"Political power is built upon group consciousness, not individualism. Politicians appeal to the individual and human liberty, but their careers are built upon helping more and more power flow to the state.
When the American politicians talk about 'human liberty,' they certainly are not talking about our or your personal and individual liberty. 'Human liberty' is a code word for groupism (the crowd). Politicians and bureaucrats never remotely consider personal or individual liberty."
Bob Livingston
"Trained to serve the power structure that presumes to have authority over us, we are quite familiar with the verb form of the word ‘train.’ But the noun usage of that word tells us something of what we have become. 'Training' produces a 'train,' which one dictionary informs us is 'a succession of pack animals traveling in the same direction.' What better description of what we have allowed ourselves to become: both the means and the ends by which otherwise self-directed individuals are compacted into one manageable herd of indistinguishable parts. The U.S. government’s collectivist motto, e pluribus unum, is an open admission of the dehumanized and morally obscene nature of the state."
Butler Shaffer
"Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think – not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment . . . Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality."
Ayn Rand
"Issues from defense to public goods to the free rider problem can never be solved by governments for the simple reason that governments aren’t about solutions, they’re always and everywhere about expanding the power, coercion and ego puffery for the elitists who run those governments."
Garry Reed
"The long-run consequences of some economic policies may become evident in a few months. Others may not become evident for several years. Still others may not become evident for decades. But in every case those long-run consequences are contained in the policy as surely as the hen was in the egg, the flower in the seed."
Henry Hazlitt
"We’ve allowed a lie to permeate our society and to become accepted as a universal truth. That is, that all of life’s problems are caused by outside factors– specifically, by people whose will to conquer nature as long as they physically can is stronger, and whose luck is better, than our own. There is no survival of the fittest, there is no luck. If you aren’t white and life isn’t going so well, a white person is keeping you down. If you’re a woman failing to reach personal goals, a man is pushing you around. If you’re a homosexual having a hard time, it’s because the breeders want to see you fail. It’s no longer even acceptable to blame biology if you believe you were born with the wrong parts and feel weird walking around– you’re simply the victim of mass misunderstanding of a scientifically un-provable physical malfunction."
Sam Rolley
"Tyranny comes easily when those seeking it need only corrupt a single Congress, appoint a single Supreme Court, or control the departments of one executive branch. In a confederation of largely self-governing states, those hungry to domineer would have to suborn fifty congresses. It could not be done. State governments are accessible to the governed. They can be ejected. They are much more likely to be sympathetic to the desires of their constituents since they are of the same culture."
Fred Reed
"Why are politicians – left and right – increasingly despised by reasonable people? Could it have anything to do with the fact that they will not leave people alone? That all they do – at great expense (to us) and with great pomposity – is decree how we will be allowed to live, what we must do and what we may not do? Most of these things being precisely none of their business to so order?"
Eric Peters
"Every Revolutionary movement, every 'ism,' posits a final, perfected society. Whether early pre-Reformation zealots like the Cathares or Lollards, various millenarian sects, the Illuminati followers of Adam Weishaupt, or the socialists, anarchists and Communists of more recent times, a future utopian vision is held up as the final goal, the final stage in mankind’s torturous path to earthly happiness and perfection. But that chimerical objective is always an illusion, and usually a bloody one, strewn with the corpses of thousands, even millions of victims, who stood in the way of its realization."
Boyd Cathey
"It’s important to remember that we don’t need a national majority of any kind to press for two key strategies in preserving liberty: secession and nullification.
We must have a system in which states always have a right to secede. Does that mean we always have to have a pro-secession position? It doesn’t mean that. But the option to secede should always be there.
And when people tell me that secession is terrible, I ask them if they opposed secession of Eastern Europe from the Soviet Bloc and if they opposed secession of the United States from Britain. They’re of course fine with those secession movements."
Ron Paul
"As I see it, when the rules of engagement are devolved to the military, and who knows how far down in the chain of command this goes, the risks of military clashes that lead to increased tensions rise drastically. It becomes easier for red lines of honor and face to be crossed. It becomes harder to back down. These too raise the risks of a larger war that no one in his right mind should want."
Albert Meyer
"In another way of highlighting the difference between Texas and California, think of them as two children leaving the same household. Texas seeks to leave the house and be an independent functioning person, to make his own decisions and be responsible for himself. On the other hand, California is the like the basement-dwelling teenager: he likes parental subsidies, but not the rules, and in a tantrum says that he wants to run away from home. California isn’t flirting with secession out of any deep conviction, they’re doing it out of spite."
Jessie Rude
"War is like a big machine that no one really knows how to
run and when it gets out of control it ends up destroying
the things you thought you were fighting for, and a lot
of other things you kinda forgot you had."
Anonymous
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