Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"We might even say that in 2017, there are two things that really animate the political and cultural elites of the West: first, their self-styled urge to defend truth, their pose as warriors for honesty against the misinformation of the new populists; and secondly, their agitation with unfettered discussion and with the expression of what they consider to be hateful or outré views. This is striking, because truth without freedom, without the freest possible space in which to debate and doubt and blaspheme, is not truth at all. It is dogma. It represents an assumption of intellectual and moral infallibility rather than a winning and proving of it in the only way that counts: through free public contestation. That our rulers both claim to love truth and fear freedom of speech utterly explodes the pretensions of their moral panic about a ‘post-truth’ era. It’s not truth they want to protect – it’s the authority of their prejudice."
Brendan O’Neill

"The Mohammedans—although I’ll note it’s now very un-PC to call them that—are technologically and economically backward. As long as they put the Koran at the center of their lives—and they have to, because it is the direct, incontrovertible word of Allah—they’ll remain backward. If, through an accident of geology, there wasn’t a lot of low cost oil in places they live, the West would have no reason to care what they think, say, or do. They’d be no more than an interesting tourist attraction."
Doug Casey

"If Trump is willing to defy his own word, as well as constitutional, domestic, and international law regarding war, will he now use his presidential power to affirm his principles and bypass the politicized courts (whose overreach he has often disparaged) and unilaterally nullify Roe v. Wade and all subsequent federal court decisions which slavishly follow that case’s nullification of all state laws regarding abortion?"
Christopher Manion

"To those walking the halls of government power, the people over whom they rule usually fall into one of two classes. In the mind of the politician, anyone who deigns to oppose 'public policy' — which means government policy in all cases — for any reason, regardless of the reason’s merit, is the enemy and must be branded as such and crushed. Anyone who stands between them and their efforts for more power, more aggrandizement and more wealth is public enemy No. 1."
Bob Livingston

"Social divisions are absolutely rational and healthy, and there is nothing 'evil' or totalitarian about organizing only with people that share your values. The real evil comes from those that would suppress our values in the name of 'harmonization' — there is no such thing.  Globalists and leftists argue for the adoption and toleration of all ideologies and principles as a means to peace, but what they really want in the end is the erasure of all the ideologies and principles they see as disagreeable in order to make way for their own."
Brandon Smith

"What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor.  Man curbs his innate instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings.  The more he wants to improve his material well-being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor.  Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action.
Human cooperation under the divison of labor 'bursts asunder,' however, when citizens turn into warriors."
Ludwig von Mises

"Those who desire to control others through access to the tools of violence that define the state, have rationales to convince their intended victims of the 'rightness' of their rule. From explanations such as 'God’s will' to the 'divine right of kings,' the authority of some to enjoy coercive power over others – along with their subjects’ duty of obedience – is so engrained into the minds of people as to seem as self-evident as the forces of gravity."
Butler Shaffer

"We’d be better off if Trump had left all the government posts unfilled and then ordered every federal government employee to find other jobs. We’d be better off if they were all given 6 months or even 12 months severance pay. Then permanently leave their posts vacant. Generous, yes, but infinitely less costly than the existing amounts extracted from taxpayers. We should bribe Congress to dissolve itself and this Union in the same way. If every member were given $10 million, the total would be only 5.35 billion dollars or so. It’s a bargain."
Michael Rozeff

"The Cold War was Marx; the cultural war is Gramsci.  Both had the same objective.  Gramsci’s model has sustained and has proven more successful in destroying western civilization."
Bionic Mosquito

"When you watch the president and government in Washington, the European governments, especially the idiots in London, the Canadian and Australian governments, you can only marvel at the total stupidity of 'Western leadership.' They are begging for the end of the world.
And the presstitutes are at work driving toward the end of life. Huge numbers of Western peoples are being prepared for their demise, and they are protected from the realization by their insouciance."
Paul Craig Roberts

"Clinging to nostalgia for the Union that was, many refuse to even consider legal and peaceful independence as an option. But meanwhile, D.C. takes our lands without asking, strikes down our laws through judicial fiat, and dictates a multitude of other rules that are not constitutionally permissible. Yet, in the face of all that, there are still those that insist that we can reform our prodigal government, as if it hasn’t been tried and tried again.
If Texas wants its sovereignty back, then we must have the courage to repossess it from the federal government that has abused it. What we’ve laid down, we can take up again, understanding that it is not the political union that currently binds us that ultimately matters, but the principles that it was founded on. The same principles that the Union no longer cherishes, Texas will defend. The hour is late, and the longer we delay, the more we damage a prosperous and free future. It’s time to Texit."
Billy Hathorn