"We lost our constitutional republic long ago — perhaps as far back as 1898 with the Spanish-American War. Or at the latest 1947, when our leaders decided the nation must adopt a state of permanent mobilization for war to counter the Soviet menace — ignoring the warnings of 'Old Right' types like Robert Taft, never mind Founders like Madison.
If Donald Trump wants to demonstrate he’s serious about restoring a constitutional republic, he can start by pardoning Julian Assange (and Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden).
Anyway… we are not oblivious to the hard left and its bottom-up 'long march through the institutions' strategy inspired by Antonio Gramsci.
But we daresay their time hasn’t come — regardless of who wins. Joe Biden is a centrist Democrat hack and so is Kamala Harris. The Democrats’ donor class who installed them as the party’s nominees have proven extremely adept to date at keeping the hard left in line. Look how they throttled Bernie Sanders for two straight election cycles.
This year, they mobilized the Sanders-Warren forces by forever invoking the specter of 'Orange Man Bad.' The lefties rationalized playing ball with the centrist corporate Dems by saying, 'Once they’re in, we can push them aside.'
But as a wag on Twitter said yesterday, it’s far more likely that the centrist corporate Dems will quickly pivot from 'Shut up and help us get rid of Trump'... to 'Shut up or do you want another Trump'?"
Dave Gonigam
"I have a 93-year-old mother in law, and she said to me two months ago, 'I’m not interested in being confined in my home. I am not interested in living if that’s the life…. I’m old enough to take a risk; I understand social distancing. I’m going to function, otherwise there’s no reason to live.' This sort of bizarre, maybe well-intentioned but misguided idea that we are going to eliminate all risk from life, we are going to stop people from taking any risk that they are well aware of, we’re going to close down businesses, we’re going to stop schools — these are inappropriate and destructive policies.
There are between 30,000 and 90,000 people a year that die — that are high-risk elderly — in the United States every flu season. We don’t shut down schools in response to that."
Dr. Scott Atlas
"Our educational system has become the seedbed—the Typhoid Mary, if you will—for the frenzied 'cancel culture' we see around us and for the concerted and increasingly fanatical attempt to destroy and erase the two millennia of Western Christian civilization.
Far too many Republicans and so-called 'conservatives' believe that—somehow—they can coexist or even collaborate with this lunacy. They cannot. It will devour them, just as it is devouring what remains of our heritage.
There are literally hundreds of publicized examples of this educational madness, and they are just the ones that earn particular notice. But for every one news account there are dozens, even hundreds which don’t make it into the press. For every example of progressivist 'woke' lunacy there are numerous others in classrooms across the nation, or proclaimed by professorial or teachers’ organizations."
Boyd D. Cathey
"Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost."
Josiah Warren
"Let’s see now, if white Americans are white supremacist racists, why did they let their white country fill up with people of color and reduce the white percentage of the population from close to 100% to 60% and falling?
Would white racists vote in an immigration law that essentially keeps white people out and fills the country up with black people?
Would white supremacists impose affirmative action against white people in order to elevate blacks?
Would white supremacist racists elect a black president?"
Paul Craig Roberts
"Sovereignty is not given, it is taken."
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
"THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated…"
Thomas Paine
"The real problem is that when you have a cultural split—such as developed in the US—a country cannot, and more importantly, should not stay together.
At this point, politics has become a contest of who gets to impose their will on the rest of the country. When that’s the case, a country is best off dividing. People should have freedom of association, generally with those whom they share culture, traditions, and general worldviews.
The US is no longer a country that is united by culture and language, ideas, or anything else. It’s become a multicultural domestic empire. It’s too large to be governable. The central government is totally bankrupt. It should break up peaceably before the situation gets completely out of control."
Doug Casey
"It's hard not to come to the conclusion that since we live in two different realities, it's time for us to live in two separate societies.
One can live actual human lives -- with all the risks and joys that entails -- and the other can live as moral scolds in hermetically sealed underground bunkers, from which they can broadcast their outrage at the rest of us over Zoom."
