Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"The more U.S. history we know and the better acquainted we are with previous presidents, the more we realize bad guys have, on balance, been the norm. And that the presidents of our own day have quite a task in front of them in order to match that level of iniquity.
In fact, I would say the worst thing the schools do in U.S. history is to instill a superstitious reverence for the presidents. They run down the legislative record of various presidential administrations, and the poor kids are left to believe that these must have been truly extraordinary men.
For if people demanded free X, and the president gave them free X, well, that's all there is to say about the matter, isn't it? What other consideration could there be? If he signed the Save the Children bill, well, the guy loves kids! And so on. That's the level of analysis students get in virtually every school in the country."
Tom Woods
"'Honest' Abe supplanted Honest George as the quintessential American, and thus two American symbols had been born. One represented the original American order, the other a new America; one conservative and rational, the other revolutionary; one built on the refined ancient constitutions and customs of Western Civilization, the other in a rough-hewn world of log cabins, dirty jokes, foul language, and shifting political sands.
While the monuments of each man may serve as pseudo sentinels guarding the United States Capitol building, America and its legacy cannot be both Washington’s and Lincoln’s. It may seem that both men had much in common, but they, and the symbolic America they represent, are in fact incompatible.
The chasm between Washington and Lincoln is larger than the reflecting pool or one spot in a historical presidential ranking.
Lincoln has become America and America is worse for it."
Brion McClanahan
"Imagine a world wherein sovereignty was truly understood and honored. What would change?
Well, obviously we’d no longer see the most powerful nations interceding in the affairs of others, bursting in and treating a weaker country like property because it has resources it wants or a style of government it doesn’t. The idea that there are people in the world whose lives you don’t get to control would be seen not as some outlandish, fringe notion to be dismissed as wacky crackpottery, but as a self-evident truth which forms the guiding principles of the way different parts of the world interact with each other."
Caitlin Johnstone
"While both collectivists and individualists claim to seek the betterment of the human condition Progressives and Conservatives demand compliance with authoritarians while libertarians insist that all interactions be voluntary.
This pits libertarianism against both Progressivism and Conservativism. And to the extent that libertarianism is anarchist it pits libertarians against all forms of statism as well."
Garry Reed
"Government is a masterpiece of corporate cynicism, propaganda perfection and people control. It was not created for the people, by the people nor of the people. It was created or at least evolved for the power and benefit of the elite and their politicians and bureaucrats. Government is not haphazard and bungling. It does everything with careful calculation for the benefit of government and the concealment of its fraud upon the people. It plays one economic class against another, one race against another, and it prostitutes the intellectual elite to conceal the nature of government and its purpose."
Bob Livingston
"Look at this from AOC’s [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] point of view. She doesn’t just get $200,000 a year plus massive benefits. That’s chicken feed. But lucrative speaking fees, director’s fees, consulting fees, emoluments from the inevitable Ocasio-Cortez Foundation, multimillion-dollar book deals, and sweetheart investment deals. Not counting undisclosed bribes. She’ll be worth $100 million in no time, like Clinton and Obama.
That’s not even the best part. She’ll be idealized, lionized, and apotheosized by an adoring public. The media will hang on her every word. That’s pretty rich for a stupid, evil dingbat. Other young socialist idealists will try – and succeed – in replicating her success. Congress will increasingly be filled with her clones.
Frankly, at this point, resistance is futile."
Doug Casey
"So let’s get this straight, the coproach infestations that appear to have a license to kill with no repercussions have no obligation whatsoever to protect the very subjects they forcibly extract their salaries and equipment from to lord over like an occupation army. Yet these same armed Leninists and their Chief mouthpieces constantly talk about the new disarmament schemes so their well-fed (most obese 'profession' in America) uniformed thugs can go home at the end of their shift. By the way, police have always been overweight."
Bill Buppert
"The right-wing totalitarians (Nazis, white supremacists, and others) have not remade American law or justice. The left-wing totalitarians have been far more successful in remaking law, justice, ethics, language and the culture. They are far more successful in worming their way into universities and education. They are far more successful in gaining the sympathies of blocs of Americans via identity politics and via advocating equality. The successes of the leftists in creating totalitarianism in America and other countries like Canada and Great Britain are becoming more and more destructive of freedom and other values."
Michael Rozeff
"Generals always fight the last war, and politics is no different. We all tend to see the current political climate in terms of old and familiar divisions, long-faded alliances, and obsolete rhetoric. We all cling to the comfortable ideology and influences that help us make sense of a chaotic world. As one commenter recently put it, liberal Baby Boomers still think it’s 1968 and conservative Baby Boomers still think it’s 1985. Generation X and Millennials will exhibit the same blinders. It may be disheartening to keep fighting what should be a long-settled battle against socialism, but today we have no other choice."
Jeff Deist
"Here’s a question for Progressive philosophers—if any there be. Since we can all choose our 'gender' now, why can’t we also select our age and race? And if our decisions flatly contradict reality, so what?"
Becky Akers
"Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment have used ISIS to justify the stationing of those 2000 troops in Syria. But it’s been a lie from the beginning. The real reason those troops are there is to attempt to achieve regime change in Syria, just like they got regime change in Iraq. That’s ultimately what those four Americans died for—regime change, which is the same thing as dying for nothing. That’s because the U.S. government has no business engaging in the business of regime change. It is not a legitimate role of the U.S. government to be deciding who should be in power in foreign countries and engaging in actions to buttress or remove foreign regimes."
Jacob Hornberger
"The USA is economically a disaster because the tax rate fluctuates depending on who wins the election. This is what is wrong with Democracy insofar as it allows the majority to exploit the minority be it in taxes or even religion crafting criminal laws to enforce religious beliefs."
Martin Armstrong
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