Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"All governments are, as they must be, oligarchies: only a relatively small number of people have substantial effective discretion to make critical decisions about how the state’s power will be brought to bear. Beyond the oligarchy itself and the police and military forces that compose its Praetorian Guard, somewhat larger groups constitute a supporting coalition. These groups provide important financial and other support to the oligarchs and look to them for compensating rewards—legal privileges, subsidies, jobs, exclusive franchises and licenses, transfers of financial income and wealth, goods and services in kind, and other booty—channeled to them at the expense of the mass of the people. Thus, the political class in general—that is, the oligarchs, the Praetorian Guards, and the supporting coalition—uses government power (which means ultimately the police and the armed forces) to exploit everyone outside this class by wielding or threatening to wield violence against all who fail to pay the tribute the oligarchs demand or to obey the rules they dictate.

Democratic political forms and rituals, such as elections and formal administrative proceedings, disguise this class exploitation and trick the masses into the false belief that the government’s operation yields them net benefits. In the most extreme form of misapprehension, the people at large become convinced that, owing to democracy, they themselves 'are the government'."

Robert Higgs

"The politicians claim that 'hate crime' laws will deter people with hateful motives from carrying out their crimes based on their hatreds. But much like laws against murder don't prevent murder and laws against burglary don't stop burglars, hate crime laws apparently haven't stopped hate crimes. What they have done is create an almost cottage industry of claims of hate crimes from people seeking to profit from them.

Hate crimes are essentially thought crimes. Hate is a nebulous term, and it's dangerous when the political elite or the mass media or popular opinion can define what is criminal and what is acceptable on their terms. You may recall that it became so popular to hate Jews in Nazi Germany that an entire ideology was created off it. This 'hate' became public policy and state-sanctioned."

Bob Livingston

"All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

Even if the absence of government really did mean anarchy in a negative, disorderly sense – which is far from being the case – even then, no anarchical disorder could be worse than the position to which government has led humanity."

Leo Tolstoy

"American revolutionaries in 1776 employed violent means as a last resort, but only after a long train of abuses had occurred which they articulated, and only after all peaceful avenues to rectify the injustices had been exhausted. Antifa articulates nothing as a group, doesn’t make clear its grievances, doesn’t try to have its grievances redressed, and goes about singling out, not a government oppressing it, but other private groups. The role assigned to any government is to keep the peace among its citizens. Accordingly, government should crush Antifa."

Michael Rozeff

"We must ask, not whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be safe from a power grab by the men with the guns (safety is not an available option), but whether it would be safer than our society is from a comparable seizure of power by the men with the guns. I think the answer is yes. In our society, the men who must engineer such a coup are politicians, military officers, and policemen, men selected precisely for the characteristic of desiring power and being good at using it. They are men who already believe that they have a right to push other men around – that is their job. They are particularly well qualified for the job of seizing power. Under anarcho-capitalism the men in control of protection agencies are selected for their ability to run an efficient business and please their customers. It is always possible that some will turn out to be secret power freaks as well, but it is surely less likely than under our system where the corresponding jobs are labeled 'non-power freaks need not apply'."

David Friedman

"Perhaps Identity Politics is correct.  The days of 'the whites' are over.  The days of white people brainwashed into cowardice and impotence are at an end.  The Americans and their empire are incapable of self-defense.  All white gentiles can do is to attack Israel’s enemies for Israel, thus multiplying the crimes of whites and the associated guilt that has destroyed a once vigorous people who made the modern world with all its faults and advantages."

Paul Craig Roberts

"No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want."

Ludwig von Mises

"Do insurers owe the public coverage? No. The fact is that nobody owes you, or anybody else, anything. If you don’t qualify for a policy, that’s unfortunate. You also may not qualify for joining an athletic team. Or getting into a school. Or working for a certain employer. Or a thousand other things. I’m sorry. But tough. Your choices are to either do something to improve your circumstances or, if you can’t, find an alternative. One person’s bad luck doesn’t constitute a mortgage on another person’s life."

Doug Casey

"Today’s level of lawlessness and insecurity in many black communities is a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1950s, ’40s, ’30s and earlier times, people didn’t bar their windows. Doors were often left unlocked. People didn’t go to bed to the sounds of gunshots. And black people didn’t experience anything like what’s experienced in Chicago and other cities such as one person being shot every four hours and murdered every 18 hours. The uninformed blame today’s chaos on discrimination and poverty. That doesn’t even pass the smell test, unless one wants to argue that historically there was less racial discrimination and poverty than today."

Walter Williams

"Don’t just ask 'Cui bono?' of potential false flag events. Ask it about every belief in your head. Rigorously holding that candle up to the ideas in your own mind will reveal a lot of junk floating around in there that benefit other people, both the powerful and the not-so-powerful."

Caitlin Johnstone

"Great insights and strokes of brilliance come from individuals who, in wanting to solve a particular problem, with the ability of deliberate focus and reflection, come to a realization. 

This, at its most basic, requires that individuals be untethered from the collective, allowing their thoughts to roam freely outside of 'the box.'

(After all, if the answer was obvious, the collective would’ve already picked it up.)  

Sometimes, the realization has little to do with the particular problem-at-hand. But what ties all great discoveries together is that it came from an active, open, and searching mind.

There’s been exactly zero cases of a spontaneous collective 'Aha!' moment leading to a great invention, discovery, or insight. 

It always took root in an individual mind first. 

Brilliance, in other words, is a product of what makes us unique as individuals, not what makes us the same. 

The seed always begins with the individual, then is tempered and shaped and elaborated on by others. 

This is a liberating realization because individual brilliance doesn’t discriminate… 

Every single individual with the capacity for insight has the ability to ruminate on a specific problem. And, flipside, the problem can be seen through a billion lenses that are all entirely unique. 

We have billions of potentially brilliant solutions whirling around at this very moment, screaming to be let out."

Chris Campbell

"There is one huge difference between businesses (even Woke Capitalism) and government: business firms cannot engage in the kind of coercion that is the lifeblood of government rule. While Americans might still believe that corporations one day will rule the world, creating a Rollerball dystopia, there is a reason that such scenarios are depicted in fiction, and that is because they are fiction. Government coercion and brutality, unfortunately, are quite real. While one can fear what is happening in corporate boardrooms and executive offices, one always should fear government more."

William L. Anderson

"…The business people, regular people in Russia and China, are hardly dictators. So they’re saying that Putin is a dictator, that Xi is a dictator. I don’t think either one of them has all power. And even if they are- obviously there is a dictator in North Korea- how do you achieve peace unless you’re willing to deal with them? The U.S. president, by the way, is a dictator. He has the power to launch atomic weapons on his own say so. He has the power to destroy the world on his own say so. I mean, what is a more dictatorial power than that? And everybody thinks that’s okay, that’s fine. Maybe they don’t like it if Trump can do it, but they thought it was fine if Bush or Obama could do it. So the U.S. presidency is actually an elected dictatorship."

Lew Rockwell

"If you are paralyzed with fear it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do."

Steven Pressfield