Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"Of America’s most populous states — California, Texas, Florida and New York — the first two are already minority-majority [non-white] and the latter two are not far behind.

Yet the gaps between Asian and white Americans, and Hispanic and African-Americans — in income and wealth, crime rates and incarceration rates, test scores and academic achievements — are dramatic and are seemingly enduring."

Pat Buchanan

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

Friedrich Nietzsche

"Look, nation-states are criminal enterprises dressed up to resemble legitimate storefronts with colored rags blowing in the breeze, bad music crackling on the loudspeaker and splendidly dressed psychopaths singing the odious song of their conquests, promises and future greatness. You’ll note the greatness is usually cloaked in a sacrifice that the violence brokers themselves never dirty themselves with. Your attendance in government schools was nothing more than a finishing process to make sure you as slave people think you’re free."

Bill Buppert

"There are those who believe that Texas should 'Stick it out' and work to fix the federal government. Like small children who weep and wail at the suggestion of throwing out the remaining tatters of their safety blanket, the offer solutions that ignore reality."

Daniel Miller

"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

"The gift of freedom is humankind’s natural possession. It does not require justification or elaboration. All it takes is to reclaim one’s freedom. Liberty is not a right but a choice. If it were a right, it could be taken away the same way that it was given. Yet freedom is not a right but a part of human nature."

Antony P. Mueller

"Always remember that personal freedom is inversely proportional to governmental freedom. In other words, in whatever interest or matters one chooses not to self-govern, others will govern for you. But individuals are often happy to relinquish this responsibility for themselves in order to seem altruistic. It might even make them feel patriotic.  What they don’t realize is that they are making a terrifying trade-off. Once an individual sacrifices himself to the collective, the collective can then sacrifice the individual to further its own ends."

Bob Livingston

"The individual is being replaced by the worship of community. This is a basic tenet of Communism. The basis of this country’s political system, as is the case with all political systems, is that the group or mob is more important than the individual. Once the individual is destroyed, nothing of value remains. Freedom is impossible to achieve or hold when the group has power over the individual. Critical thinking disappears."

Gary D, Barnett

"We must make Texas great again, reclaiming all of the ill-used sovereignty we invested in Washington and seize our own destiny as Texans, just as our Texian fore-fathers did. We no longer have any choice, for this is certain: if we continue as we have, focusing on a federal solution when none is likely to come, then the only consolation we will have is that we all went down together. Whatever the rest of the Union decides for itself, Texas can do better. We may not be able to take back America, but we can take back Texas."

Ryan Thorson

"Ironically neoconservatives and other right-wing authoritarians are among the biggest purveyors of real 'hate speech.' What could possibly be more hateful than speech advocating perpetual war? Cultural Marxists are also guilty of hate speech with their calls for both government and private violence against political opponents, and for the use of government force to redistribute property. Just about the only individuals advocating a political philosophy not based on hate are those libertarians who consistently advance the non-aggression principle."

Ron Paul

"Government commands no resources of its own. 

Before it can lay out one slender dime for guns, butter or circuses, it must first draw upon two pools of resources — taxes or credit. 

Absent these revenue sources, government lacks all force.

It is a cat without claws, a shark without teeth, a cop without a nightstick.

Government seizes its dollar in tax by sticking a gun in the citizen’s ribs. 

But the same circumstances obtain with a dollar the government borrows. It is merely a robbery delayed, a theft at one remove.

It is true, the dollar borrowed appears more benign than the dollar taxed. 

The government does not directly assault the citizen. It rather appears before the credit markets with an empty hat, requesting money.

But do not forget, the borrowed dollar must be repaid — with interest.

Who stands behind the government’s promise to repay? And what stands behind him with a gun in its hand?

The citizen once again must raise his hands… and surrender his dollar to service the debt. 

That is, he pays now in taxes or he pays later in taxes. 

Either way... he pays."

Brian Maher

"Trying to explain economics to progressives is like trying to explain how a satellite orbits the planet to a flat-earth believer."

William Anderson