Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"The House plans to hold endless hearings on the conditions of the detention facilities holding illegal aliens. What few in government and the media plan to focus on is what we are not seeing but that is still coming into our country, since Border Patrol has been transformed into Walmart greeters and babysitters. Moreover, what nobody in the media wants to discuss is the number of people who come in openly and go on to commit crimes in this country.

While House Democrats hold hearings on behalf of illegal aliens, the question nobody in the Republican-controlled Senate is asking is why should Border Patrol be forced to allow in so many criminals, yet still get called Nazis? And if not Border Patrol, then why can’t the military actually defend our border?

Ultimately, this all boils down to one question: Are the assets of the United States government for the protection of the American citizen or for the welfare of those seeking to subvert our sovereignty?"

Daniel Horowitz

"Brexit has monkeywrenched the plan and Americans were paying attention. Even now, long after the post-Brexit hysteria has fizzled out, mentions of Texit continue to surface. Indeed, the Texas Nationalist Movement recently surged in popularity and currently boasts hundreds of thousands of followers. It appears that more than a few Americans are questioning the sanctity of a system whereby one self-interested city presides over hundreds of millions of people. Is that really so unreasonable?

We’ve been propagandized for so long against considering alternatives to rule by our DC overlords. According to the pledge that American schoolchildren recite every day, our country is 'one nation,' 'indivisible.' But these words – remnants of world war fascism – run contrary to the very founding of this country. After all, the most American of holidays celebrates an illegal declaration of secession. Americanism is rooted in decentralization.

So the next time you encounter talk of Texit, don’t just dismiss it outright – as foolish, or selfish, or anti-American. Because Texit is none of those things. Texit only asks a simple question, to be judged by its answers: Would the Lone Star State be better off on its own?"

The Texas Nationalist Movement

"Our policy should never be to suffocate the civilian population of another country with ruinous sanctions. In addition to being unjust and cruel, it hardens attitudes against the U.S. and provokes stronger resistance. No genuine U.S. interests are served by immiserating tens of millions of people for the actions of their government, and by inflicting collective punishment on an entire nation our government commits a terrible injustice that should shame us all. If the Iranian people are not our enemy, we must halt the economic war our government is waging against them and pursue a course of diplomatic and economic engagement instead."

Daniel Larison

"It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they are born.

Hence, people will grow accustomed to the idea that they have always been in subjection, that their fathers lived in the same way; they will think they are obliged to suffer this evil, and will persuade themselves by example and imitation of others, finally investing those who order them around with proprietary rights, based on the idea that it has always been that way."

Etienne de La Boétie

"Taxation is theft and the acquisition of other people’s resources with a velvet glove backed by a mailed fist. It is simply one of the many ways in which the state brutalizes and impoverishes its tax cattle on a daily basis. Despite the government-media complex insistence that the tax rate in America is tolerable if not fair, anything above zero is morally wrong if the robbed don’t agree implicitly and consensually to the mugging for whatever fantastic services the state proclaims it provides."

Bill Buppert

"The second Wilsonian excuse for perpetual war ... is even more utopian: the idea that it is the moral obligation of America and of all other nations to impose 'democracy' and 'human rights' throughout the globe. In short, in a world where 'democracy' is generally meaningless, and 'human rights' of any genuine sort virtually nonexistent, that we are obligated to take up the sword and wage a perpetual war to force utopia on the entire world by guns, tanks, and bombs."

Murray Rothbard

"Once a culture becomes thoroughly politicized, most people come to believe that the most effective means of human action necessitates the use of threats and violence. This represents the essence of all political systems, distinguished from the peaceful and voluntary methods of non-political social systems. It is the mind that is the battlefield for this contest. Only individuals can think; collectives react. Reasoned analysis and long-term commitments to problem-solving or projects take too long, and the skills for employing such methods may atrophy from diminished use. Civilizations are sustained only by maintaining respect for the inviolability of the individual and his or her interests, the conditions that were essential for the creation of cultures. They begin to collapse into divisive and undifferentiated collectives wherein autonomous individuality is transformed into group identities and purposes, with human energies and resources subject to centralized, coercive direction. Violence and other dehumanizing behavior give a false impression of liveliness and resiliency to the destabilizing forces of change."

Butler Shaffer

"The question that no open-borders advocate has ever answered is, How many illegals should be allowed into the United States?  100 million?  500 million?  One billion?  Where does it end?  When the United States finally becomes one of the most undesirable countries in the world to live in?

If Republicans were really serious about solving the border crisis, they would come up with legislation that would cut off 100 percent of government benefits to illegals, overturn the ridiculous asylum laws and the 72-hour release scam, and require that all — repeat, all — people who are here illegally be rounded up and deported.  No exceptions."

Robert Ringer

"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. …Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."

Elbridge Gerry, Fifth Vice President of the United States

"Democracy is an esoteric belief system that manipulates the people in such a way that all power flows to the state. As with pure dictatorships, power flows from the top down.

Democracy implies freedom in the public's mind while power and wealth is constantly channeled to the federal government. Human liberty is regressively crushed under 'democracy.'

Democracy is a political word that is embraced by all political parties and all politicians under many labels in every country of the modern world. It is a cover and a facade for communism, socialism, fascism, for class warfare, for the exploitation and manipulation of minorities against stability, cultural heritage and private property. (By the way; communism, socialism and fascism are all equal. Don't be fooled by claims that one is a right wing and another is a left wing philosophy. They all transfer power to the state. The difference is simply semantics.)"

Bob Livingston

"All too often, government-produced defense is discussed as an ideal — a force that protects people and their rights. Seldom does reality enter the picture. Standing armies, after all, often do not only practice defense.

Once established, a government’s military, its bureaucrats and leaders, as well as laymen all face a different set of incentives. Those with a job related to the military have an incentive to keep their job. In most cases, they probably also desire to see the scope of their power expanded and their pay increased. The support for war then, is the ideal policy for achieving those goals. These incentives may not transform a champion of peace into a war-loving bureaucrat, but they can have effects on the margins. It’s much easier to rationalize a war if your job depends on it."

Andrew Kern

"I dislike the idea of a hereditary aristocracy – kings and queens and royals. They’re basically just successful, silk-clad gangsters. Why the royal family in Britain is looked up to is a mystery to me. They, like all royals in the world, historically are just descendants of successful thugs."

Doug Casey

"Slavery was a gross violation of human rights. Justice demands that all participants in the trans-Atlantic slave trade make compensatory reparation payments to slaves. However, there is no way that Europeans could have captured millions of Africans. That means compensation would have to be paid by Africans and Arabs who captured and sold slaves to Europeans in addition to the people who bought and used slaves. Since slaves and slave traders and owners are no longer with us, compensation is beyond our reach and it’s a matter that will have to be settled in hell or heaven."

Walter Williams

"I agree that the fake story of America’s moral worthiness is much easier to live with than it is to bear the shame of the true story.  But in the end the fake story destroys our liberty even more completely than would conquest by a foreign opponent. People are more suspicious of an occupying power than they are of their own government and are less likely to believe foreign occupiers when they lie to them.  In contrast, a people’s own government can trap them in a false consciousness and keep them there with fake news."

Paul Craig Roberts

"The appropriate term for the 7 billion people who haven’t yet gone through the formality of moving to the United States is 'Pre-American-Americans'."

Steve Sailer

"More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States."

Thomas Sowell