Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"For those that did not think things could get worse, it is obvious that allowing government to gain more and more power over these past decades has reached a pinnacle not expected by the dumbed-down masses. But the reality of this situation is that it can get much worse, and the tyranny that is now evident is not the final tyranny. There is much more to come in the future, and this has been openly stated by the politicians, their powerful masters, and those involved with government, as they do not fear the people any longer. That is why they have openly exposed their plans through live false-flag exercises for a long time, and continue to do so. Only the few real thinkers out there are noticing this, but the bulk of society ignores these warnings due mostly to indifference and ignorance."
Gary D. Barnett

"One thing demonstrated by this episode is the incompetence of governments in dealing with the virus. This is but an example of the incompetence of governments in dealing with everything else they are given powers to deal with.
A second thing being demonstrated is that the politicians, while unable to exercise good judgments on our behalf, are highly competent at devising stories critical of their opponents, while attempting to portray themselves as excellent and strong leaders who are free of blame. Politicians will also attempt to enact other parts of their agenda either as blackmail or by making irrelevant connections to the virus.
A third thing this episode shows with stark clarity is that governments do not give a damn about rights. Given the chance via some crisis, real or manufactured, governments will rapidly extend their powers and crush liberties right and left.
A fourth thing shown clearly is that major media are absolutely horrible. They stoke panic. Heavily influenced by political biases, they distort facts and reports. They are almost entirely unreliable in dealing with government powers. They are much closer to being propaganda arms of governments than independent journalists."
Michael Rozeff

"You can’t fix stupid and the CDC, like so many of the assisted living facilities for the eminently unemployable in Mordor on the Potomac, is filled to the brim with the intellectually lame, morally stunted and sociopathic scum that is the human coin of the realm in the Federal government.
We need to stop with all the data manipulation … algorithms… data homogenizing … smoothing … poor data quality, etc. Just stop. The purpose of all this data manipulation is political. It has nothing to do with reality or actual health."
It is only about control.
Bill Buppert

"The truth is that the 'experts' have no idea how much the lockdowns are even preventing the spread of disease or how employment and economic growth would be affected in the absence of coerced lockdowns. The lockdown proponents simply don’t have enough data to make the case for their position. They only know they desire to force people to abandon their jobs, abandon their shops, and indefinitely embrace a life on the dole. As a result, many will kill themselves. Many will overdose on drugs."
Ryan McMaken

"Population lockdown is an onerous, destructive, last-resort practice that is counterproductive as it eliminates the safety net our communities rely upon (doctors, hospitals, ambulances) and deprives the public of sunlight needed to produce natural vitamin D which is critical for immunity.  We now have a perpetual mandated population lockdown with no exit strategy in mind, which leads to public chaos.  Nutrition is the elephant in the room that modern medicine ignores."
Bill Sardi

"In so many words, Democrats want to “Keep America Sick”, 'Keep America Afraid', 'Keep America Masked', 'Keep Americans Unemployed', 'Keep Americans Locked Down', 'Keep Americans Indoors', and 'Drive Americans Crazy'. In the meantime they will cavort on their private beaches while eating gourmet ice cream and pass spending bills that raise indebtedness to bankruptcy levels.
Political campaigns often descend into baseness. The Democrats’ attempt to benefit at the expense of the lives of tens, even hundreds, of millions of our countrymen is evil."
Michael Rozeff

"I’ll simply say: ALL COVID-19 case numbers are meaningless.
Why? 
ONE: Researchers never properly discovered a new virus in China in the first place. Their claim of having done so is false.
TWO: The widespread diagnostic test for the virus in a patient, the PCR, is riddled with irreparable flaws. It spits out false-positives, because the test reacts to the presence of irrelevant germs that have nothing to do with a purported COVID. Most importantly the test has never been vetted, in the real world, for its claimed ability to detect whether a patient is ill or is going to become ill.
THREE: Many diagnoses of COVID in patients are based on no tests at all, but rather eyeball assessment, guesswork, unproven assumptions, outright lying, or, in China, CT scans of the lungs, which prove nothing about the presence of COVID or any other supposedly causative virus."
Jon Rappoport

