Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"If Texas wants to leave, don’t vote it away. Walk away and cut off all ties. Take a week to secure the borders and establish diplomatic relations with countries abroad first and the American government last."
Bill Buppert
"It is true that socialism and interventionism have not yet succeeded in completely eliminating capitalism. If they had, we Europeans, after centuries of prosperity, would rediscover the meaning of hunger on a massive scale. Capitalism is still prominent enough that new industries are coming into existence, and those already established are improving and expanding their equipment and operations. All the economic advances which have been and will be made stem from the persistent remnant of capitalism in our society. But capitalism is always harassed by the intervention of the government and must pay as taxes a considerable part of its profits in order to defray the inferior productivity of public enterprise.
The crisis under which the world is presently suffering is the crisis of interventionism and of state and municipal socialism, in short the crisis of anticapitalist policies. Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism. On that issue there is no difference of opinion. The market prices bring supply and demand into congruence and determine the direction and extent of production. It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense. If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter try to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop."
Ludwig von Mises
"When American politicians talk about 'rights' and 'liberty,' they certainly are not talking about our personal and individual liberty. For them, 'rights' and 'liberty' are code words for groupism (the crowd). Politicians and bureaucrats never remotely consider personal or individual liberty.
Government under any name or label is all about making and passing laws that strengthen and grow government. Where there are many laws, there is no individual freedom. Where there is no individual freedom, there is no freedom at all.
Politicians and bureaucrats have so skillfully imposed the word 'democracy' into the lexicon that the crowd confuses groupism with individual liberty. Democracy by all definitions is mob rule, or groupism. It is anathema to individual liberty.
Democracy does not equal human liberty. Democracy precisely means the manipulated mob. Mobs are rarely if ever spontaneous. They are usually manipulated events like the Arab Spring events of a few of years ago or the Antifa riots of late and coming to a city near you."
Bob Livingston
"The values and goals of the left and the right are mutually exclusive: you can’t have economic freedom and socialism, nor rule of law and mob justice, nor personal liberty and an unlimited centralized authority. And since the left has no interest (nor anything to gain) in competing fairly in the market place of ideas, if we wish to peacefully preserve our values and traditions, then separation is the only way. We must opt-out. And the longer we wait to act, accepting this melancholy truth, the less likely it will be that we will have the means of preservation… assuming that there’s anything left to preserve."
Ryan Thorson
"It’s hard not to sound like a curmudgeon when looking at America’s blossoming Idiocracy. For those of us who grew up forty or fifty years ago, this is not only a different country, but an entirely different world. A different reality. A different dimension."
Donald Jeffries
"Popular efforts by the electorate to create, amend, or repeal constitutional provisions or statutes are often met with judicial declarations of their unconstitutionality. Rarely is the question asked: if 'the people' are the sovereign political authority, why is their collective will subject to judicial preemption? The same question applies to the charge that people ought not 'take the law into their own hands.' Whose hands are to manipulate the machinery of state power if not the purported owners thereof?"
Butler Shaffer
"I form my friendships based upon neither diversity nor a lack of diversity, although there’s a natural tendency to associate with people like yourself. I form my friendships based upon the character and the beliefs that a person has. The attributes that create diversity are stupid accidentals. The fact that diversity is emphasized draws attention to incidentals like race, sex, and gender, and diverts it from important things like character and beliefs. Diversity has become destructive. Cultural Marxists love it because they hate people."
Doug Casey
"The only difference between socialism and fascism in practice is the name on the asset seized or controlled. Just because Nabisco and General Electric aren’t US Foods and US General Electric doesn’t mean they aren’t controlled by the government. Fascism uses taxation and regulation to vertically and horizontally control every aspect of a firm’s behavior.
If you contest this notion, name one single component in the American provision of goods and services in the above-ground economy that isn’t regulated, just one."
Bill Buppert
"Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.
In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business or in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."
Edward L. Bernays
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Hunter S. Thompson
No comments:
Post a Comment