Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"On January 31st of this year, the UK will rejoin the world of independent and sovereign nations/unions. This day will be a momentous occasion not only for Great Britain, but the world, for It will prove that a first-world nation can peaceably leave an intractable union that no longer lives up to its responsibilities nor has at heart the best interests of its constituent nations. Decentralization and independence are the wave of not just the future, but the now. And when Texans follow the UK’s example and casts off our own intractable American Union, we can have confidence in the expectation of a peaceful transition where the US realizes that, for its own economic self-interests, they will have to play ball with the largest energy producer in the world."
Ryan Thorson

"Across all measures, the relationship between Texas and the federal government is far worse than what has been experienced by the UK. We have less sovereignty. We sit under the weight of a far greater number of unelected bureaucrats. We send far more of our hard-earned money into the federal system and receive far less in return. We have less of a voice in policies that affect our daily lives and groan under the weight of those policies that we don’t want and didn’t vote for. More importantly, our fundamental rights are under assault or have already been abridged or warped into privileges that would be unrecognizable by those who founded this nation in 1836.
Texans, our time is coming. We can have a vote on independence. We can win a vote on independence. We can stand as a nation among nations. If you choose to be sheepish and give excuses as to why your country should remain shackled to an irredeemable federal superstate, then understand that you are standing on the wrong side of history. We’ve been right every single time and the opposition has been wrong every single time. I would suggest that standing with the TNM is where you’ll want to be to avoid any undue embarrassment."
Daniel Miller

"It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke."
Søren Kierkegaard

"One of the great myths of our time is that the U.S. is a free market capitalist system. In reality, there is no free market in America and has not been for more than 150 years. A market with regulations and licensing and taxation and incentives and cronyism and laws requiring whom a business may or may not serve is in no way a free market.
Most of today's conservatives would agree that the market is overregulated. But they are few and far between who would agree that all federal regulations should be removed and America's system should be laissez-faire.
Or try to get the conservative to agree to end Social Security, all gun laws, the Federal Reserve, all welfare programs, the income tax, the FDA, farm subsidies, regulations on the auto industry, antitrust laws, the FCC, the EPA and energy regulations. 'You can't take away all regulations,' the conservative will say. 'Some of them are necessary. We don't want the seniors to be broke, kids to go hungry, to have the 'wild west' or unregulated banks, etc., etc., and government — and only government — can prevent that'."
Bob Livingston

"Government doesn’t produce anything, but rather redistributes, manages, and consumes the wealth created by the citizenry, serfs and livestock it 'owns.'  Just as a farmer, who when facing lower sales price and higher costs, re-evaluates his or her operation, so too do federal and state governments. The farmer counts his or her livestock carefully, and figures out how to do more with less, the same with less, and less with less all while squeezing more cash out of what he or she 'owns.' Imagine, if you will, the gentle cow or ewe. Her value is necessarily monetized, and as the bottom line sinks ever lower, her owner will become very interested in what Bessie and Belle do all day, where they go, what they eat, and how they behave."
Karen Kwiatkowski

"There are three legs to the Deep State stool. One controls the guns. Another seeks control over the voters. The third controls the money.
The most powerful and dangerous of the three legs is the one Dwight Eisenhower warned about: the military-industrial complex. It’s gotten much more complex… and much more powerful… since Eisenhower outed it in 1961.
The second leg is the politically correct, mostly culturally liberal, non-deplorable elite who dominate the universities, the media, and the Health, Education, and Welfare complex.
Wall Street is the third leg. It is not interested in politics. It is interested in money itself. But it knows that today’s fake money comes from politics, and it does its part, along with the rest of the Deep State, to keep it flowing."
Bill Bonner

"It is important to state that I believe the common people are not incapable of intelligent thought, but have given in to the pressure from their self-appointed overseers, and accepted a subordinate position in society. They have been programmed to suppress their curiosity, and therefore have chosen to hide from responsibility. I refer to this attitude as a fear of freedom, as freedom requires much work, a strong moral base, an active intellect, and constant defense of self-rule. It is difficult to achieve and even more difficult to keep, so most are willing to take the easy way. By doing so, tyranny of the masses is always the resulting societal structure."
Gary D. Barnett

