Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"The U.S. military—whatever it once was—has, for many years, simply been the president’s personal attack force to bomb, invade, occupy, and otherwise bring death and destruction to any country he deems necessary.

Fallen U.S. soldiers died unnecessarily, needlessly, senselessly, in vain, and for a lie. They died a pawn in service to the state. They died for the military/industrial complex. They died for a reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy that is deeply flawed, and has been for over a hundred years."

Laurence Vance

"But the impulse to conserve for conservation's sake has taken on an unthinking, unsupported, unnecessary urgency. Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection prunes the poorly adapted and allows the most hardy to flourish. Species constantly go extinct, and every species that is alive today will one day follow suit. There is no such thing as an 'endangered species,' except for all species. The only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings. Yes, we have altered the environment and, in doing so, hurt other species. This seems artificial because we, unlike other life forms, use sentience and agriculture and industry. But we are a part of the biosphere just like every other creature, and our actions are just as volitional, their consequences just as natural. Conserving a species we have helped to kill off, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to discharge our own guilt, but little else."

Alexander Pyron

"When the superiority of voluntary interactions is so patent, so heart-warming, and so overwhelming, why does the State with its soul-crushing compulsion still exist?"

Becky Akers

"The mainstream argument becomes a kabuki theater between the 'ignorantly destructive' populists/nationalists/individualists versus the more 'reasonable' and supposedly forward thinking socialists/globalists/multiculturalists. The truth is, sovereignty champions can be pro-individual liberty and also pro-community or pro-nation, as long as that community is voluntary."

Bob Livingston

"The non-aggression principle, fully extended, allows for managed borders of property.  Property implies discrimination by the property owner; in the case of his property borders, this means the visitor has a right to exit, but not a right to enter.  The property owner may exclude anyone from his property for any reason.

When it comes to 'borders,' the state has made the private property owner impotent in terms of gathering with his neighbors and agreeing to this completely libertarian principle.  The state removes from me my property rights.  The only means I have by which to exercise these rights is via the state – and this is the single argument against state-managed borders, that it is the state acting as the agent."

Bionic Mosquito

"Politics makes society uncivil and demented. In their lust to manipulate and control, the political class is willing to say and do anything to garner power and destroy alternatives. Their goal is not pluralism, tolerance, individual autonomy, or peaceful coexistence—their goal is totalitarian domination. They are reprobate and rabid in their hunger for power. Their methods enthusiastically involve deceiving, confusing, crippling, annoying, insulting, maligning, meddling, molesting, muckraking, impeding, burdening, exhausting, exasperating, extorting, damaging, demoralizing, threatening, frightening, terrorizing, and destroying. It’s complete incivility and depravity.

What should one expect to be the psychological result of such an environment?"

Trenton Fervor

"The fact is that the federal government has become too bloated, corrupt, and incompetent to really be accountable to the people. And sadly, there’s nothing we can do to fix it. However, it is equally true that a government closer to the people tends to be more responsive and responsible. We need to finally acknowledge that Washington has outlived its usefulness and a 'federal government' is a government too many. If Texas were to revoke the sovereignty that it loaned to the Union, then Texas could form a more transparent government, one that is more interested in protecting the freedom of its citizens than it is in stealing their money."

Ryan Thorson