Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"The US was also called a Union once; it still is on occasion (consider the name of the State of the Union address, which, interestingly enough, is shared by its EU counterpart). Also, historically the word state has referred to a nation under a single government. Just as the European Union comprises member states – like France, Germany, and the rest – the American Union also consists of annexed states – like Texas.

This shared terminology has a political basis – the same reason that the treaty concluding the American Revolution individually listed each of the thirteen colonies as newly independent entities, and that until after the Civil War the US was typically referred to in the plural ('the United States are,' not 'the United States is'). It reflects an original understanding of the states as representing separate, sovereign peoples.

According to the compact theory of the US Constitution, the individual states, having preceded the federal government and having themselves created it, naturally retain the final say in their own fates – including the right to leave. This nature of the American system is epitomized by the Tenth Amendment, which codifies the reservation of state sovereignty.

In sum, however strange this seems today, the US, certainly under the Articles of Confederation but also as conceived under the Constitution, was once perceived the way we perceive the EU now – as a voluntary association of independent states."

The Texas Nationalist Movement

"Yesterday, President Trump stated that America’s military forces protect our 'freedom.' In actuality, it’s the opposite. America’s military forces are part of the national-security governmental apparatus that has destroyed our liberty, in the name of 'keeping us safe'  from 'enemies,' many of which have been produced by the national-security state’s policy of intervening and meddling in the affairs of other nations. After all, how can people truly be considered free when they live under a regime in which government officials wield the omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers to assassinate them, incarcerate them indefinitely in military dungeons and concentration camps, torture them, execute them, embroil them in forever wars in faraway lands, and tax and spend them into penury to fund the ever-growing military-intelligence establishment."
Jacob Hornberger

"Any undocumented person arriving at any border of the United States, regardless of age, sex, or country of origin, should be refused entry into the country, no questions asked.  No debate.  No court rulings.  End of discussion.

Plain and simple, the reason we call them illegals is because they are — Duh! — here illegally!  Meaning they are in violation of U.S. law.  It has nothing to do with age.  Whether someone is seventy or seven, whether they are labeled 'DACA' or some other catchy acronym, it doesn’t change the fact that they are in the United States illegally.  If you buy into the argument that children who are here illegally should not be held responsible because it was their parents who brought them here, you are unthinkingly agreeing to open borders.

Think about it.  If you’re allowed to stay in the United States just because someone else brought you here, what it really does is assure an endless flow of illegal immigrants.  It gives too much of an incentive for parents to take whatever risks necessary to get their children onto U.S. soil."

Robert Ringer

"How many people have suffered in the name of decentralization and individual rights?  How many people have been exterminated in the name of the non-aggression principle?  Conservatives are certainly not evil, or extreme. But in the twilight zone of leftist thought, we are now the monsters."

Brandon Smith

"What does it mean when Americans fall all over themselves to apologize for using some word or term that someone finds 'offensive' when it never occurs to Americans to apologize to Libyans, Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans, Yemeni, Somalis, for destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of them? The disconnect here is extreme. Words hurt but not bombs. Moreover, I can remember when words now said to be offensive gave no offense to anyone. What has happened is that people have been taught to regard the words as offensive. How else did 'girls' become offensive? Identity Politics finds more offensive words every day. Before long a white person will not be able to open their mouth. Language itself is being made dysfunctional. If the means of communication is dysfunctional, how can society be functional?"

Paul Craig Roberts

"All throughout history, the social engineers, central planners, and builders of societies have always assumed human beings don’t have a specific nature.

We are, they have always believed, infinitely plastic, amorphous blobs, clean slates to which not only can be molded... but should be molded to suit the grand plans of the new, hot, utopian vision.

Human beings have always been told they must devote their lives to the State, to God, or the 'common good,' as defined by those who sit on the high and mighty perches of society.

In this distorted reality tunnel, the human being is little more than a sacrificial animal, born to serve the dictates of those who deem themselves superior to the unwashed masses… 

A draft mule for those who look down the bridges of their noses at the human creatures and see only swarming throngs of vermin, packs of parasites, a collectively clustered cancer on the world.