"Note that the law of association does not suppose that everyone in society is smart, enlightened, talented, reasonable, or educated. It presumes radical inequality and points to the paradox that the world's smartest, most talented person still has every reason to trade with his polar opposite because scarcity requires that the tasks of production be divided between people. Under the division of labor, everyone plays an essential role. It is the basis of families, communities, firms, and international trade. Another fact that needs to be understood is this: the law of association is a fact of human existence whether or not there is a state. Indeed, the foundation of civilization itself precedes the existence of the state.
What the law of association addresses is the core problem of freedom itself. If all people were equal, if everyone had the same skill level, if there were racial, sexual, and religious homogeneity in society, if people did not have differences of opinion, there would be few if any problems in society to overcome because it would not be a human society. It would be an ant heap, or a series of machine parts that had no volition. The essential problem of social and economic organization, aside from scarcity, is precisely how to deal with the fact of inequality and free will. It is here that freedom excels."
Lew Rockwell

"Even if we imagine a scenario—contrary to reality—where humanity did run into a crisis because of natural resource crunch, the best way to deal with the situation would be reliance on private property and market prices. To blame capitalism for the potential problems of a finite world is like blaming thermometers for the flu."
Bob Murphy

"I have outlined in numerous articles Trump's dubious background and behavior. To summarize, we hear pieces of anti-globalism and anti-elitism from Trump, even though he has saturated his cabinet with globalists and elitists. We heard anti-banker talking points from Trump during his campaign, even though Trump has a longstanding relationship to the Rothschild family and works side-by-side with Rothschild and Goldman Sachs bankers in the White House. We heard lots of anti-Federal Reserve discussion from Trump and observations that the current economy is an explosive bubble engineered by them; yet he now openly demands that the Fed inflate the bubble further while he takes full credit for the fake stock market rally.
In other words, Trump is a skin job. A robot. A false conservative and false prophet of the liberty movement. He tells us what we want to hear while his actions say something entirely different. Yet, a lot of conservatives still listen to him, because they despise the collectivist religion of the left, because they desperately want mainstream recognition and representation, and because they want to believe that there is a white knight out there defending their interests and their future.
The establishment understands these desires and exploits them. They understand that the more extreme the left becomes, the more tempted conservatives will be to jump blindly on the Trump bandwagon."
Brandon Smith

"Here are some facts: CO2 levels are rising, but there’s no evidence that CO2 causes warming. The evidence points the other way, that warming causes CO2 to be released from permafrost and the oceans.
Sea levels are rising, but the pace is about seven inches in 100 years. That minimal rise will not inundate the New York subways or drown island nations. The rise that is occurring will likely be reversed due to feedback loops long before any seven-inch increase.
By the way, sea levels have risen 400 feet since the last ice age and people adapted just fine. Remember Al Gore’s polar bear extinction scare? He hopes you don’t because the evidence is that polar bear populations are thriving.
Moreover, a mild global warming episode appears to have ended around 1998. Claims of ‘record’ temperatures since then are based on dubious measurements (including putting land-based thermometers in asphalt parking lots; satellite infrared measurements show no warming), and the results are within the margin of error.
Climate does change, but not because of carbon dioxide and not in ways that humans can control."
Jim Rickards

"It’s hard to imagine what more the US government and its allied political/media class could possibly do to quell conspiracy theories that now have Hollywood celebrities clamoring for government internet censorship. I guess if they really, really wanted to dampen conspiracy theories, there are a few more extremely drastic steps that could be taken. Steps like not lying all the time. And maybe not hiding immense amounts of information about what the most powerful institutions in the world are doing behind thick walls of government opacity. And maybe cease promoting conspiracies themselves, as with Russiagate. And maybe stop secretly doing depraved things. And maybe stop engaging in conspiracies."
Caitlin Johnstone

"Q: When a socialist doesn’t truly know how food is produced, but wants to nationalize and redistribute it anyway, what do you call it? 
A: History."
Chris Campbell

"Legal gun owners have 300 million guns and probably a trillion rounds of ammo. Seriously, folks, if we were the problem, you’d know it."
Bill Buppert

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
Thomas Paine

"Freedom begins between the ears."
Edward Abbey