Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be…"
Lao Tzu (6th century B.C.)

"But let’s remember the Democrats used to be very pro-Russia when there was Stalin. When Stalin and Lenin were in charge, they liked Russia. They set up the export and import bank to fund trade with Russia. Of course, they were Russia’s ally in WWII. Now that Russia is …no longer Communist, it has much freer market and no Gulag, they hate its guts. Seems to me there is something wrong about that."
Lew Rockwell

"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

"Nation states when stripped of the patriotic bunting and jingoistic propaganda are nothing more than claimed (and conquered) tax jurisdictions where the subjects are drained of resources at gunpoint to subsidize the rulers and their parasites and looters who maintain their constituent power.
Terrorism is politically motivated violence against non-combatants which means that government’s very charter is a terrorist act."
Bill Buppert

"Government, begotten of aggression and by aggression, ever continues to betray its original nature by its aggressiveness.
We let ourselves be deceived by words and phrases which suggest one aspect of the facts while leaving the opposite aspect unsuggested. A good illustration of this…is seen in the use of the words 'protection' and 'protectionist' by the antagonists of free-trade… this so-called protection always involves aggression; and that the name aggressionist ought to be substituted for the name protectionist. For nothing can be more certain than that if, to maintain A’s profit, B is forbidden to buy of C, or is fined to the extent of the duty if he buys of C, then B is aggressed upon that A may be 'protected.' Nay, 'aggressionists' is a title doubly more applicable to the anti-free-traders than is the euphemistic title 'protectionists;' since, that one producer may gain, ten consumers are fleeced."
Herbert Spencer

"There is a reason that nation, tribe, race, and religion are 'age-old.'  That reason is human nature.  To ignore or otherwise try to remove these from our humanness is…inhuman.  Of course, if we do not have nation, tribe, race, and religion to fall back on, we are left only with government for governance (and for the libertarian utopians out there, it will always take more than the NAP to provide governance; take away culture, and you will always and only be left with government)."
Bionic Mosquito

"The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, 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, and securing itself against the revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion has no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors."
Franz Oppenheimer

"I see leftism as a projection of personal unhappiness into the world of politics whereby the leftist uses the state when they control it, or private violence when they don’t, to do damage to those who are the object of the leftist’s colossal envy and thereby somehow reduce the leftist’s chronic misery." 
James Ostrowski

"Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."
Thomas Paine

"However congenial the idea of open borders may be to elites who think of themselves as citizens of the world, it is not even possible to have everyone come to America and the country still remain America.
Some immigrant groups seek to bring to America the very cultures whose failures led them to flee to this country. Not all individual immigrants and not all immigrant groups. But too many Americans have become so gullible that they are afraid to even get the facts about which immigrants have done well and improved America, and which have become a burden that can drag us all down."
Thomas Sowell

"Body counts are not victory. Victory will be when America doesn’t continue to make terrorist enemies, when the TSA is gone, when the FBI isn’t entrapping potential bombers, when domestic shooters and mass murderers do not take ISIS as their inspiration, and when the domestic police state and domestic spying are dismantled. Until then, bin Laden has won. One can die and still win. One can kill enemies and still lose."
Michael Rozeff

"Any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation or consultation or permission, they are invaders, whether they are American, Turkish, or any other one. And we don’t think this is going to help. What are they going to do? To fight ISIS? The Americans lost nearly every war. They lost in Iraq, they had to withdraw at the end. Even in Somalia, let alone Vietnam in the past and Afghanistan, your neighboring country. They didn’t succeed anywhere they sent troops, they only create a mess; they are very good in creating problems and destroying, but they are very bad in finding solutions."
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad