, war is inseparable from propaganda, lies, hatred, impoverishment, cultural degradation, and moral corruption. It is the most horrific outcome of the moral and political legitimacy people are taught to grant the state. Wrapped in the trappings of patriotism, home, songs, and flags, the state deludes people into despising a leader and a country that until that point they had barely even heard of, much less had an informed opinion about, and it teaches its subjects to cheer the maiming and death of fellow human beings who have never done them any harm.”
Lew Rockwell
“The crucial distinction between government and business is not private vs. public. After all, business often serves the public while government often serves private interests. The crucial difference between government and the so-called private sector is impunity – the ability to assault, kill, and defraud without consequence. The more government and business become intermingled, the more the law becomes a tool of privilege for private and public players alike rather than a defensive measure for the equal liberty and dignity of all.”
Joey Clark
“Everyone acts like the fate of Western Civilization hangs upon these elections. If that is the case, then Western Civilization is long past its ‘Best By’ date and needs to be shuffled off to the trash can before it starts to stink even worse.”
Jack Perry
“Populism is the belief in policies that benefit the average person. The only viable populist platform is liberty and the free market. Protectionism always was and always will be a policy that favors wealthy elites at the expense of the average American worker. Politics is a rich man’s sport.”
James Ostrowski
“It is a curious notion that if 15 percent is considered enough public support to grant a candidate a national platform in the Presidential debates, then why is an issue like state independence [supported by 25%] relatively ignored by our state and national leaders? Usually, when a quarter of a country’s population supports an issue, it tends to demand attention. In a cynical political sense, one would even expect officials to exploit it in order to achieve higher office, but instead there’s largely silence. I suppose they recognize that an implication of independence being so popular among their constituents might be that their own leadership is seen as dysfunctional.”
Ryan Thorson
“Similar to the past, where we recognized chattel slavery was wrong. In time, we’ll also see free-range slavery as a mistake.”
Jamie Redman
“Progressivism is a cartel. It is breaking down. It wins only by default. Its political leaders no longer inspire confidence. Yet the whole movement has been a massive confidence game for over a century: faith in bureaucracy. That faith is waning. So are new revenue sources to support the existing programs, which are all running deficits.
They promised a new world order. It's the same old order: power grabbing and tax grabbing.”
Gary North
“All world history presents a contest between the economic and the political means. The state is an organization of the political means forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished.”
Franz Oppenheimer
“Divisiveness is not a byproduct of politics, it’s a feature. Politics is designed to create hatred and unrest, as a prelude to justifying more and more state power over our lives.
After all, politics is war by other means. And war claims victims. War has winners and losers. Most of all, war has profiteers: namely the political class and its many clients, both in government and the nominally private sector.”
Jeff Deist
“No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
Ludwig von Mises
“Let it be known across the land: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, no matter who craps in the master bedroom’s bathroom, have about as much power to ‘save’ America than does Vladimir Putin.”
Chris Campbell
