Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Like most Jesuits, the current pope is in reality a socialist ideologue hiding behind a priest’s collar. His real 'faith' is socialism, as he has proven time and again with his asinine denunciations of capitalism as 'the dung of the devil' and other ignorant communistic slogans. He smiled ear to ear while meeting with Fidel Castro and happily accepted a hammer-and-cycle relic by another Latin American dictator while denouncing President Trump as a non-Christian — and much worse — for enforcing the laws of the United States, including immigration laws passed by Congress. He is a 'climate change' nut who apparently couldn’t care less if the climate change nut fraternity succeeds and taxes energy so heavily that the poor in countries like the U.S. will have to pay $30/gallon for gas and $3,000/month electric bills (presumably paid for with radically higher welfare checks financed by monetary inflation).
Not only is he a communist in disguise; he recently denounced those who attempt to convince others to embrace Christianity, something that has been an official part of the Catholic Church since the seventeenth century through its Sacred Congregation of Propaganda (as in 'propagating the faith'). You are not a Christian, he said, if you try to teach the Bible to others, contradicting the words of Jesus Christ in the Bible and the centuries-long practice of the Catholic Church. Is the pope Catholic?"
Tom DiLorenzo
"A fundamental pillar of true free markets is the existence of choice; the availability of options from production to provider to purchase mechanism without interference from governments or corporate monopolies. Choice means competition, and competition drives progress. Choice can also drive changes within society, for if people know a better way of doing things exists, why would anyone want to stay trapped within the confines of a limited system? At the very least, people should be allowed to choose economic mechanisms that work best for their particular situation.
This is not how our society functions today, and free markets do not exist anywhere in modern nations including the U.S. Whenever I hear someone (usually a socialist) blame free market 'capitalism' for the oppressive ailments of the world, I have to laugh. The alliance between governments and corporate monopolies (what Mussolini called national socialism or fascism) makes free markets utterly impossible. What we have today is an amalgamation of socialist economic interference and corporatocracy. Our system is highly restrictive and micro-managed for everyone except the money elites, who do not have to follow the same rules the rest of us do."
Brandon Smith
"If we believe in the cause of peace, putting a halt to aggressive violence between nations is not enough. We should not want to bring about peace overseas in order that our rulers may turn their guns on peaceful individuals at home. Away with all forms of aggression against peaceful people.
The people and the warmakers are two distinct groups. We must never say 'we' when discussing the US government’s foreign policy. For one thing, the warmakers do not care about the opinions of the majority of Americans. It is silly and embarrassing for Americans to speak of 'we' when discussing their government’s foreign policy, as if their input were necessary to or desired by those who make war. Never use 'we' when speaking of the government."
Lew Rockwell
"As long as most Americans labor under the authoritarian notion that the United States is 'one nation, indivisible' there will be no answer to the problem of one powerful region (or party) wielding unchallenged power over a minority.
Many conservatives naïvely claim that the Constitution and the 'rule of law' will protect minorities in this situation. But their theories only hold water if the people making and interpreting the laws subscribe to an ideology which respects local autonomy and freedom for worldviews in conflict with the ruling class. That is increasingly not the ideology of the majority, let alone the majority of powerful judges and politicians.
Thus, for those who can manage to leave behind the flag-waving propaganda of their youths, it is increasingly evident that something other than repeating bromides about teaching high-school civics, reading the Constitution, or electing 'strong leaders' will have to be done."
Ryan McMaken
"One very important psychological mechanism of deception is to promote fear of the loss of something that has actually already been lost.
For example, the government authorities tell us of the threat terrorism poses to democracy when America is already a fascist country. It is not unpatriotic to say this because it is a fact. Democracy is only the mask."
Bob Livingston
"Texas passed a law that, in effect, closes down most of its abortion clinics. The U.S. Supreme Court struck it down. What if Texas closed them nonetheless? Send the Army to point guns at Texas rangers to open them? What would the federal government do if North Dakota declared itself a 'Sanctuary for the Unborn' and simply banned abortion? For that matter, what is the federal government doing about the fact that, for practical purposes, its laws concerning marijuana are being ignored in Colorado and California? Utah objects to the boundaries of national monuments created by decree within its borders. What if the state ignored those boundaries? Prayer in schools? What could bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., do if any number of states decided that what the federal courts have to say about such things is bad?
Now that identity politics have replaced the politics of persuasion and blended into the art of war, statesmen should try to preserve what peace remains through mutual forbearance toward jurisdictions that ignore or act contrary to federal laws, regulations, or court orders. Blue states and red states deal differently with some matters of health, education, welfare, and police. It does no good to insist that all do all things uniformly."
Angelo Codevilla
"Remember, you don’t get the best and the brightest going into government. That’s because there are two kinds of people. You’ve got people that like to control physical reality – things. And people that like to control other people. That second group, those who like to lord it over their fellows, are naturally drawn to government and politics."
Doug Casey
"It would appear to be prudent ... to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government and not openly denounce its authority or even abjure the realm. Rather, it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and non-cooperation. One simply stops to help in the enforcement in each and every federal law. One assumes the following attitude: 'Such are your rules, and you enforce them. I cannot hinder you, but I will not help you either, as my only obligation is to my local constituents.'
Consistently applied, no cooperation, no assistance whatsoever on any level, the central government’s power would be severely diminished or even evaporate. And in light of the general public opinion, it would appear highly unlikely that the federal government would dare to occupy a territory whose inhabitants did nothing else than trying to mind their own business. Waco, a teeny group of freaks, is one thing. But to occupy, or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal, accomplished, upstanding citizens is quite another, and quite a more difficult thing."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
"All of the madness associated with government supremacism, the leviathan state and the creepy twenty-first century terror state posing as democracy in the West could be brought down with the simple notion of refusing cooperation.
Freedom cannot exist if an opt-out of the system is unavailable. It makes no logical sense whatsoever that one can assume you are free unless you can opt out or choose not to participate in those activities you as an individual find objectionable or untenable from a freedom perspective. A man is a slave otherwise no matter how fanciful or exigent the explanation for the denial or abridgement of individual liberty."
Bill Buppert
"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations, of these obstructions is always more less either to encroach upon its freedom or to diminish it security."
Adam Smith
"As democratic politics are considered a cure for our ills, so long as mobs vote to install trimmers to lord over them, and so long as men seek equality of outcomes, corruption and despair will continue.
The absurdity of it all is mind-boggling, but then the pleasure comes in the comedy that is the human condition."
Gary D. Barnett
"I will suggest without moral realism – or objective moral values – we are left with the whims of society. And as we look around us today, tell me: what makes 'anything goes' a lie when it comes to acceptable behavior?
I say nothing. Every day we are confronted with more depravities, which by tomorrow we come to accept as normal. Every day we are stepped on further by the boot of the state, with no argument available to us from Natural Law or any other solid philosophical foundation.
When every evil becomes acceptable and when the state’s boot has no hindrance to your face…tell me: what chance do we have to move toward liberty?"
Bionic Mosquito
"It is much easier for government to deceive people in a democracy where people assume everything is above board than in a dictatorship where they know it is not."
Paul Craig Roberts
"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent."
H.L. Mencken