"As I watch the current practice of governments releasing violent and predatory convicted criminals, lest they catch the flu, and arrest disobedient and patriotic hair salon and tavern owners, it appears to be nothing more than a poorly disguised mass destruction of the bourgeoisie class so hated by communist revolutionaries, engineered by communists at all levels of government under the pretense of 'safety'. The targeting of these businesses for destruction as 'non-essential' while handing the 'relief' money over to the corporate state 'approved' corporations (that harangue us with their Orwellian commercials about being in this together (as if!), and the 'New Normal' (for who??)) illustrates this more clearly every day. Also, the fact that the ruling class routinely flout the 'safety' edicts that the rest of us are forced to obey makes this whole 'pandemic' more ridiculous and patronizing."
Kathy Grable

"The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant."
Matt Taibbi

"What sort of life do we think we are protecting? There is more to life than the avoidance of death. Life is a drink with friends. Life is a crowded football match or a live concert. Life is a family celebration with children and grandchildren. Life is companionship, an arm around one's back, laughter or tears shared at less than two metres. These things are not just optional extras. They are life itself. They are fundamental to our humanity, to our existence as social beings. Of course death is permanent, whereas joy may be temporarily suspended. But the force of that point depends on how temporary it really is."
Lord Sumption

"State planning killed close to a billion people in the 20th century. Led by the banning of DDT, the resurgence of malaria, the suppression of nuclear power, and the retardation of global growth, environmentalist excesses have already killed more people than environmental pollution ever did. Now the expert response to the coronavirus is on track to exceed even environmentalism in its vast damage of our civilization.
Now in the name of fighting COVID-19, we are destroying the monetary underpinnings of capitalist markets with untold trillions of dollars of wanton spending and crony bailouts. We are closing down much of the economy for months on end. We are jeopardizing food supplies and other medical services. We are giving up world leadership in technology to Communists in China. We are condoning a devastating blow to the economies of Third World countries that unlike the US cannot merely print dollars and expect people to take them."
George Gilder

"That most Western governments have now decided to emulate the Chinese dictatorship in imposing a severe lockdown of society should be a wake-up call for those innocent souls who still think, even after the show trial of Julian Assange, that the West still protects individual freedom. A dangerous and frightening political evolution is on the way in an already fragile political and economic system. The political consequences of the generalized confinement of millions of people in Europe will be of long-lasting consequence to the balance of power between state and society. Though the Western 'liberal democratic' order was never really one except in name, it is clear that a decisive step has now been taken away from it."
Finn Andreen

"When the state shuts down millions of private businesses but doesn’t lay off a single government employee, it’s not about your health. 
When the state puts you IN a jail cell for walking in a park with your child because it’s too dangerous, but lets criminals OUT of jail cells for their health… it’s not about your health. 
When the state tells you it’s dangerous to go golfing alone, fishing alone, or boating alone, but the governor can get his stage makeup and hair done for FIVE TV appearances a week… it’s not about your health"
Lori Hendry

"In mankind’s past battles against a long line of enemies, an unspoken rule took precedence, which is that people continued with their regular customs and traditions for as long as humanly possible. To halt the normal flow of life when confronted by an adversary was considered an admission of defeat. In our present fight against an invisible virus, however, the old rules of engagement have been rewritten. Unity and solidarity are no longer looked upon as invaluable assets; in fact, they’ve become potentially deadly liabilities. We would be foolish to think this attitude, borne out of understandable fear, will not have long-term repercussions."
Robert Bridge

