Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"People, especially in desperate times, band together based on shared values and heritage, not naïve and ephemeral notions of a Star Trek future with the greater and greater flow of power away from individuals and towards giant bureaucracies that must come. This being the case, why shouldn’t states like Texas recognize that this is the time? Is the virus the catalyst for Texans to realize we may be better together, but apart from the union? It may be time for our leaders to cut their losses and cash in their chips. And if not now, when?"
Ryan Thorson

"So, what does our future hold if mass resistance is not forthcoming? This new SARS-related virus called Covid-19 was almost certainly created in a U.S. lab, and although not nearly as deadly as propagated by government and media, and in fact, most likely less dangerous than the common flu, it was the catalyst necessary to fool the people so as to gain control over large populations. This government has the ability to produce very dangerous biological weapons, and can produce at will any multitude of viruses that would be much more deadly than this one, and could do so without detection. With a second wave certainly coming, and if necessary, a third and fourth wave, what will be next? Will it be Covid, or something much worse? Will it kill just enough to continue the lockdowns, or will it be much more devastating the next time around? It is coming, and it is this writer’s opinion that this is leading to the end game, and will not go away, or be temporary, but will be taken as far as is necessary and possible in order for the ruling class to gain total control. There is little time left."
Gary D. Barnett

"The President declared himself dictator and said 'when somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s gotta be. It’s total.'
The Right cheered. The left sneered. If the rolls were reversed and a democratic president said this, an entire militia movement would have formed to institute an overthrow of the Offal Office, and the left would have defended unlimited executive power till the death. What’s new? Each faction has no issue with total power they just want to be the ones wielding it."
John Meyers

"Ever wonder why the US is illogically battling a virus that kills fewer people than TB?
Want to know why 1300 major corporate US CEOs took their payouts last year and resigned?
Why does America have a man with Alzheimer’s running for President?
Why do our leaders tolerate Dr. Anthony Fauci putting American shop and restaurant owners out of business when neither they or any of their customers are at significant risk for COVID-19 coronavirus killing them, ever?  Do we lockdown the population because some people die of the flu?
America is now living with many contradictions."
Bill Sardi

"A lot of humans around the globe have opened their eyes to what government has always been (power, consolidated, and corrupted. After all, it only took 6 years for the U.S. government to violate the basic human rights listed in the  Constitution that they wrote to 'keep us safe' from them), yet some think they need more chains and restrictions. If you give up power, in any amount, don’t expect to get it back. Ever. Which is why we could be seeing the beginning of the end of government.  It won’t take many more to wake up to eliminate the ruling class by disobeying."
Mac Slavo

"When Patrick Henry famously said 'give me liberty or give me death' in 1775, he didn’t add under his breath 'unless a virus shows up'."
Ron Paul

"This is a nursing-home disease. We need to shelter the appropriate people -- in other words, don't do what Andrew Cuomo did, and send COVID-positive patients into nursing homes.
The rest of us need to get our lives back.
The older folks I talk to are saying more and more: we don't even want you to do this! We're terrified of what's going to become of our grandchildren's futures if this is allowed to go on much longer.
We are living through the craziest moment in American history. It's not even close.
And we're getting a glimpse of how deranged, how detached from reality, how addicted to apocalyptic predictions, our neighbors are."
Tom Woods

"'Public health' is the health of the state and nothing else.  It is literally the reason why the phrase 'junk science' exists.  It is a tool that the old Soviet communists could have only dreamed of having."
Tom DiLorenzo

"There is absolutely nothing concerning those like Fauci and Gates that consists of honest charity or help for mankind. The kind of philanthropy practiced by Gates and his ilk is that of deception, for his desire to help people is just a cover for his real aspirations of money, power, and control. Philanthropy at this level is meant to achieve large-scale objectives, objectives that are aimed at the masses and allow for wealth transfer and control. There is a huge difference in heartfelt charity and large-scale philanthropy, and the latter is most always about sinister intent."
Gary D. Barnett

"The cost of an 0.0003% risk of dying from a coronavirus is costing you all your wealth and savings.  Unless you are Black, or reside in a nursing home, your chance of dying from the coronavirus is remote (0.00001 or 1 in 100,000).  But you must stay indoors, away from sunlight, and experience a decline in your immunity and develop mental depression from the lack of vitamin D, and the death count never goes down."
Bill Sardi

