Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"The most egregious lie on display during the whole impeachment drama is the lie that Schiff, Schumer, Pelosi, Nadler, and the other Bolsheviks masquerading as 'Democrats' are champions of constitutionalism and the rule of law.  This is exactly the opposite of reality, and anyone with a brain should know it.  Raw, arbitrary, unchallenged political power is what motivates every fiber in their totalitarian beings, and they hate Trump because he imposed a tiny roadblock on their road to totalitarianism.  The whole purpose of the so-called rule of law has for centuries been to deter just such behavior.  Getting Trump out of office will lead to more arbitrary rule and less rule of law, not more.  These are people, after all, who wanted to coronate Hillary Clinton as Queen of America.  The notion that impeaching and convicting Trump promotes the rule of law is a farce and an absurdity."
Tom DiLorenzo

"[I]n order to advance their egalitarian utopia (or rather dystopia), every human characteristic, condition and institution smacking of difference and inequality, then, has been taken under attack by the Left in due course.  Down with human excellence and all ranks of human achievement, because no person is to be more excellent than any other.  Down with private property as it implies the distinction between mine and thine and thus renders everyone unequal. Down with all income differences.  Down with the family as citadel of inequality, with a male father and a female mother and their common, young and dependent children.  Down in particular with men and especially white men as the most unequal people of all.  Down with marriage because of its exclusivity, and down with heterosexuality.  Down with discrimination and individual preferences of and for one person over another.  Down with free association and disassociation.  Down with all covenants, and down with any and all borders, fortifications or walls separating one person from another.  Down with exclusive, bi- or multi-lateral private contracts.  Down with employers and landlords as unequal and different from employees and renters, and down with the division of labor in general.  Down with the biblical notion that man is to rule and be the master of nature and rank above all animals and plants — and always down with everyone dissenting from the egalitarian leftist creed."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"Ronald Reagan is quoted freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history'.
It now appears that socialism/communism is attempting to leave democratic republicanism on the ash heap of history.
However, life and freedom are natural, intense, linked, uncontrollable and countervailing forces to socialism/communism. There is no life, human or not, without freedom and freedom is integral to life. Socialism, communism and democratic republicanism are not forces of life and not forces of freedom. They are forces of oppression and death. They are forces of collectivism, which means that the 'group' has political and social priority over the individual. But this invariably means the power of some individuals over other individuals.
With the extinction of these political philosophies that kill life, freedom will be the only life-giving philosophy left. If there is not to be human misery, death and extinction, freedom has to and will leave socialism/communism in all forms including democratic republicanism on the ash heap of history."
Michael Rozeff

"As history has shown us, it is always the elites that end up in the position of deciding the fates of millions or billions. From the Rockefeller Foundation sterilization programs in the U.S. in the early 1900s to the U.N. today, the globalists, a veritable death cult, are desperate to conjure a rationalization as to why they should be the ones to allow or deny human life based on lies like man-made climate change. My theory — they are psychopaths looking for a socially justifiable way to kill as many people as possible. Why? Because they enjoy it."
Brandon Smith

"The one big promise the state system and its ideology, archism, make is order but all these competing states and proto-states have produced is chaos, violence and disorder.  Worse yet, they learn nothing; their mindset never changes and they continue to use the same strategies, methodologies and tactics that have failed them so far.  They do not and will not, as our late father often advised when we acted up, 'meditate on the virtues of peace'."
James and Michael Ostrowski

"The mainstream media is virtually worthless as a guide to investment.
It is preoccupied with a bankrupt Keynesian economic theory, an ingenious campaign to blame conservatives for bad weather, and endless rotation of the kaleidoscopes of social issues."
George Gilder

"When George Washington said, 'government is force,' he meant that government is force against its own people.
Since by definition government is force, then it follows that government will use any ruse imaginable to increase its power. Increased use of government force or power could backfire unless skillfully handled and justified in the public mind. Therefore, governments rarely take action unless accompanied by skillful propaganda."
Bob Livingston

"The Deep State is not a homogenous or centrally controlled organization. It is not a conspiracy of spooks, meeting in secret and plotting a takeover of the country. Instead, it includes hundreds of thousands of people who already run the country.
It is a loose and tacit alliance of cronies, politicians, bureaucrats, consultants, experts, economists, lobbyists, the press, professors, the whole medical care complex, and the military and its contractors.
There are so many mansions in this house, the walls bulge and the nails pop. And the people who live in them have many different competing interests. But they have one single overriding common agenda – to shift power, status, and wealth from the public to themselves.
That is what makes them different from you and us: They can get richer only by making us poorer. And that, and only that, is the reason federal spending, debt, and fake money go in only one direction – up."
Bill Bonner

"The idea of democracy is an anachronism, at best. The US has mutated into a domestic multicultural empire. The average person has been propagandized into believing that it’s patriotic to do as he’s told. 'We need libraries of regulations, and I’m happy to pay my taxes. It’s the price we pay for civilization.' No, that’s just the opposite of the fact. Those things are signs that civilization is degrading, that the members of society are becoming less individually responsible. And therefore that the country has to be held together by force.
It’s all about control. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The type of people that gravitate to government like to control other people. Contrary to what we’re told to think, that’s why the worst people – not the best – want to get into government."
Doug Casey

"If Washington, D.C. were held to biblical standards, it would be an ash heap.
We should stop pretending there’s virtue on one side of this enterprise and evil on the other and accept the reality that two things can be true at once."
Nolan Finley

"It’s not uncommon to hear language that suggests anti-trans discourse constitutes harm—and perhaps even violence—against trans people—for instance, that certain expressions 'invalidate,' 'delegitimize,' or 'erase' trans people. I find it hard to see how any kind of discourse can constitute harm, let alone violence, against any group apart from how it affects people psychologically. Calling arguments 'harmful' or 'violent' are plausibly examples of what I’ve called 'concept inflation'."
Bill Buppert

"Success has a funny way of building someone’s confidence and independence. When you work hard and become successful, you begin to see yourself achieving even more. 
But Bolshevik politicians depend on their supporters seeing themselves as victims, not as champions. 
Their power comes from keeping people angry, afraid, and downtrodden. 
So they’ll never aim to close the wealth gap by helping poor people become successful."
Simon Black

"One look around will expose the results of this societal disaster called democracy. We live in a society of victims, each group a minority within the whole of a communal mess. This is just one of the reasons that the electoral practices of the political system in which we live are so worthless and destructive of sanity. There are those of intellect who oppose this system, but they are a vast minority outcast by the mob. They are marginalized, cursed, threatened, and silenced, all due to the indoctrinated ignorance of the herd, and the masters they follow.
The collective group that makes up the majority relies on false worship of the state, thus the common attitude is one of allegiance, which is 'the loyalty of a citizen to his or her government or of a subject to his or her sovereign.' This is religious in nature, and simply results in a compliant society under the control of the few. When most of any society falls to this level, all freedom has already disappeared, and this is exactly what democracy is meant to achieve. It is now the current state of affairs in this country, and only a monumental effort could alter the course we are on today.
In a system such as this, integrity is replaced by mediocrity, courage is replaced by cowardice, intelligence is replaced by ignorance, and compassion is replaced by indifference. This leaves only a road to perdition."
Gary D. Barnett