Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Julian Assange founded an innovative leak outlet on the premise that corrupt power can be fought with truth and transparency. Corrupt power responded by silencing, persecuting and smearing him. In so doing they succeeded in slowing down the leaks, minimizing the impact of publications, and nullifying Assange’s ability to defend himself, and in exchange they have publicly proved that his thesis was, and is, absolutely correct. There is a power establishment which uses lies and secrecy to manipulate and deceive us, and it hates having the light of truth shone upon it more than anything. We know that for certain now. There is no doubt whatsoever."
Caitlin Johnstone
"If you don’t have any borders and you allow everyone from some other place to come to America, it stops being like America and starts being like some other place."
Paul Joseph Watson
"Tyranny can come through elections, by force, or by inheritance. Although the methods differ about how the rulers come into power, the method of dominance is the same. All types of rules, including tyrannical ones, are based on voluntary submission of the people."
Antony P. Mueller
"The greatest reward of a death cult is to love death and translate and impute the love of death to the public mind. We must come to love 'big brother' so much that we desire to die and sacrifice our children for the 'greater good.' And anyone who stands in the way is an enemy of the state and must be 're-educated' and/or silenced, if not exterminated."
Bob Livingston
"The systemic problems with the Union stand in stark contrast to the success story of Texas. Sure, Texas has its issues, bur increasingly our issues are being seen as a function of our membership in the Union and our success and prosperity in spite of it. This causes Texans to look at the federal government with deep-seated distrust and ever-growing contempt."
Daniel Miller
"A society become totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when it ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud."
George Orwell
"American government is a deviant subculture. Its leaders stand on soapboxes and polarize the public by pointing fingers while secretly doing the bidding of special interests. Many public employees plod through life with their noses in rule books, indifferent to the actual needs of the public and unaccountable to anyone. The professionals who interact with government- lawyers and lobbyists- make sure every issue is viewed through the blinders for a particular interest, not through the broader lens of the common good."
Philip K. Howard
"We don’t have a War Department anymore. That would be too honest. It’s called the Defense Department, but it doesn’t defend the U.S. Actually, it draws in trouble and danger to the U.S. They should call it the Opposite of Defense Department, because it’s actually the biggest single existential danger to the U.S. Entirely apart from the fact that, fiscally, it’s going to bankrupt the U.S.
A generation from now—assuming they don’t start World War III, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Seventh Fleet rotting at the dock like an Argentine destroyer, or like the Soviet Navy 20 years ago. But in the meantime, don’t call it the Defense Department. It doesn’t defend anything."
Doug Casey
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular."
David Hume
"It wasn’t the US that came to the table in Paris in 1783 to fashion the peace after eight years of war, it was thirteen different nation-states that were formerly fleeced colonies of the Crown in London.
Secession is the natural orchid house for the evolution of new polities and breakaway entities.
Secession is the only vote that counts in history."
Bill Buppert
"I propose the perhaps novel idea that there is a place for everything and that the correct place for the marginal is… on the margins! The argument lately, especially on the Progressive side, has been that the marginal ought to occupy the center (of American life). That is surely the argument of The New York Times. It is a foolish and even dangerous argument, popular only with those determined that the center should not hold. In the process, they have come close to replacing the political center with a black hole. Now they want to drag the country across the event horizon into what they hope is a transhuman paradise of rainbows and unicorns. I wouldn’t be so sure that awaits us there."
James Howard Kunstler
"It is important to begin, and particularly to change our political culture, which treats 'democracy,' or the 'right' to vote, as the supreme political good. In fact, the voting process should be considered trivial and unimportant at best, and never a 'right,' apart from a possible mechanism stemming from a consensual contract. In the modern world, democracy or voting is only important either to join in or ratify the use of the government to control others, or to use it as a way of preventing one's self or one's group from being controlled. Voting, however, is at best, an inefficient instrument for self-defense, and it is far better to replace it by breaking up central government power altogether.
In sum, if we proceed with the decomposition and decentralization of the modern centralizing and coercive nation-state, deconstructing that state into constituent nationalities and neighborhoods, we shall at one and the same time reduce the scope of government power, the scope and importance of voting and the extent of social conflict. The scope of private contract, and of voluntary consent, will be enhanced, and the brutal and repressive state will be gradually dissolved into a harmonious and increasingly prosperous social order."
Murray Rothbard
"For those Americans who see majority rule as sacrosanct, ask yourselves how many of your life choices you would like settled by majority rule. Would you want the kind of car you own to be decided through a democratic process? What about decisions as to where you live, what clothes you purchase, what food you eat, what entertainment you enjoy and what wines you drink? I’m sure that if anyone suggested that these decisions should be subject to a democratic process wherein majority rules, we would deem the person tyrannical."
Walter Williams
