Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"What the ruling political elites and their mainstream media shills fear is a wide-open, chaotic and very Darwinian competition of concepts and ideas.
They fear this so profoundly because they all know, somewhere in their hearts and minds, that their narrative is bankrupt, and that it no longer explains the world around us. It has failed, and this failure is now self-evident.
The mainstream media has faithfully promoted a neoliberal, neoconservative, Keynesian narrative that has failed to produce the expected results. No wonder trust in the mainstream media has declined sharply in the past few years."
Charles Hugh Smith
“'Greed' is ‘reprehensible acquisitiveness’ and the beauty of capitalism is that the market speaks louder than government dictates or ‘greedy capitalists.’ When the government says, ‘I’m here to help you,’ it’s time to hold onto your wallets. With capitalism, it’s your choice. Greed doesn’t work; markets do."
Peter Lorenzi
"Even if America stands for freedom and possesses exceptional power, we have no obligation to free other peoples whom we consider unfree, using force unilaterally or not using it. There is no such moral law that says ‘free other unfree people.’ There is no greatness or honor in trying. Under the Golden Rule, we do not expect or allow others to invade us and our country in attempts to free us as they see fit; therefore, we should not do that to them, even if we think they are unfree."
Michael Rozeff
"Like the trees in forests and the cells in living organisms, humans too are ‘intimately interconnected’ to each other. One such important way is through our markets, the mechanisms we’ve used for millennia to interact and trade our labors, goods, services, capital, technologies, discoveries, cultures, arts, music and rhythms, ideas, compassion. And, we humans also naturally respond to signals and incentives. And, also like those varying tree species, human individuals, and communities possess various skill sets and comparative advantages. Like the forest, trading on our diversification and specialization provides mutual benefit allowing us, individually and communally, to survive and prosper."
Marc Guttman
"You know you’re a statist when you contend that state punishment and threats is the only thing that keeps you from harming your family."
Bll Buppert
"I want to oppose the idea that the school has to teach directly that special knowledge and those accomplishments which one has to use later directly in life. The demands of life are much too manifold to let such a specialized training in school appear possible.
The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost."
Albert Einstein
"A great variety of special interests always understood that if they could capture the powers of government to back their schemes of enrichment and empowerment, they could make themselves better off at the expense of everyone else. So with the spread of ‘democracy,’ the plunder that had previously been confined to a much narrower set of plunderers was made much more comprehensive, giving rise to the real war of all against all. Of course, this ceaseless political war-making wreaks havoc with the creative forces that private individuals and organizations are exerting, and sometimes it overwhelms them completely, as during serious business contractions and great wars."
Robert Higgs
"We now have a political system which is nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian. The Rule of Law has been defined down to finding a single federal lawyer to write a secret memo vindicating the president’s latest unpublished executive order."
James Bovard
"Democracy is war by other means. Superficially, it is waged with ballots instead of bullets. At the end of the day, those ballots become bullets. Elections load real guns and aim them at real people. If you disobey the commandments handed down by elected officials, beefy men with shaved heads and Ray-Ban sunglasses will come to take you away. If you resist them, hot lead will fly. Elections are scrambles for control over the service weapons that propel those rounds. In such contests, every faction is trying to point the gun barrels at someone else."
Dan Sanchez
"Everywhere you go, everyone is glued to their phones. If all the cell phones in America were suddenly turned off, I wager about 90% of the population would die of thirst and starvation sitting and staring into their cell phones, waiting for them to come back on."
Jack Perry
Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
“There’s a true measurement of the genuine significance of government for you: in its absence, real civilization flourishes. In its malignant presence, the hopes and dreams of ordinary individuals wither and fade and die. How many civilizations have risen and fallen without learning that simple lesson? How many Dreamkillers have occupied the Oval Office?”
L. Neil Smith
“Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all — and I believe that we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn’t true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn’t true of the United States. In all the years I’ve been a journalist, I’ve never known public consciousness to have risen as fast as it’s rising today…yet this growing critical public awareness is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer scale of indoctrination, the mythology of a superior way of life, and the current manufactured state of fear.”
John Pilger
“Fake news: A fake concept created by fake authority figures using fake standards to protect you from fake enemies out of a fake concern for the good of humanity.”
T.K. Coleman
“Libertarian theory is thin – it is the non-aggression principle. Thin leaves the most room in the tent, making room for the most people to join. When it comes to writing about and defending the libertarian theory, I will put my 'thin' credentials next to anyone. But the libertarian theory is not everything.
Application of libertarian theory in this world requires taking into account human realities. Achieving and then sustaining a libertarian future (or even moving in that direction) requires the same.”
Bionic Mosquito
“Without liberty, the world would sink into a pit of mutual recrimination and violence. Human beings thrive in the absence of politicization. Discovering that great truth is one way to avoid the mire into which the politics of our time seeks to plunge us.”
Jeffrey Tucker
“Requiring by force of law that one perform some specific government-mandated act in order to demonstrate proper fealty to government or a symbol of government elevates government and that symbol to the status of a god. It creates a phony form of patriotism within the population that becomes strong leverage against independent thinking, keeping people ignorant of the treason by their own government.”
Bob Livingston
“Keep in mind that just as moths are drawn to a flame so power-seekers are drawn to power hierarchies whether they be political, social, economic, theocratic, military or whatever. So the only hope we have for a peaceful society is to remove the legitimacy of coercive power from our institutions. That’s why I advocate voluntary ‘governance’ over compulsory 'governments' as based on the non-aggression principle against coercion, intimidation and fraud. Then hopefully those who crave power, wealth and ego gratification will have to channel those needs into areas that don’t require coercion, like competing in free market businesses, charitable organizations, mutual aid societies, etc where they can gain legitimate mutually-agreed upon leadership, earn legitimate wealth and feel great about themselves.”
Garry Reed
“The mainstream media is dying. It’s flesh is becoming gangrene. It has become an aversive entity. Whatever it promotes (which is usually more centralization of power), the majority of the people run away from pinching their noses in disgust.”
Chris Campbell
“Power and those in control concede nothing ... without a demand. They never have and never will... Each and every one of us must keep demanding, must keep fighting, must keep thundering, must keep plowing, must keep on keeping things struggling, must speak out and speak up until justice is served because where there is no justice there is no peace.”
Frederick Douglass
“‘Collectivism’ is an idea that is contrary to the individual nature of our lives. We were conceived, with a DNA unique to each one of us, because our sperm was able to outrace the 200,000,000 others just as eager to fertilize our mother’s egg. We live and die; feel pain, joy, happiness, or despair; are able to create and discover; and can mobilize our own energies, only as individuals. Left to the pursuit of our own interests, we would probably never be inclined to demote ourselves to purposes and systems created by others for their self-interested ends. The way in which collectivism wars against our individuality is reflected in the fact that the former interests are mandated and enforced by the coercive machinery of the state.”
Butler Shaffer
“My gosh, all these weenies in their Priuses oppose nuclear power plants, but they’re okay with a nuclear war?! Has there been an environmental impact report filed for Doomsday yet? Have they found a way to have a Green nuclear war? I suppose since it’ll kill everyone equally, we can applaud it as true diversity.”
Jack Perry
