Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"This American 'idea' came from somewhere – ideas cannot exist
absent the people who hold these. I have written often enough from
where this idea comes. It grew on a specific soil – a specific
cultural and civilizational soil. It hasn’t been demonstrated, to my
knowledge, that it can grow on any other soil for any extended period of time.
So what happens when the elite work to replace the soil? Why
is it that open-borders libertarians join the likes of open-borders Soros in
this endeavor?"
Bionic Mosquito
"The State is, by its nature, a coercive institution. And coercion of
any type should be kept to a minimum in any society. That means the State
should be limited to protecting you from domestic coercion with police. Foreign
coercion with an army. And facilitating the adjudication of disputes with a
court system. In today’s world, however, it does none of those things
effectively—but tries to do everything else."
Doug Casey
"Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable
circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one
might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that
their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable.
Nevertheless, with full knowledge of this fact, they advocate a reform, e.g.,
socialism, because they hope that the rich, whom they envy, will also suffer
under it."
Ludwig von Mises
"The question at hand – whether here in the United States or anywhere on
this Earth – is whether the individual has rights that others are bound to
respect – morally as well as legally.
Or, not.
Is your physical body is your exclusive property – to do with as you
see fit? If it is, then you are a free man. If it is not, you are a slave – the
degree of your slavery being morally(as well as logically) immaterial.
Theft is theft. Rebranding legalized theft as 'taxes doesn’t
change the nature of the thing. A person’s property is taken from him by
violence. This is theft, by whatever name.
Moral human interactions are either voluntary and consensual
– the concept of free association – or they are not. When a man is forced to
interact with other men in any way whatsoever, he is no longer a free man.
Do you agree – or disagree – with the proposition that the only
moral basis for interfering with any man is when he causes tangible harm to the
person or property of another free man?
If you do not agree, then you believe in conditional
privileges . . . as articulated in the Constitution."
Eric Peters
"History demonstrates that genuine freedom cannot be invented whole
cloth nor imposed among any people who have no organic tradition of it.
Responsible self-government is not a prize or a trinket that can be taken up
merely by a change of scenery. When unrestrained masses who have never known
freedom and who believe in mindless superstitions like witchcraft and voodoo
are set loose on the land and on the people, there is an unwholesome clash of
cultures."
Bob Livingston
"It may be argued that ours is a government that was designed to do
exactly what it has and to become exactly what it has become, an empire. Maybe,
but is this empire necessary for the market order that has produced our great
benefits? Absolutely not. Or has this growth in government retarded the
benefits of that market order? Without a doubt."
Michael Rozeff
"By its collaboration with the military/security complex and
the corrupt Hillary DNC, the liberal/progressive/left has forever discredited
itself. It is now seen by every thinking person worldwide as an insane
propaganda ministry for the neoconservatives’ plan to use nuclear weapons to
eliminate constraints on US
unilateralism. The liberal/progressive/left has endorsed 'hegemony or death.' They will get death. For all of us."
Paul Craig Roberts