"The average age that people die from this disease is older than the average age people die."
Joe Rogan

"The coronavirus DID NOT cause an economic recession, the people who obeyed the commands of tyrants did. The coronavirus DID NOT cause food shortages, farmers who obeyed the commands of tyrants did.  The coronavirus DID NOT cause tyranny, the cops who followed orders to exact tyranny on the public did.  This all comes down to obeying.  The masters barked orders, and the slaves obeyed to their own detriment. If we ever hope to be free, we have to reject the slave mindset they have brainwashed all of us into."
Mac Slavo

"More than 100,000 Americans died in 1968 of – or with – the Hong Kong Flu. Why wasn’t the country 'locked down' then? Because the country wasn’t yet in the grip of a consolidated media – and pervasive instilled fear of risk – such that a bad flu season could be turned into a simulacrum of the Black Death in the minds of the population.
America was a sane country back then.
It is becoming insane. 
The Goebbelsian kernel of truth about the 'novel' Corona virus hyped to an extinction level threat terrorizes the suggestible and emotional – and makes it very difficult for the thoughtful and rational to be heard amid the manufactured hysteria."
Eric Peters

"And anyone who hasn’t been paralyzed in a skiing accident from the neck up knows that the usual suspects among the considerable communist intelligentsia in the US are secretly celebrating the deaths, unemployment, mass closures, bankruptcies and the whole gruesome spectacle of government utterly destroying the livelihoods and life achievements of millions of subjects on the tax plantation named America.
There is only one solution: refuse all government edicts and increase herd immunity at all costs. The more society becomes dependent on vaccines, the more society WILL become dependent on vaccines. We need to actually get rid of products that make us cleaner and more antiseptic to allow our immune systems to stay functional. It is, after all, additional sanitary conditions that led to the polio outbreaks in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s….the polio antibodies that had been transmitted from mother to child in utero were pretty much gone leaving that generation open for the outbreak."
Bill Buppert

"Humanity is finally moving in the right direction.  The last step is to just live.  Protesting is begging the master to let you be free.  Just live free. Don’t ask permission. Conduct your life as the free, sovereign human being you were born as, and let the ruling class panic. If you don’t buy their fear, they cannot control you. The fact that humans are finally realizing they had this power all along is incredible. Live your life your way! That’s the biggest middle finger we can give to any tyrant, whether it be a cop, a governor, a politician, an elitist, or anyone else who wants our compliance and enslavement. 
Freedom is not negotiable and rights are not gifts from governments or others.  We all have the basic human right to be free and live our life the way we see fit.  As more people realize this, our power grows and the mainstream media’s fear campaign fails. After all, if there are no order followers, there are no orders."
Mac Slavo

"Everyone needs to be aware that when politicians tell you they will use government power to solve a problem or problems and make your life better, what they're really telling you is your life and liberties are being further sacrificed to the collective.
There is nothing lawmakers love more than making laws, even when they know their laws won't accomplish their stated purpose. This is particularly true of those laws that take more authority for the state, or if they enrich the fascist system. For lawmakers, the 'unintended consequences' of their laws are just like gravy, because then they get to pass more laws to correct the unintended consequences. This, of course, leads to more 'unintended consequences' and the passage of more laws.
Understanding this simple fact is essentially to preserving liberty."
Bob Livingston

"Military-economic fascism, by empowering and enriching wealthy, intelligent, and influential members of the public, removes them from the ranks of potential opponents and resisters of the state and thereby helps to perpetuate the state's existence and its intrinsic class exploitation of people outside the state. Thus, military-economic fascism simultaneously strengthens the state and weakens civil society, even as it creates the illusion of a vibrant private sector patriotically engaged in supplying goods and services to the heroic military establishment."
Robert Higgs

