Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"Empires need more than force to dominate other nations. They need a mystique. This mystique—a mask for imperial plunder, repression and exploitation—seduces some native elites, who become willing to do the bidding of the imperial power or at least remain passive. And it provides a patina of civility and even nobility to justify to those at home the costs in blood and money needed to maintain empire."
Chris Hedges

"We the people are the sovereign and ultimately, we the people are the government formed to meet needs that are better met by a group than by individuals. We are not slaves. We need to remember that. I think that’s forgotten. The definition of freedom is lost in America. When we have to have a license or ask permission to do everything, we are subjects."
Ran Bundy

"My prescription for throwing off government serfdom and escaping the endless-taxation system is always to read, read, read. Be curious. The greatest enemy of government is the knowledgeable individual. In order to defeat government control, the answer is to be an individualist. Ignore the party line. Parties are only interested in building their power base and collecting your money." 
Bob Livingston

"Politics is now an arena for discourtesy and effrontery, aggression and manipulation, perpetual interpersonal aggravation and confrontation—essentially just legitimized provocation. The system destroys civility and brotherhood, respect, courtesy, dignity, and voluntary cooperation. It fosters social disconnection based on judgmentalism, condescension, paternalism, benevolent despotism, vicarious altruism, unaccountable compassion, and pride and moral smugness in coercion.
Elections and politics are stressful, frustrating, insulting, and infuriating. They produce feelings of angst, vulnerability, impotence, powerlessness, exhaustion, debilitation, and suffocation. They embarrass, aggravate, disgust, incite, demoralize, and polarize. They encourage taking pleasure in the misfortune and antagonization of those with whom a person disagrees. They promote a constant drone of ill-will, hate, and hostility."
Trenton Fervor

"The state serves very little useful purpose. Throughout history its main products have been wars, taxes, pogroms, revolutions, persecutions, confiscations, and the like. Politics produces nothing; it’s all about who decides who gets what at whose expense. Political entities are coercive by their nature. The bigger they are, the more dysfunctional. Nation-states are just a testimony to how thoughtless the average person is, that he accedes to the idea, like a sheep."
Doug Casey

"I am not a Christian and don’t allow one passage in an ancient book translated over and over again to paint my impression of you. I have no animus whatsoever against flexi-sexuality (much less cumbersome than the alphabet soup), what you put in your mouth and other parts of your body is your business. Just don’t ask me to pay for anything, force language requirements and don’t force me to like what you do on penalty of law. Just leave me out of it entirely."
Bill Buppert

"We’ve got to ask ourselves: if Texas is on the hook for up to 20% of disaster costs, why not just take back our tax money, own up to 100%, skip the FEMA confiscation and actually be masters of our own destiny?"
Jeff Thomason

"If we look at the world’s nation-states, they generally consist of large, centralized political entities comprised of a union of culturally distinct provinces, states or regions. In some cases these regions voluntarily came together over time, while in other cases they were forced together during a war or revolution. It’s crucial that we not view such nation-states as eternal structures that can never be altered, but rather as voluntary political associations. Again, the only way to know such associations are truly voluntary is to periodically subject them to referendums. It seems to me that this should be an integral part of any nation-state. In contrast, we have a name for power relationships that aren’t voluntary. Slavery."
Michael Kreiger

"Think about this for a moment. The world is being driven to Armageddon simply because a greedy and corrupt US military/security complex needs an enemy to justify its huge budget, because Hillary and the DNC cannot accept a political defeat, and because the neoconservatives have an ideology of American Supremacy. What’s the difference between the detested White Supremacy and the American Supremacy that President Obama himself endorsed? Why is white supremacy terrible and American supremacy God’s gift to the 'exceptional' and 'indispensable' country?"
Paul Craig Roberts

"The extremely patriarchal religion of Islam is ignored when kissing the feet of the 'Muslim community.' Their flimsy excuses for open oppression of women, persecution of gays and exploitation of children for sex in Islamic nations is totally at odds with SJW complaints about Western countries. Not to mention the still ongoing practice of enslaving black Africans, now seen openly in Libya post-Hillary 'liberation.' This is never mentioned in discussions of Islam by the neo Marxist news outlets which instead are fixated on President Trump’s comments about potential Muslim terrorist threats.
Of course, that is merely my objective reality male brain on the subject.  I probably don’t have the proper 'social construct' mindset to really understand."
Mike Holmes