Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"Collectivist systems, whether they are called democracy, socialism, communism or fascism, are philosophies of envy. When one sees something another has and decides he wants it,  rather than earn it on his own merits he wants the power of government to take it and either give it to him or redistribute it to the masses. Often the collectivist doesn’t want that something for himself as much as he doesn’t want someone else to have it.

Collectivism is also a philosophy of racism, weakness, ineptitude and collectivism in that it assumes one gained what he has by way of special privilege not afforded everyone if they are of a different race or creed or social standing; and that one cannot obtain a thing or advance economically without the assistance of government or the collective."

Bob Livingston

"Remember that career politicians care about votes and campaign donations. Career bureaucrats care about their power, incomes, benefits, privileges and guaranteed retirements. They will forever claim to 'care' about you only to the point that it benefits them to do so. If their jobs and positions are protected by laws or unions they won’t 'care' so much about you even while they’re saying they care about you."

Garry Reed

"Neoconservatives constantly harp on the danger of vacuums. Without a U.S. presence, the logic goes, more sinister forces will take over. What happens when American troops must be evacuated from all over the world because we can’t afford to keep them there anymore? There’s no debate, no weighing of options, and no choice. If the money isn’t there, the money isn’t there. Nothing could tie the hands of America’s military more than a debt crisis. And if one happens, it will be in part because those same neoconservative intellectuals preached a multi-trillion-dollar global war to remake humanity in our image. Hubris leads to downfall."

Hunter DeRensis

"Production and economic activity, by their very nature, serve to improve man's environment.This is because from the point of view of physics and chemistry, all that production and economic activity consist of is the rearrangement of the same nature-given chemical elements in different combinations and their movement to different geographical locations. The guiding purpose of this rearrangement and movement is essentially nothing other than to make the chemical elements stand in an improved relationship to human life and well-being. It puts the chemical elements in combinations and locations where they provide greater utility, greater benefit to human beings.

The totality of the chemical elements in their relationship to man, constitutes man's external, material environment, and precisely this is what production and economic activity serve to improve, by their very nature."

George Reisman

"The U.S. government is a huge prize for those who run it, bringing money, power and prestige. Immigrant votes favor the Democratic party, and this is why Democrats favor high levels of legal immigration and want illegal immigrants to gain the vote. Both Abolish ICE and Open Borders movements are leftist. Both favor the Democratic party. Both favor increasing leftist control of the U.S. government.

The many appeals that surround the central battle over immigration are window-dressing. They divert attention from the fight over votes and power. The immigration political fighting in America is not centrally about breaking up families, asylum, poor people needing jobs, rapists, gang members, rights of migrants, wage rate competition, disease, culture, racism, xenophobia and welfare burdens. It’s about votes and power."

Michael Rozeff

"All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of 'Court Intellectuals,' whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public. The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public."

Murray Rothbard

"It is not the job of the president of the United States to be a negotiator or agent for U.S. businesses. It is not his job to rectify any trade injustices in foreign countries. If American businessmen don’t like the trade conditions in some foreign country, there is a simple remedy: Negotiate better terms or just stay out of that country. No American businessman needs for Trump to be his daddy and to wage trade wars on his behalf."

Jacob Hornberger

"The question before us is whether the Western peoples are too brainwashed, too firmly locked in The Matrix, to exhausted to stand up and defend their freedom. Resistance is happening in France and Belgium, but the government that sold out Greece hasn’t been hung off of lamp posts. Americans are so brainwashed that they think Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela are their enemies when it is perfectly clear that their Enemy is 'their' government in Washington."

Paul Craig Roberts

"Rule Number One of socialism is that SOME PEOPLE ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.  The doctrine of egalitarianism has always been rhetorical fodder for chumps and fools."

Tom DiLorenzo