Tom Woods
"This ruination of the individual and the idea of self was no accidental occurrence, but stands in stark contrast to what the confused masses falsely believe today. Freedom is not based on equality, and in fact cannot exist in such a society. Those intent on rule understand the weaknesses of the herd, and cater to the fears that are evident amongst them. They use propaganda to breed envy, and use control techniques to advance a loyalty to the state. This helps to create the mob that will voluntarily work as one to destroy all that they fear. This is apparent in the idea of 'we the people,' it is apparent in the dishonest idiocy called voting, it is apparent in mandatory state indoctrination centers called schools, it is apparent in the purposely created division at every turn, and it is apparent in the efforts of the herd to fight over which ruler will lord supreme over them.
Only the individual can face this monster called collectivism. Only the individual can defeat the indifference consuming the crowd. Those that reject authority, that reject the state, and that resist all conformity, can be the light for others to follow so that they can escape the darkness that has consumed the western world. These few are the real heroes."
Gary D. Barnett
"We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them."
John Dickinson’s rewrite of the “Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms” in 1775, by Thomas Jefferson
"A vast number of young people are finding themselves completely unprepared for adult life and they blame boomers indirectly for their failings. Contrary to popular belief, boomers had nothing whatsoever to do with the decline of the U.S. economy; if you want to find the culprits behind you financial pain, I suggest learning about the history of the Federal Reserve and how that institution has systematically destroyed our currency's buying power and our economy over time.
Where boomers are culpable is in their terrible parenting model. They raised a generation of weaklings and rarely questioned the establishment and media propaganda that told them that helicopter parenting was the best way to raise their children. While perhaps done out of love, boomers spoiled their own kids so completely and shielded them from all acute stress that as young adults they now have no capacity to succeed in a world where survival instincts might be required."
Bob Livingston
"All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force."
George Orwell
"No one can succeed at anything without a free, open, safe, voluntary society where hundreds of millions of people of every kind are willing to interact voluntarily to make it all happen.
We don’t need the government and its crony corporatists controlling us. Corporations are the creation of the political classes in which business enterprises are granted special state-enforced advantages, privileges and protections in exchange for corporatist cronies funneling money into the politician’s pockets in the form of campaign funds, political action donations, speaking fees and just plain old under-the-table bribery.
Corporatist money is traded for political power and political power is traded for corporatist money. This unholy alliance must be condemned and eliminated.
What we do need is a free market unencumbered by politicians and beyond the control of the biggest business concerns that would succeed only if they can out-perform their competitors to deliver goods and services that people actually want and need at a price they could actually afford.
This kind of society may be called a voluntary laissez-faire open marketplace for all forms of human interaction under the non-aggression principle against coercion, intimidation and fraud."
Garry Reed
"Why did we previously insist on terms like human rights and freedoms? Because we believed they are inalienable; that is, that they cannot be taken away regardless of the excuse. We baked these ideas into our laws, constitutions, institutions, and into our civic codes found in pledges, songs, and traditions. The social contract we practice with regard to the threat of infectious diseases is that we manage them intelligently while never trampling on the dignity of the human person. The payoff is that our immune systems get stronger, enabling all of us to enjoy longer and healthier lives – not just some of us, not just the legally privileged, not just those with access to platforms to speak but rather every single member of the human community.
We made that deal many centuries ago. We’ve practiced it well for hundreds of years, which is why we’ve never before experienced draconian and near-universal lockdowns of essential social functioning.
This year we broke the deal. We shattered and smashed the social contract."
Jeffrey Tucker
"It can be no surprise that collectivists care not for the harm that they do. That is their nature. Reality is their enemy. Humanity is their enemy. Individuals are their enemy. Truth is not the goal. Clearer thinking or better comprehension of reality is not the goal. Their ideas and those who ascribe to them are their allies. Those are replayed in broken-record fashion with minor cosmetic changes. If you need any more proof of this, merely look at the effects of this thinking writ large across the Century of the Great State. Collectivists have proven what will come when society is left in their hands. It is the duty of individuals to prevent oneself from being so oppressible by the collectivists."
Allan Stevo
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