Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"The danger of thick libertarianism is not simply that vast chunks of the American population will fail to pass its entrance requirements, not keeping up every ten minutes with what MSNBC informs us is acceptable to believe and say. The danger is that thick libertarianism will import its other concerns, which by their own admission do not involve the initiation of physical force, into libertarianism itself, thereby transforming it into something quite different from the straightforward and elegant moral and social system we have been defending for generations."
Lew Rockwell
"Some argue that a state can’t leave the Union. In their argument, they will cite many sources and lay it on thick with appeals to patriotism, claims it was settled in the courts, and threats of violence, but the one thing they can’t do is use the Constitution. The Constitution is supposedly the supreme law of the Union, but you might not know it with as often as it is trampled by courts, congressmen, and presidents. Nevertheless, it is the source of authority for the federal government, and like it or not, Washington is bound by it. And in the Constitution, there is no prohibition on resigning the Union."
Ryan Thorson
"Tribes may have their differences or even come to conflict if they do not respect the nonaggression principle. But any war that erupts between two tribes is never going to match the horror of the centralized military industrial complex with its never-ending wars on a global scale. By the same token, tribalism prevents the possibility of a single world system that claims to 'end war' while enslaving the populace through dependency and force. One ring to rule them all is not the answer. It never was."
Brandon Smith
"Any political system built upon self-sacrifice (and all are) is an illusion and can only maintain authority at your expense. Distorted reality is any ploy that seeks to persuade you to share what you have with nonproducers or to seek guidance from external authority. Politics is such an ingrained system that few realize that politics is a system of reliance on external authority that perpetuates itself on illusions and distortions.
Relying on the external authority feels safe because it is the status quo. It feels like freedom because we have endured mass brainwash telling us our slavery is freedom and democracy.
But freedom and happiness are only restored through self-reliance and acting on our own judgment. Self-sufficiency and self-worth produce ultimate happiness and human liberty."
Bob Livingston
"Instead of loving truth, most people try to make true that which they love, which is a self-delusive practice that virtually guarantees frustration and failure. Thus, most people live in an unreal world, a world they create in their own minds based on the way they would like it to be rather than the way it actually is.
It is absolutely essential that a person intellectually and emotionally recognizes that reality isn’t the way he wishes things to be or the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are. The individual who is not able to make this distinction finds it virtually impossible to make decisions that lead to positive results."
Robert Ringer
"The way toward the rule of the cultural Marxists is the moral corruption of the people. To accomplish this, the mass media and public education must not enlighten but confuse and mislead. The media and the educational establishment work to put one part of the society against the other part. While group identities get more specific, the catalog of victimization and history of oppression becomes more detailed. To turn into a recognized victim of suppression is the way to gain social status and to obtain the right to special assistance, of respect and social inclusion.
The demand for social justice creates an endless stream of expenditures deemed essential — for health, education, old age, and for all those people who are 'needy,' 'persecuted' and 'oppressed,' be it real or imaginary. The flood of never-ending spending in these areas corrupts the state finances and produces fiscal crises. This helps the Neo-Marxists accuse 'capitalism' of all evils when, in fact, it is the regulatory state that provokes the systemic failures and when it is the excess of public debt that causes the financial fragility."
Antony P. Mueller
"Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds not words."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Socialism is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created each step leading towards socialism must exhaust itself in the destruction of what already exists."
Ludwig von Mises
"'If only we could get back to the Constitution'. I have heard this phrase uttered an untold number of times, but what does it mean? It means nothing to me, for it is not a worthwhile argument or for that matter, any argument at all. It places reverence on a political document, and any thinking person should be able to understand that if the protection of individual rights is due to a constitution drafted by politicians, then he has no rights at all."
Gary D. Barnett
"Guns have two enemies – rust and politicians."
Bill Buppert
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