Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"Most of our lives are about mutual choice. We download the app and rate it highly if we like it. We spend our money to get what we want. But government? They take and take and take and offer only excuses and inept monopoly services in return. After a while, you begin to feel used, like a chump. We can’t just cut them off and do our own thing, because government forces it all down our throats."
Jeffrey Tucker

"A weak federal government would produce little divisiveness because there is little to be divided over. A strong Federal government would produce significant divisiveness since there is much to be divided over. It also goes to say that an absolute government would create absolute division while the absence of government would not produce a division because there isn’t any risk of having your life dictated by distant populations. When we add in factors of geographic distance and cultural diversity, we end up with a horrible mud-slinging process where people actively dislike both candidates and the electorate openly attacks one another over the political process, completing the division process. These issues won’t go away with vague calls of being civil, coming together or getting along. One group or another will always feel put out and ignored since those in office only truly represent those that got them elected."
Justin Murray

"From its very inception the state has had too much power. The moment that agents of the state are allowed to do things that, if we attempted, would put us in a prison cell, it has too much power. When the state has power to confiscate and threaten to accomplish its ends—i.e. to tax, set tariffs, and prevent other governments from attempting to form within its territory—it has gone too far. Indeed, all the most basic characteristics that define the modern nation state extend well beyond anything that could be called legitimate power."
Ryan Miller

"A mixed economy is ruled by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force."
Ayn Rand

"The State is a make-believe entity to which over-awed believers ascribe preferences, will, and agency: essentially, a god. True believers in this god slavishly adhere to its preferences. They swallow the confused, incoherent notion that the State exists as a manifestation of their own collective will that works for their own collective benefit. The church and its god are one. This superstition that, in some vague sense, they are only enslaved to themselves makes such bondage easier to accept.
In other words, the State is a herd mentality: an inclination in a person to renounce his individuality and subsume himself into a herd, a pack, a tribe, a horde, a gang, a cult, a collective. The believers revere and defer to their own 'togetherness' as if it were a god. Deutschland uber alles."
Dan Sanchez

"Let’s face it: Today’s conservatives don’t conserve anything, except political jobs. And the GOP is a party that never stood for much of anything, except war and banks."
Jeff Deist

"Grave injury has been done to the concept of democracy by those who, exaggerating the natural law notion of sovereignty, conceived it as a limitless rule of the volonté générale. There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat. The idea that carries away our demagogues and their supporters, the idea that the state can do whatever it wishes, and that nothing should resist the will of the sovereign people, has done more evil perhaps than the caesar-mania of degenerate princelings."
Ludwig Von Mises

"If 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that boring politics are the best politics. A staid political culture is a sign of a healthy society, as it allows humanity’s passions to flourish outside of the coercive and violent realm of political power. Those who say we should look to our leaders to inspire us, or that politics should be the engine of 'progress,' are unwittingly calling for the destruction of civil society."
J. Andrew Zalucky

"Fascism rested not on the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion related to romanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise denied romanticism’s exaltation of unfettered person creativity. The fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of politics that they would experience sensually: the warmth of belonging to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power; the excitement of participating in a vast collective enterprise; the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings, and of sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill of domination."
Robert O. Paxton

"For it is only in an essentially free society that certain trends have the possibility of prevailing: self-responsibility, improved morals, a passionate striving for intellectual excellence, a will to overcome obstacles, an energetic enthusiasm turned toward self-improvement, and abounding entrepreneurial spirit, competition, and free pricing." 
Leonard Reed

"Government is the ultimate hierarchical control structure. While it may attract well-meaning people to its lower echelons, typically based on a deep misconception of government’s true nature, it’s the upper reaches where the truly opulent wealth and unbridled power resides that attracts the worst that the human race can produce."
Garry Reed

"Politics is prone to corruption, no matter how detailed the legislation, no matter how noble the public official. If you want politics to be less corrupt, the solution isn’t to shrink corruption. The solution is to shrink the state."
TJ Brown

"Industrialization did more than just extend the average human lifespan. It led a greater percentage of the population to decide that humans were meant to be ballerinas, full-time musicians, mathematicians, athletes, fashion designers, yoga masters, fan-fiction authors, and folks with one-of-a kind titles on their business cards."
Kevin Kelly

"The mainstream press continues to maintain that the CIA, the Pentagon, and the CIA are necessary to 'keep us safe.' It’s the exact opposite. They are the ones who stir up the enemies and produce the crises which they then use as the excuse to 'keep us safe.'"
Jacob G. Hornberger

"Fire the CIA. And sell the Pentagon to a laser-tag arcade. These people couldn’t flip burgers and they’re out there flipping governments."
Jack Perry