Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"It is absolutely bat shit crazy that we feel normal about the most powerful military force in the history of civilization running around the world invading and occupying and bombing and killing, yet are made to feel weird about the possibility of any part of that ending. It is absolutely bat shit crazy that endless war is normalized while the possibility of peace and respecting national sovereignty to any extent is aggressively abnormalized. In a sane world the exact opposite would be true, but in our world this self-evident fact has been obscured. In a sane world anyone who tried to convince you that war is normal would be rejected and shunned, but in our world those people make six million dollars a year reading from a teleprompter on MSNBC."

Caitlin Johnstone

"If congressmen are so upset about leaving Syria, maybe they should have declared war.

If show panelists are so horrified by the market selling off on rising interest rates, maybe they should have said something while the Fed forced rates down.

If Washington is so upset about the government 'shutdown,' wait until we see what happens when nobody wants to fund US debt."

Charles Goyette

"It’s easy to dismiss a problem if its costs seem a distant consequence, like ignoring the fact that the Earth will one day crash into the sun. However, we’re talking about maybe a period of 5-10 years before the U.S. could begin suffering from Arma-debt-on. Everything we know from history and economic analysis says this could be the worst crisis ever faced by the Union. And, since our politicians refuse to do anything about it, the only option for Texas to avoid this doom is to quit the United States. And while saving the U.S. would be great if it could be achieved,  since there is no political will left in D.C. to change things significantly, the only thing remaining is to do it ourselves as our own country, as is our right under the Texas and U.S. constitutions."

Ryan Thorson

"Strip any government of its policing and law enforcement function and no one will comply with the edicts issued by the elected mandarins and in the US, the venal and corrupt executive that lords over the land like an occupying force. Whether it is the land of the free or a Russian gulag or a Chinese labor camp, cops make governments work; they are the sociopathic pointy business end of all collectivist endeavors."

Bill Buppert

"Society does not give in or sanction the crimes of government without impetus. They are constantly pounded with the propaganda of altruism. Altruism is not what you’ve been taught it to be.

Altruism is a selflessness self-denial to the point of literal self-sacrifice for a myth called society. Altruism is the very foundation of statist/socialist propaganda and power that the individual must place his interest including his property beneath the 'need' of the collective (state).

In our time this is called 'in the public interest.' The term 'public interest' always translates into the government interest. Therefore, the army of federal judges and politicians act in the 'public interest'."

Bob Livingston

"The morally grotesque 'social contract' idea is an attempt to erect an altogether new standard of morality, one we would never accept in any other context, in order to validate the state after the fact. It is a twisted effort to show that my actual words and my actual views, all of which indicate my lack of consent, are less important than some mystical 'tacit' consent that nobody can precisely identify."

Tom Woods

"It’s nonsensical to blather about the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave when reality TV and Walmart riots are much closer to the truth. The rot originates with the majority of Americans, of course. Political candidates spend millions to take their pulse in surveys and polls, and then just regurgitate what the public wants to hear. Once a country buys into the idea that a privileged lifestyle is everyone’s minimum due, that country is on the decline. Lobbying and taxation are replacing production and innovation as the national modus vivendi, but parasites can’t sustain prosperity. The wealth that took centuries to produce is not inexhaustible."

Doug Casey

"If the sociopathic establishment can convince us that everything our conscience tells us is wrong, then they can create a world in which their fringe sociopathy becomes the norm. This will obviously lead to catastrophe, but organized evil lives most comfortably in the midst of catastrophe. As long as sociopathic narcissists think they are maintaining their own control over the chaos, they see the end game as justified. The pointlessness of their lives and existence is never considered."

Brandon Smith

"Collectivists believe that what they have is theirs. But they also believe that what you have is theirs and it should be used to fund their pet projects and the leftovers distributed by them to everyone equally, whether they’ve earned it or not. And if you want to keep what you’ve earned for yourself to use as you see fit, then the collectivist believes you’re a thief."

Jay Baker

"As with all government programs, but especially when it comes to military spending, the failure of a program never leads to calls for funding reductions. The Pentagon’s failure to properly account for the trillions of taxpayer dollars shoveled in year after year only means, they say, that we need to send more money! Already they are claiming that with more resources – meaning money – they can fix some of the problems identified by the audit. 

If you subsidize something you get much more of it, and in this case we are subsidizing Pentagon incompetence. Expect much more of it."

Ron Paul

"To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them."

Lysander Spooner