Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Not only did the doom and gloom predicted by the lockdown fanatics fail to materialize, but the steady, seasonal downward trend of the virus toward extinction continued regardless of government action. As we have repeated for a year on the Liberty Report, the virus was going to virus regardless of anything we did about it. And Texas proved it.
Though [Texas Governor] Abbott deserves credit for taking the bold step, shouldn’t he be held accountable for closing the state in the first place? After all, when someone has been punching you in the face and then they stop, do you thank them for letting up or do you ask why they punched you in the first place? Will all the tyrannical rule-by-decree orders across the United States be stricken from the books? Or will they just be allowed to do this again for any reason they choose?"
Ron Paul
"The past year has placed the entirety of the United States in de facto quarantine under the perceived threat of spreading covid. While quarantine is for the sick, most of those subject to the long list of restrictions have been healthy. Not a single person affected has had the opportunity to get in court and object. These blanket measures have denied every single citizen the constitutional right to due process they supposedly possess. Deemed sick until proven healthy, unfortunately, no one has had the opportunity to even prove their health. Governments have argued that 'stay-at-home' orders are not quarantine as a way to end-run the issue. If that is the case, where do they get their authority? Neither the US Constitution nor that of any of the states provides an exception to due process in the case of a pandemic. Many states have relied on ambiguous statutes meant for use in a foreign invasion to justify these actions, but anyone who looks at the scenario objectively can see that there are no 'pandemic exceptions' to due process of law. These powers were made up out of thin air, with absolutely no authority to grant itself this power."
Daren A. Wiseley
"States, by their very nature, are perpetually at war – not always against foreign foes, of course, but always against their own subjects. The state’s most fundamental purpose, the activity without which it cannot exist, is robbery . . . which it pretties up ideologically by giving it a different name (taxation) and by striving to sanctify its intrinsic crime as permissible and socially necessary."
Robert Higgs
"We now have a new definition of 'science.' Scientific knowledge is not derived from applied mathematics, the generation of testable theories and hypotheses, discussion, research, debate, and scholarship in general, but from the mouths of the likes of one Anthony Fauci and scores of other government bureaucrats and political hacks. All dissenters are to be libeled, slandered, smeared, and character assassinated. Furthermore, science is no longer knowledge that free people can utilize to make decisions for themselves about how to live their lives. It is now the justification for orders and dictates by the state about how you MUST behave — or else. Follow the science my ass."
Tom DiLorenzo
"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable."
Henry David Thoreau
"Probably the costliest thing to individual Americans is that they do not understand the nature and desire of society and its system, operated by the government. Politicians who are paid by the federal government do the political maneuvering as prescribed by the system to benefit the system. Federal judges channel the legal system to the political and economic benefit of the system.
The more government takes an interest in private affairs, the less individual freedom there is. The greater the government's involvement in regulation, the greater the threat to your life. Massive government spending intended to 'improve' people's lives or correct ailments created by government intervention (see: lockdowns) corresponds directly to the loss of individual freedoms."
Bob Livingston
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson
"The entirety of illness and death attributed to the 'pandemic' can be explained by multiple factors (not one), and none of those factors involves a virus.
'People dying equals a virus' is about as convincing as 'all-cause mortality rising is the result of plane crashes.'
As sure as I’m writing this sentence, someone somewhere will think, 'Hmm, plane crashes. I should look into that…'
And he will. He’ll look into planes flying through underground caves, carrying passengers intent on exploring the center of the Earth, where doctors are producing a longevity drug that extends life for 500 years. But the planes are having accidents.
That level of fantasy is on the same bookshelf as 'the virus is causing the pandemic'."
Jon Rappoport
"My favorite mantra of gun grabbers is the claim that 'Your AR-15 isn't going to help you against an Abrams tank or a predator drone.' These people don't understand how totalitarian systems function. In order to control a population, you have to have loyal troops on the ground... everywhere. Not only that, but you also need loyal civilians, a large percentage of the population, to act as your eyes and ears and sometimes brute force. And finally, you need anyone who might oppose you to be afraid to take action to defend themselves. You need them docile and passive.
There are a lot of moving parts to tyranny, and tanks and planes are secondary to basic manpower. And where there are troops and others enforcing tyranny, there are numerous targets. Where there are firearms, there is a means to eliminate a tyrant at the top of the pyramid with a single well-placed bullet. Furthermore, you don't need armored vehicles and stealth jets to fight tyranny; what you need is a good firearm to remove the people driving and flying those machines. You might even take those weapons for your own arsenal."
Brandon Smith
"We are experiencing a time when information should be the most abundant in the history of mankind, but it is being censored and eliminated to the point of closing the door to any information that is not approved by the controlling class and their political accomplices. This is unbelievably dangerous, because when the people allow speech to be manipulated or restricted in any way, truth is effectively erased, and all that is left is state propaganda. With speech censored and effectively disappeared, only the state narrative will be reported. In this environment, the masses will normally accept the lies as truth and the truth as lies. This can only lead to a slave society.
A country deprived of information and speech will cease to be free. A country without knowledge of its history will cease to be a country."
Gary D. Barnett
"The new 'War on Domestic Terror' waged by the Deep State – aided and abetted by the corporate media — is not about 'liberation' or protecting democracy, just as the previous 'War on Terror' at the turn of the century was not about those things in the far-off regions where it was waged.
Instead, what we are witnessing is an unprecedented attempt to assert domination and control over an uncompliant US populace increasingly frustrated with the unrepresentative federalized forces that occupy their land – only this time, the battlefields will be Nebraska and Mississippi, not Fallujah, and the 'insurgents' are average Americans, not Iraqis.
When they are met with force, and agents of the repressive federal state killed, as will inevitably occur, it will not be the Nebraska corn farmer who is to blame. Self-defense is an inalienable right of free people everywhere."
Ben Bartee
"Job One of totalitarian regimes is to suppress, if not crush, the so-called intellectuals. Their great sin against the State is the incorrigible habit of thinking for themselves. Because such autonomous thoughts might infect the populace, they must be silenced. By banning books, videos, social media accounts, and otherwise de-platforming dissenting voices, the statists are able to control the transmission of thought. Such suppression is the very negation of humanity, to say nothing of the possibility of human flourishing."
George Gilder