Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Prohibition didn’t work but decriminalization does; the moment something is regulated by law, it is encumbered by the state and becomes a weapon against freedom to choose."
Bill Buppert
"It’s inevitable that some of the U.S. soldiers who are now in Syria will be killed or maimed. If the military were not led by a pack of pathological liars and told the truth, here’s what they would say to the mother of a young American soldier killed in Syria: 'Your son thought it would be fun to join the military in order to go to Syria, which poses no threat to anyone or anything in America, in order to murder strangers from Russia, a country which also poses no danger to anyone or anything in America. He thought it would be an 'adventure' to be a paid murder for the military/industrial complex, shoot a few foreigners, and get well paid for it. We hope he cashed enough paychecks to pay for his casket. Suckerrrrrrrrrrs'.”
Tom DiLorenzo
"The only reason victory is elusive in Afghanistan is that presidents continue to have an impossible definition of victory. If victory is creating a nation where no real nation has ever existed, then no victory will ever occur.
If victory requires the disparate tribes and regional factions of Afghanistan to have more allegiance to a regime in Kabul than to their local tribal leaders, then victory will never come."
Tom Woods
"Texas has sent money and its best politicians to Washington to salvage and safeguard the rights and property of Texans. Unfortunately, they have all failed. They’ve all succumbed to the power of the ring and become the beast they were meant to slay. If Texas doesn’t want to be next on the beast’s menu, to see her prospects become a barren waste, her future lost, and her resources squandered, Texas has to give up the fantasy of a Washington solution and save herself. Texas independence, before its too late."
Ryan Thorson
"To the political right government is an extension of God and they want a government that will coercively impose their values of God-Family-Country on everyone.
To the political left government is a substitute for God and they want a government that will coercively impose their values of group rights-collective thought-social justice on everyone."
Garry Reed
"Validation without merit and demanded empathy without discrimination are time bombs within any culture. Social justice thrives on these disturbing ideals."
Bob Livingston
"The average person now resents rich people for having a modicum of privacy in today's world. Privacy is a signature of civilization—there is no privacy in primitive societies, where everyone can see and hear what’s going on in the next hut. Today the average guy intuits that Google, the NSA, Facebook, and a hundred other entities, including his new 'smart' refrigerator, know everything about him. He resents that some people don’t want to be an open book to the world, and can avoid it."
Doug Casey
"Sure, there is no question that North Korea has a more complete welfare state than the United States has but isn’t that simply a difference in degree rather than principle? Isn’t the overall philosophy of North Korea’s socialist economic system the same as the overall philosophy of America’s welfare state: that it is the purpose of the state to take care of the citizenry and protect them from the vicissitudes of life?
Both North Korea and the United States are national-security states or 'deep states.' They both have enormous, permanent military establishments that require massive amounts of money to fund. They both have secret intelligence agencies that engage in spying and surveillance, including on their own citizens."
Jacob Hornberger
"If we take away the power Washington has, and allow politics to be played out at the State and Local level, then America will no longer be a country in which we are required to force our political beliefs on everyone else. Instead, we would all have genuine options about the style of government we live under.
As the scope of government America continues to grow, we will see political tribalism only grow.
Until that trend reverses itself, a politician's political affiliation will always matter more than his morals."
Tho Bishop
"Often, arguing over which version of the State is worse is like having a debate as to whether it’s better to be kicked in the groin or gouged in the eye. Due to the State's ability to control immense amounts of resources through its power to tax, the very presence of the State, not the form it takes, creates an impetus for violence.
Ultimately, the State itself, not the form it takes, is the problem. Premature deaths from all other sources pale in comparison to the violence inflicted by organized governments; and as the correct answer to the question of getting hit in the groin or gouged in the eye is saying you’d rather have 'none of the above'."
Justin Murray
"Prior to the leftist cultural ‘liberation’ movements of the 1960s, school shootings were virtually nonexistent. They had a form of gun control then that we lack now: respect for life, respect for property, religious faith, rules about right and wrong, and law and order.
Today we have Idiocracy, extreme video games, a culture of nihilism, a lack of religious faith – basically Leftist Nirvana. And we have a generation of emasculated men, clueless young people, depression and psychotropic drugs, thug music that glorifies sexual assault and gunplay – and we also have school shootings.
My friends on the Left refuse to come to terms with the truth: these school shootings are their legacy. But they won’t change the culture that spawned it. Why? Because their attitude is 'F-you, I like my nihilism'."
Larry Beane
"Virtually every aspect of human life — from business organizations to trade to food to communications to travel to shopping to money to education — becomes more and more decentralized every day. Hub and spoke networks are dying; replaced by nimbler webs and networks. Only government, in its hubris, bucks this dominant trend of the digital age. Somehow governance continues to go in the wrong direction: from local to regional, from regional to national, from national to supra-national, and from supra-national to global. And it’s not just DC: bodies like the UN, EU, and IMF work every day to centralize the management of human affairs. Why do we put up with this, even as we demand decentralized efficiency in everything else?"
Jeff Deist
"If technology is destroying jobs faster than it’s creating them, it is the first time in human history that it’s done so. Actually, the number of jobs is unlimited, for the simple reason that human wants are unlimited — or they don’t frequently reveal their bounds. People always want more of something that will create a job for someone. To suggest that there are a finite number of jobs commits an error known as the 'lump of labor fallacy.' That fallacy suggests that when automation or technology eliminates a job, there’s nothing that people want that would create employment for the person displaced by the automation. In other words, all human wants have been satisfied."
Walter Williams
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