"Applying the median level of natural reason that informs internet theorizing, GLOBAL COOLING is here. GLOBAL WARMING is dead. We do not need a Green New Deal. All we needed was a rather short period of shutting down, and not even complete shutting down either.
If we want to get back to a pristine environment in which all sorts of animals take over and temperatures go down, and the human population is reduced by at least 90%, all we have to do is allow our governments to make us stop working and place us under house arrest until vaccines are produced for coronaviruses. If we destroy the means of production, there’s a bonus. We won’t have to worry about socialists or communists taking over. There will be no significant means for the socialists to confiscate and control.
How easy it was to produce GLOBAL COOLING. All we had to do was cut our GDP by one-fourth to one-half."
Michael Rozeff

"I have never re-opened a business, let alone one that politicians have shuttered. I’m therefore unworthy to advise these brave souls who have. But despots are bullies, and appeasing bullies never works. Abiding by any arbitrary regulation legitimizes all of them: if you cede government the right to dictate how far apart your tables sit and whether you and your patrons must wear masks, you are tacitly agreeing that it may order you to close your doors as well."
Becky Akers

"As long as the propaganda continues and is accepted by the herd, which requires a continuance of fear, the more control that will evident.
This is exactly what has happened as of late due to a false pandemic called Covid-19, which in effect is simply a normal flu-like sickness blown completely out of proportion by design. The only way that this fraud could have advanced to this current level, is if the propaganda campaign not only fooled large numbers of people, but the entire world’s populations. This has never happened before in history, and that is part of the reason it has been such a successful takeover of humanity. The larger the lie, the more people that are captured due to that lie, and this lie has been the biggest deception of all time. No dictator, king, or murdering tyrant in the past could have ever conceived of such a world takeover as this, and would stand in awe at its scope."
Gary D. Barnett

"'Our boys' are not noble warriors protecting democracy, rescuing maidens, and righting wrongs. They are, like all soldiers, obedient and amoral killers. Pilots bombing Iraq or Syria know they are killing civilians. They do not care. If ordered to bomb Switzerland, they would do it. This is the nature of all armies. Glamorizing this most reprehensible trades is just a means of usefully stimulating the pack instinct which we often call patriotism.
The militarily is America’s worst enemy. It does enormous damage to the United States while providing almost no benefit. Start with the war on Vietnam that cost hugely in money and lives, ours and theirs, with no benefit. Iraq: high cost, no benefit. Afghanistan: High cost, no benefit. Syria: High cost, no benefit."
Fred Reed

"Natural Law is based on right and wrong, and is set in stone. There is right and there is wrong, and the two can never overlap. One of the major problems we face as a people is that many believe that right and wrong are dependent on time and space, on circumstance, or are interchangeable due to human desires. This thinking is the death knell of peaceful anarchy and freedom, and without a collective acceptance of this truth, any society seeking freedom is doomed.
It may be useful to put this into perspective so that no confusion is evident. Government is a cult. All the people that participate in government are the cult priests, and all those who accept government, and live its by rules and vote in its elections, are the cult followers. In other words, government is the church, and the people that accept government are the congregation. This is the American religion. It should be abolished!"
Gary D. Barnett

"America’s national government has moved way beyond a political spoils system. America has become a piñata: Everybody gets a crack at it. Presidents and other elected officials pass the big stick around as a reward to those who help keep them in charge of the piñata party."
Charles Goyette

"Politicians are neither statesman nor public persons of noble intent; they are simply a self-selected class of psycho-/socio-paths whose only agenda is the monopoly of the power to enforce what I just described.  Despite all the court historians and contemporary mouthpieces who sing paeans to government and the drones who run it, the agenda remains the same: the destruction of individual self-governance, direction and volition and the harnessing of the captured citizenry to the whims and will of the rulers.  You have been lied to and civics class in the government education system then and now has been a descriptive mechanism to rationalize yoking individuals into the collective hive of the state."
Bill Buppert