This isn’t (entirely) because all central planners and their glazed-eyed zealots are (mis)guided by resentment, envy, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, and, more recently, Karl Marx. 

But because we as individuals do not know ourselves enough to realize that we do, indeed, have a specific nature… and this nature requires a specific type of society for proper and healthy functioning."

Chris Campbell

"It seems obvious to me now – though I was slow coming to the conclusion – that the institution of private property, the dispersion of power and importance  that goes with it, has been a main factor in producing that limited amount of free-and-equalness which Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution."

Max Eastman

"There is a political and subversive word that has been created and is promoted by the establishment as a major key to formulate and channel the public mind. The word has more than saturated the public conscience. It's uttered hundreds of times a day on political talk shows and in the halls of government. Very 'intellectual' people spout this word assuming it means human freedom and liberty.

But this word has a dark and hidden meaning. It is a cover and disguise for fascism and socialism and tyranny.

It is workhorse of the American propaganda ministry. It is taught in schools (government indoctrination centers) as the source of all freedoms. Politicians love to hear it and use it. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels used it. The word is 'democracy'."

Bob Livingston

"When truth telling is considered a crime against the state, when heroes like Julian Assange are not supported and protected by society at large, when journalists who speak truth to power are rounded up and imprisoned or killed due to exposing corruption, life in a free country has ceased to exist.

The common man and the powerful politician have one thing in common. Both are afraid of the truth, and seek to avoid it at all costs. It is only the thinking individual who dares to confront the truth, and spread it without fear."

Gary D. Barnett

"But wars are not made by common folk, scratching for livings in the heat of the day; they are made by demagogues infesting palaces. It is not necessary for these demagogues to complete the sale of a war before they send the goods home, as a storekeeper must complete the sale of, say, a suit of clothes. They send the goods home first, then convince the customer that he wants them. ... But the main reason why it is easy to sell war to peaceful people is that the demagogues who act as salesmen quickly acquire a monopoly of both public information and public instruction. ... The dead are still dead, the fellows who lost legs still lack them, war widows go on suffering the orneriness of their second husbands, and taxpayers continue to pay, pay, pay. In the schools children are taught that the war was fought for freedom, the home and God."

H.L. Mencken

"A new Democratic presidential candidate enters the race every day now. I think we’re up to 22 candidates now. But who’s counting?

They seem to be competing with each other in an actual freak show. The Evil Party is trotting out its most bizarre nomenklatura, each trying to outdo the other in being socialist, black, queer, transgender friendly, or a professional female. By which I mean a female who parades as a female for a living. They’re vying over who has the most outlandish, rabid and nonsensical ideas about how they’re going to transform the very nature of what’s left of the United States.

Meanwhile, the Stupid Party, the right wing of the Demopublicans, populated by neocons, has-beens, and assorted non-entities, seems mainly interested in hyping the stock market with phony money, and looking for a major war somewhere in the world."

Doug Casey

"The libertarian's basic attitude toward war must then be: it is legitimate to use violence against criminals in defense of one's rights of person and property; it is completely impermissible to violate the rights of other innocent people. War, then, is only proper when the exercise of violence is rigorously limited to the individual criminals. We may judge for ourselves how many wars or conflicts in history have met this criterion. ... If classical international law limited and checked warfare, and kept it from spreading, modern international law, in an attempt to stamp out 'aggression' and to abolish war, only insures, as the great historian Charles Beard put it, a futile policy of 'perpetual war for perpetual peace'."

Murray Rothbard

"The Green New Deal requires government to extend its power dramatically over the entire economy. It will have total control if supporting legislation is passed, or even if the approach is piecemeal enactment over time. This economic control entails a corresponding destruction of property rights, that is, such freedoms as freedom to contract, freedom to create wealth, freedom of exchange and freedom to consume freely-made products.

Total control of the federal government, which suppresses capitalism and replaces it with a command-and-control economy, justifies the term totalitarian. The accompanying destruction of private property rights justifies the term communist."

Michael Rozeff

"Folks, the Iranian people are not our enemy. Our enemy is those warmongering miscreants in Washington, D.C., Tel Aviv, Riyadh and London."

Chuck Baldwin