Saturday, June 24, 2017

Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:


"Common culture provides governance with much less government.  Destroy common culture and you inherently invite more government, more control."
Bionic Mosquito

"Self-determination is the ultimate political goal. It is the path to liberty, however imperfect. A world of seven billion self-governing individuals is the ideal, but short of that we should prefer the Liechtensteins to the Germanys and the Luxembourgs to the Englands. We should prefer states’ rights to federalization in the US, and cheer for the breakup of EU. We should support breakaway movements in places like Catalonia and Scotland (provided they are organic and not engineered by states and their spy agencies). We should admire the Swiss federalist system, where localism is a governing principle.  We should favor local control over faraway legislatures and administrative bodies, and thus reject multilateral trade deals. We should, in sum, prefer small to large when it comes to government."
Jeff Deist

"If a true UBI [Universal Basic Income] was put into effect, productive people are going to find it degrading, and unproductive people are going to take advantage of it. More important, it’s immoral, because you’re taking production from some people and giving it to others that have done nothing in return to deserve it. That creates resentment. Simply being alive doesn’t give you the right to demand things from other people."
Doug Casey

"The soldiers are not heroes but mercenary killers morally indistinguishable from hitmen for the Mafia. A kid joins the military, perhaps never having heard of the Pentagon’s next target country–Iraq, Vietnam, Iran, Afghanistan, wherever. It doesn’t matter. They are just countries.
Then one day come orders from Washington to go kill people in the country du jour. The kid does it. He doesn’t know the people he kills, who have done nothing to him and threaten neither him nor the United States. If ordered, he would as readily attack Switzerland–or Americans.
Guido and Vito. You tell me the difference."
Fred Reed

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience."
George Bernard Shaw

"The conspiracy theory is a tool in a larger tool kit used by those who wish to decode the grossly imperfect and fluid narrative describing our world. When investigated responsibly, conspiracy theories function as part of a conceptual spectrum of analysis with which we can investigate government and corporate abuses of power and the manufacturing of ‘consensus reality.’ In the 21st century, when the very transmission of information can be considered criminal, being a responsible conspiracy theorist just means you practice due diligence and hunger for the truth."
Jake Anderson

"While patriotism is a form of affection, nationalism, it has often been said, is grounded in resentment and rivalry; it’s often defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It is militant by nature, and its typical style is belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight."
Joe Sobran

"The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day. Whatever the merits of other civilizations in other respects, no civilization is like that of the West in this respect. No other civilization can claim that its defining characteristic is a dialogue of this sort. No dialogue in any other civilization can compare with that of the West in the number of great works of the mind that have contributed to this Dialogue. The Spirit of Western Civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the Logos. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everyone is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined."
Robert Maynard Hutchins

"The pain and injury of being attacked is all too real today for those in our own imperial capital. Some in Congress were victims of vengeful violence on June 14 [shooting of Republican congressmen].
If they have the wisdom and morality they often claim, Congress should develop empathy for this same grief and pain they inflict upon others using their military agents in far off lands. Angry vengeful barbarians are already lining up at their gates. Foreign and domestic.
For any real healing to occur, Congress needs to halt their support for senseless and unending violence and work instead for peace here and abroad."
Mike Holmes

"The consolidation of the states into one vast empire, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of ruin which has overwhelmed all that preceded it."
Robert E. Lee

"Section 1.1.1 [of the ‘An Act to Amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code’] tells us, for example, that some people 'self-identity with a non-traditional or non-stereotypical concept of gender.'
'Non-stereotypical'? It’s f*cking science. 
It’s perfectly fine for people to be whatever they feel. But that doesn’t change the laws of nature: human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes, one of which determines gender. 
Aside from rare cases of genetic deformation, an X+Y sex chromosome means having a male wee-wee. An X+X chromosome means having a female wee-wee. 
What exactly is the stereotype here? 
Are magnetism and trigonometry also stereotypes? 
Has Western Civilization really reached the point where basic science and human anatomy are set aside to ensure that someone doesn’t get offended? 
Apparently we have."
Simon Black


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