Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Despite their mantra of limited government, federalism, fidelity to the Constitution, individual freedom, private property, free markets, traditional values, and free enterprise, Republicans and conservatives have no philosophical objection to any government program as long as it is run efficiently, doesn’t waste too many taxpayer dollars, or furthers some right-wing agenda like abstinence education.
Republicans and conservatives are statists just like Democrats and progressives. They all believe that the federal government should take money from some Americans and redistribute it to American (and foreign) individuals, groups, organizations, and businesses—after it is filtered through a massive government bureaucracy—in the form of subsidies, vouchers, loans, EBT cards, grants, and cash payments."
Laurence Vance
"There is one reason the government supremacists always go after weapons in private hands and it has nothing to do with private weapons violence. Power. You will note there are no impassioned clarion calls to disarm the largest existential murderer of all time, government."
Bill Buppert
"Anti-libertarian conservatives confuse libertarianism with the authoritarian 'neoliberalism' embraced by both major parties. This confusion may be why these conservatives blame libertarians for the American middle class’s eroding standard of living. Conservatives are correct to be concerned about the economic challenges facing the average American, but they are mistaken to place the blame on the free market.
The American people are not suffering from an excess of free markets. They suffer from an excess of taxes, regulations, and, especially, fiat money. Therefore, populist conservatives should join libertarians in seeking to eliminate federal regulations, repeal the 16th Amendment, and restore a free-market monetary system."
Ron Paul
"The doctrine of equality and fraternity as a doctrine of liberty, as promoted during the French Revolution and as pushed by the government today, is a myth, a fiction and a self-evident contradiction. It is impossible to have liberty and equality. Yet, the unthinking masses still today accept this as the foundation of American democracy. On the contrary, the concept of human equality is basic to the destruction of human liberty.
Equality is the organism of racism and 'otherism' as promoted by the government. Its purpose is the opposite of human liberty. It is the systematic subversion of human liberty. Further and deeper conclusions are that when we hold two contradictory thoughts such as liberty and equality, the result is double mindedness and unstable thinking (see James 1:8; '... a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.') leading to greater receptivity to the power of suggestion.
The closer we come to total acceptance of the doctrine of human equality, the closer we come to slavery. In reality, human equality is an impossibility in the real world. As an instrument of government propaganda, it is the perfect organism."
Bob Livingston
"Our lives are too short, too fleeting, too important to spend all of our waking hours engaged in the systematic organization of hatreds, which is as good a working definition of politics as there is. There's ultimately not a lot of wiggle room between Trumpian conservatism, which demands complete reverence for the Donald and includes bolder and bolder threats to stifle free speech along with free trade, and Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Dealism, which explicitly uses the totalist regimentation of all aspects of American life during World War II as its model. If I wanted to deal with politics all the time, I'd move to a totalitarian country already."
Nick Gillespie
"One thing the United States most certainly is not is a democracy. A democracy requires an informed electorate, and the United States most certainly does not have an informed electorate. The American media, indeed, the entirety of the Western print and TV media, functions as a Propaganda Ministry for Washington and the ruling oligarchies. The explanations are controlled to serve the agendas of the ruling elites. The persecution and torture of Julian Assange proves conclusively that the First Amendment is a dead-letter Amendment.
The vaunted rule of law in the Great American Democracy is a dead-letter rule of law. Since the Clinton regime America has had four criminal regimes in a row, the presidents and high officials of which are more guilty of war crimes than the German National Socialists who were tried at Nuremberg on ex post facto grounds in order to distract from the war crimes of the victorious allies."
Paul Craig Roberts
"Today, any school principal permitting rifles clubs or allowing rifles on school grounds would be fired, possibly imprisoned. Here’s my question: Have .30-30 caliber Winchesters and .22 caliber rifles changed to become more violent? If indeed rifles have become more violent, what can be done to pacify them? Will rifle psychiatric counseling help to stop these weapons from committing gun violence? You say: 'Williams, that’s lunacy! Guns are inanimate objects and as such cannot act.' You’re right. Only people can act. That means that we ought to abandon the phrase 'gun violence' because guns cannot act and hence cannot be violent."
Walter Williams
"Our country’s taxpayers of all sizes, shapes, stripes, races, and origins have already paid reparations. They’ve been paying them ever since the War on Poverty began, ever since 1964, ever since Medicare, ever since Food Stamps, ever since Medicaid, ever since public housing, and ever since a host of other federal programs. Estimates of the amounts of wealth transferred range from $15 to $22 trillion.
They weren’t called reparations. They were sold as erasing poverty. In time, their vast negative effects and failures became evident.
Any new programs sold as reparations will only have the same kinds of vastly negative effects as their past equivalents have already had."
Michael Rozeff
"Historically, when any empire finds itself on the ropes, the political class does all it can to prolong the party, extending their power and emoluments a bit longer. This always occurs in a period where the system has been drained by years of extensive warfare and debt. At such times, the system begins to break down in most all areas and the electorate becomes aware that an ill wind is blowing. This is commonly felt more than understood, and the average voter develops a gut feeling that something is badly wrong, even though he may be unable to define it.
At such a time, he fervently needs reassurance that 'it will all be okay.' And, since his understanding of the problems is limited, he relies more on rhetoric than on substance."
Jeff Thomas
"Those who cheer the banning of 'hate speech' (AKA, anything that makes one feel uncomfortable or the need to feel morally superior) are also the same types who would’ve in the past -- ironically enough, given our modern moral pulpit’s (apparent) distaste for religious dogma -- shunned people out of society for blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy.
Today’s secular church doesn’t care what you look like -- so long as you become a sounding board for its 3,333 ever-shifting commandments.
If not?
The digital mob will try to alienate you from society by doxxing you, harassing your employer, or via public humiliation.
No matter how you shake it, this isn’t a very good long-term strategy, either.
There’s a long-held axiom of war that goes something like this:
The weapons I use on my enemy today will be used on me with equal or increased intensity tomorrow."
Chris Campbell
"The limitation of tyrants is the endurance of those they oppose."
Frederick Douglass
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