"There was a massive surge of migrants to Europe in 2015. But that was, I believe, just an overture to what’s coming. What we’re talking about here is the migration of millions of people of different languages, different races, different religions, different cultures, and different modes of living. If you’re an alien and you’re 1 out of 100, or 1,000, or even 10,000, you’re a curiosity, an interesting outsider. And you’d have to integrate into the new society. But an influx of millions of migrants can only destroy the old culture. And guarantee antagonism—especially when the locals are forced to pay for it."
Doug Casey

"There’s an irony in the fact that Marx and Engels believed capitalism was necessary in order to create more wealth disparity.  That irony is that capitalism creates more wealth for those on the lowest rung of the income ladder than any other system, so income and wealth disparities, while interesting phenomena for academic eggheads to ponder, are pretty much irrelevant.  The only thing that’s relevant is how well off each individual is in absolute terms — not in comparison to others.
Without capitalism, prosperity for the masses cannot exist.  Likewise, without freedom, capitalism, by definition, cannot exist, because it is nothing more than a subcategory of freedom — the freedom to trade one’s goods, services, and labor with others without interference from government.  Plain and simple, capitalism is the purest form of freedom."
Robert Ringer

"Economists have long recognized division of labor, specialization, and complementary factors of production. They have recognized different groups with different tastes for goods. They have recognized people with different skills. None of this is what 'diversity' means today and what the coercive socialist slogan 'diversity is our strength' means. Today these are schemes to share wealth, redistribute wealth, gain positions without having the merit to occupy them, and create well-paid 'jobs' that are unproductive."
Michael Rozeff

"And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read or see."
 Lysander Spooner

"You cannot have a government without willing or unwilling submission of the subjects to the will of the rulers.  There is no historical antecedent or precedent for a government ever staying within the confines of its originating power."
None.
Bill Buppert

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely…. In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions."
Jerry Pournelle

"There is no honor in war, only hormonally mediated lunacy. Where is the honor in bombing cities, putting them to the sword, raping and looting?"
Fred Reed

"Technocrats, like everyone else, have their own ideologies, their own agendas, and their own interests. Often, their interests are greatly at odds with those of the general public that pays the technocrats' salaries and is subject to the technocracy's edicts.  The rise of technocracy has only meant that the means of influencing policy is now limited to a much smaller number of people—namely those who are already influential and powerful in the halls of government. Technocracy seems less political, because the political wrangling is limited to what used to be called 'smoke-filled rooms.' That is, technocracy is really a sort of oligarchy, although not limited to the financially wealthy. It's limited to people who went to the 'right' schools or control powerful corporations such as Google or Facebook, or work for influential media organizations. It's branded 'nonpolitical,' because ordinary voters and taxpayers are excluded from even knowing who is involved or what policies are being proposed. In other words, technocracy is government by a small exclusive club. And you ain't in it."
Ryan McMaken

"The question seemingly always raised is that the idea of true freedom sounds good, but how do we do it? What is the single plan to fix everything? Obviously, there is not one answer or any legitimate short answer to this question, and those that ask it, are usually not really interested in real freedom in the first place. In fact, most people do not want the responsibility of freedom, and that makes the government’s job easy, because as a rule, the only thing required by the state to keep the apathetic public at bay, is to offer them safety and benefits. They are happy to remain slaves, so long as they can get the things they want without much effort, and can through their proxy government, use others to gain for themselves."
Gary D. Barnett

"The problem with wars, beyond all the death and destruction, is that they are seldom fought for the reasons that governments claim. In most cases, there is an underlying agenda which the public may or may not discover many decades later, and such agendas are not for our benefit. Wars rarely erupt over mere circumstance. Wars are rarely random.
War is a tool for social engineering because war creates crisis for the unprepared masses, and as the unprepared scramble for safety, the state can institute authoritarian powers they never could have asserted in peacetime. Not only this, but in our modern era over the past century there has been a distinct pattern following the aftermath of each war in which power and governance are centralized. Every time disaster strikes, the proposed solution is global government. You would think the political elites would offer some new ideas after 100 years... but no, they only have one idea that they try to sell to us relentlessly."
Brandon Smith

"Only a group that can count on the consent of the governed can establish a lasting regime. Whoever wants to see the world governed according to his own ideas must strive for domination over men’s minds. It is impossible, in the long run, to subject men against their will to a regime that they reject."
Ludwig von Mises