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it."
Albert Einstein

"On a voluntary basis, diversity will not be regarded as anything worthwhile in and of itself. If diversity has a positive price, it’s because it proxies for some factor of knowledge, brainpower, intelligence, training, accomplishment or skill; but it won’t be because skin color, sex, religion, ethnicity or some such thing has inherent value. Goldman Sachs will no longer underwrite new company issues unless their boards meet its diversity criterion. It has its reasons for boarding this bandwagon, and it has even claimed that companies with diverse boards outperform those without them. A serious study will not show that value will be enhanced merely by hiring a woman for the board or a transgender or a bisexual or an Eskimo."
Michael Rozeff

"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
Frank Herbert

"A lot of people believe that China has a communist system—where the state owns and controls everything. They call it Communist China. That was the case 40 years ago. But today it’s complete and utter nonsense to believe that.
In fact, China is much more of a free-market country at this point—with much less regulation on economic activities and restrictions on businesses—than the US. I realize that will come as a shock to most Americans, but it’s true."
Doug Casey

"The martial urge is deep in the steroid chemistry. Little boys want to play with guns. If you force dolls upon them, they shoot each other with dolls. When grown up, to the extent they ever are, they fight wars. If there is no reason for war, as for example now, they invent reasons. The Russians are coming. The Chinese are coming. North Korea will nuke us. So will Iran. We must gird our loins and fight, fight, fight.
It is the behavior of a pack of dogs. For example, when an obsolete lumbering propeller-driven Soviet-era bomber approaches American air space, fighter pilots sprint for their planes and roar into the air–loud martial noises are important to men–to intercept the intruder, bow wow, arf, woof. They cannot in sanity think that the dread Russkis have sent a single slow plane to destroy America, but that, presumably due to nucleotide arrangement, is how they behave."
Fred Reed

"To power seekers, the most attractive government is some form of collectivism. It can be any name, but it must be collectivism. Collectivism is ideal for government expansion at the expense of the people. Collectivism attracts hard-wired psychopaths who use the system for cronyism and their aggrandizement. They care not one whit about constitutional government and the rule of law. They only care about a political facade to hide their chicanery.
The result is the collectivist American system that has gradually adopted the 10 planks of communism without Americans even being aware of it."
Bob Livingston

"Good ideas don’t require constant reinforcement, and they certainly don’t need force for others to accept them. And good ideas don’t warrant endless propaganda to bait approval and adoption. Bad ideas, or ideas that have an obvious agenda, need to be bolstered by linking those ideas to 'experts' as a way of forcing unconditional belief. The tyranny of experts is a top-down approach to force others to accept rules and laws without question."
Karen De Coster

"The countries of the Western world are in a state of schizophrenic overconfidence and self-doubt. Their leaders persist in proclaiming 'our values' as the model for the rest of humanity, while their own people are increasingly divided and disillusioned. 
The 18th century was the century of the liberated mind. The 19th century was the century of Great Men. The 20th century was the century of the common man. And the 21st century’s looks like it may become a negation of all of them. The century of nobody at all.
Irrationality and censorship restore chains to thought. Great Men are only statues to be demolished. The common man, once hailed as the hero of a radiant future, has been degraded to a superfluous nuisance, probably racist and homophobic. Ordinary folks have been reassigned from the glorious concept of 'the people' to their derogatory redefinition under the rubric of 'populism' [and Trump deplorables].
People are reduced to 'consumers,' while being told that by consuming, they are destroying the planet. Identity Politics has not only turned people against each other by group, but its late manifestation, Vegan speciesism, even turns people against people altogether, for being an overprivileged life form."
Diana Johnstone

"A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government."
Lysander Spooner

"The more laws and restrictions there are, 
The poorer people become.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers."
Lao Tsu

"The state lies in all the tongues of good and evil, and whatever it says is lies, and whatever it has, it has stolen, everything it is, is false, it bites with stolen teeth, and it bites often, it is false down to its bowels."
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster."
Ludwig von Mises

"Creativity always comes as a surprise to us. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t need it, and planning [socialism] would work."
Albert Hirschman

"To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man."
John Locke