Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Facebook clearly singled out Alex Jones. It didn’t embrace 'diverse views'. It didn’t remove him because of some 'specific harm' he was causing. If he were doing some harm, Facebook would have reported him to the police for investigation; or the people being harmed could have sued Jones.
Facebook’s removal of Alex Jones is politically-motivated. It’s coming from the Left, but it would not be surprising if well-known right-wing politicians and deep state members joined in the attack on Jones because he questions the Establishment and conventional narratives. Alex Jones is 'proud to be listed as a thought criminal against Big Brother'. His basic orientation is to question appearances and to propose that considered judgments and aims of large-scale, powerful and monied interests lie behind important events. In his own case of being banished by major communications companies, this appears to be true!"
Michael Rozeff
"Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
So far from encouraging a wholesome development of social power, it has invariably, as Madison said, turned every contingency into a resource for depleting social power and enhancing State power. As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime."
Albert Jay Nock
"If, just for the sake of argument, we accepted critics' insistence that the rights of property are not absolute and must sometimes be curtailed, it would not follow that it is the state rather than the individual conscience that must do the curtailing.
State power to aggress against property owners inevitably encourages man's most predatory instincts, giving him an incentive to devote less time to satisfying the needs of his fellow men and more time to using the state's machinery of coercion to loot them for his own selfish benefit. To put this in language more familiar to our critics, the release of such instincts undermines the common good."
Tom Woods
"Socialism is political cancer. It literally ruins every place in which it’s tried; routinely with attendant casualties in the millions. But its message of 'free stuff, and the rich guys pay for it' sells to millennials, their burnt-out hippie parents, and their college philosophy professors; none of whom realize that once they’ve gotten rid of the rich guys, there’s no one left to pay for anything. Nonetheless, the Democrats are bringing it back. It’s the perfect complement to their 'pussy' hats and Che’ t-shirts — and losing."
Ben Crystal
"No one loves socialism quite like a moron who has never experienced it firsthand."
Kurt Schlichter
"The Constitution was created by the states. The 10th Amendment guarantees all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution to the states and the people. So when the judicial branch of the federal government can overturn a state law as unconstitutional, the Constitution has been turned on its head. The creator cannot be overruled by the created."
Bob Livingston
"Does an act clearly immoral when done privately become moral when done collectively? Does legality or majority consensus establish morality? Before you answer, consider that slavery was legal; South African apartheid was legal; the horrendous Stalinist, Nazi and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality or a majority consensus cannot establish morality."
Walter Williams
"Of all the reasons for Texas to sever ties with the Union, the impending fiscal collapse of the U.S. is the most critical. When that happens (not if), it will have catastrophic effects throughout the world. However, if Texas were today to establish a complete return to sovereignty, as is its right, we could begin preparations for that soon-coming day, to insulate ourselves and mitigate the damage. If we wait, we may look upon the fears we had for a hypothetical independent Texas as a relative blessing compared to the stark realities of the crisis of hyperinflation."
Ryan Thorson
"Collapse of a State means a weakening of the instruments of coercion by means of which property in the fruits of one's labors was transferred to nonproducing rulership or its supporting accomplices. Thereafter, maybe for centuries, freedom prevails, men learn to dream and hope again, and the realization of each dream through effort encourages further fantasy and generates more effort; thus wealth multiplies, knowledge accumulates, manners take shape, and the nonmaterial values attain importance in man's hierarchy. A new civilization is born.
Although something of the lost civilization is recaptured by accident, what is dug up has to be relearned; the new civilization does not grow out of its predecessor, but emerges from the efforts of the living. At any rate, history tells us, a civilization no more than gets started when a political institution attaches itself to it, feeds on it, and in the end devours it. And the roundelay starts all over again."
Frank Chodorov
"In government, the scum rises to the top."
Friedrich Hayek
