Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Why is it that all U.S. soldiers (and police, firemen, and first responders) are heroes? It doesn’t matter where soldiers go, why they go, how long they stay, whether they should go, or what they do when they are there—the soldiers are all heroes. It doesn’t matter how many widows and orphans soldiers make, how many bombs they drop, how many civilians they kill, how much infrastructure they destroy, how many bullets they fire, how many missiles they launch, or how many of 'the enemy' they injure, maim, or kill—the soldiers are all heroes.
What is so heroic about just joining the military? What is so heroic about wearing a military uniform? What is so heroic about getting up in the morning when you are told to? What is so heroic about making widows and orphans? What is so heroic about fighting 'over there' when there was no chance that you would have to fight 'over here'? What is so heroic about dropping bombs from 40,000 feet? What is so heroic about dying for a mistake?"
Laurence Vance
"The political correctness people are the most alienated and emotionally weak element in the society. Yet they dominate in the media, entertainment, universities, and art world. How is it possible that the Washingtonians are prepared to take us to war with real people—Russians, Chinese and North Koreans—two countries that have already whipped us once—and Persians, an ancient race that even the Romans had a hard time with? Do the fools in Washington really think that our homosexualized, feminized, transgenderized military can take on Russians, Chinese, and Persians? Hollywood can make all the movies it wants with female superheroes, but superheroes are the last thing whining American feminists are."
Paul Craig Roberts
"Only libertarians offer a critique of centralized power in the current environment, and only libertarians offer 'live and let live' as a solution to the cultural rancor and political rancor all around us. Only libertarians propose real money, reality-based economics, and abolition rather than reform of doomed government programs. Only libertarians offer any just or humane approach to the question of what politically-vanquished people might do via decentralization and subsidiarity. Realistic conservatives should acknowledge the role the state has served in destroying the culture they claim to want to conserve."
Jeff Deist
"Sanctions are not a more humane alternative to war. They are just another form of war. In fact they are perhaps the cruelest form of war because they do not target the military of an adversary, but rather the innocent civilian population.
Sanctions do not inspire people to rise up and overthrow their governments. Most civilians suffering under sanctions couldn’t throw out their rulers even if they wanted to — after being impoverished and malnourished for years they are really expected to take on their own government’s military?"
Ron Paul
"The concept of freedom of the individual, or individual liberty, has been shoved down the memory hole and replaced by a popular mentality of diminishing the individual and independent thinker to a collectivist mind (mentality) which can be esoterically swayed, directed and channeled against his own best interest. The virtue and sanctity of the individual person and ego is no more, and anathema to the state.
If the people imagine that they are free, all sorts of crimes by the political system can be imposed, without protest, upon the people. It functions as an invisible armed guard."
Bob Livingston
"'Social Justice Warriors' are blinded by the fact that they are in vast danger of becoming the very thing they claim to hate:
Tyrannical fanatics driven not by a healthy balance of reason and emotion, but by pseudo-religious (claiming to know truths transcendent of reason) dogma."
Chris Campbell
"The truth hurts, but truth is the most powerful weapon against tyranny. If acceptance of truth is the savior of mankind, then apathy is its destroyer. Considering the current mentality of the U.S. population, it would seem that the end is closer than it appears.In America, war is a constant. It is a fact of everyday existence, although the citizens don’t see it firsthand because the aggressors take the war to far away places. The victims are simply seen as meaningless strangers from another culture. It feels as if war is a normal part of life, and will never end. It is not that there are wars being waged to defend America, as this country’s mainland has never been attacked. Even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was sought and planned, and known about in advance. The wars today are in distant lands, where the killing of innocents and the raping of countries are much removed from the minds of the ignorant and apathetic populace."
Gary D. Barnett
"This relationship between government and corporations has become so egregious that today these monopolies receive special legal protections and immunity from some civil lawsuits, aid in the form of taxpayer funded welfare, massive tax cuts which smaller businesses and less connected corporations do not enjoy, and even central bank bailouts which keep them afloat. Major corporations are not allowed to fail, and no one is allowed to compete with them on a level playing field.
This is the exact antithesis to free markets. This is socialism. Yet many socialists point the finger at free market 'capitalism' as the source of all our economic problems. This is impossible, because free markets on a level any higher than local trade do not exist today and have not existed for at least a century."
Brandon Smith
"Governments are so united against 'terrorism' because it’s not just a very effective tactic against the nation state – it really can only be used against the nation state. Governments couldn’t care less about the few hundreds of people that might be killed in a terror attack. They care because it threatens their existence."
Doug Casey
"The socialists think the Green New Deal entails investments that pay off more than their cost. But if the good that’s produced is American air with lower CO2 content, how do we use that to pay back the bonds that finance new plants? How do we use that air to purchase foreign goods? How do we use that air to recoup the higher prices for everything we consume? Our cleaner air goes into the atmosphere where it mixes with every other country’s dirtier air. Meanwhile, they follow their own rules."
Michael Rozeff
"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."
Frederic Bastiat
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