Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"The original constitutional text remains, it is true. The original procedures and formalities remain.
The constitutional republic has its three branches of government. It has its official separation of powers. It has its protocols and decorums.
That is, the Constitution’s skeletal structure is intact.
Yet take a scalpel in hand. Knife your way through the outer layers… past the intermediate tissues… to the innards, to the vital organs.
There you will discover astonishing discombobulations of the bodily processes.
The heart breathes oxygen, the lungs pump blood. The kidneys digest food and the liver thinks thoughts...
The appendix assumes the powers of the spleen... and the spleen is reduced to an appendage.
In all, the original constitutional anatomy is scarcely recognizable."
Brian Maher
"The tyrant needs a lesson. To be shown that while he holds an office, he is not in charge. He does not posses unlimited authority. He has no lawful authority over our bodies. We control them and we will not surrender that control to him or to anyone else. We will stop working – and paying.
We will say no.
Until this ends.
Which could be tomorrow, if enough of us simply refuse to submit. Will you? Or will you emulate the cur dog, its tail tucked between its legs? What will you tell your children when they ask why you didn’t stand up for them? Will you be able to look yourself in the mirror, if you submit to this?
Americans used to like to consider themselves both brave and free. The latter requires the former. Without it, you are free, all right. To submit. To do as they say.
Will you be brave?
In order to become free, once more?
Just say No.
That’s it. That’s all of it."
Eric Peters
"Modern environmentalism has always viewed human beings as beings who eat and consume and pollute. They are not problem solvers with brains, solving even environmental problems. By catering to this consumer compulsion corporations are destroying the planet, they say. Therefore, we must destroy capitalism and depopulate the planet as much as possible to save ourselves. There you have it in a nutshell, from the horses’ mouths so to speak, at the thirty-year-old Sundance conference. They finally seem to have hit upon their magic bullet with their experimental, gene-altering, blood clot and heart attack-inducing, population-thinning-out injections. A few more years of massive worldwide death and we will be all ready for their 'Great Reset'."
Tom DiLorenzo
"Institutions have a way of evolving over time — after a few years, they no longer resemble the originals. Early in the 21st century, the United States is no more like the America of 1776 than the Vatican under the Borgia popes was like Christianity at the time of the Last
Supper…
In America, all the restraints, inhibitions and modesty of the Old Republic have been blown away by the prevailing winds of the new empire…
The United States Constitution is almost exactly the same document with exactly the same words it had when it was written, but the words that used to bind and chafe have been turned into soft elastic.
The government that couldn’t tax, couldn’t spend and couldn’t regulate can now do anything it wants. The executive has all the power he needs to do practically anything. Congress goes along, like a simpleminded stooge, insisting only that the spoils be spread around."
Bill Bonner & Addison Wiggin
"The most destructive people in the world are not generally the most ignorant, though we are often told otherwise. Rather, ignorant people are more likely to become victims. The truly dangerous people tend to be arrogant, but with enough intelligence to knowingly absorb and regurgitate a particular dogma in a way that appeals to unsuspecting bystanders that were never given the tools to defend themselves. In other words, it's the puritan 'educators' that promote incendiary collectivism, usually by preying on those that lack the armor of reason. Ignorance is encouraged by these supposed teachers as a marinade; it tenderizes their victims and makes them ready to absorb more and more cultism.
Their arrogance is the key to all of this because these folks are really just middlemen for an agenda that is ultimately designed to harm them. They see themselves as brilliant minds that cannot be denied; they think they are the prophets of our age They generally fall into two categories — the young acolytes and the aging adherents, and today all of them are leftists."
Brandon Smith
"China invests heavily in the infrastructure, both physical and educational, that makes for current and future competitiveness. They are fast, agile, innovative, and imperfectly scrupulous. They seek trade agreements: The Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with Europe, The RCEP, Regional comprehensive Economic Partnership, the CPEC, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the huge Iran deal, the development with Russia of the NSR, the Northern Sea Route. They seem good at it, China now being the largest trading partner of something like 165 countries.
Washington’s approach is military, coercive, shortsighted, and commercially dimwitted. It forms military alliances: the Quad in the Indian Ocean, with Japan against China, puts missiles in South Korea, pushes Europe to buy more American weaponry, sends naval forces to the Indian Ocean, Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, Black Sea, and Persian Gulf to intimidate, without much success, China, Russia, and Iran. It wants to get the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO to threaten Russia. It makes as much sense as lug nuts on a birthday cake."
Fred Reed
"In the last 18 months, and probably for much longer, this lie has done terrible things to the freedoms and rights we once took for granted. They have lied about Covid risk, lied about case fatalities, lied by therapeutics, lied about vaccines, lied about the costs of lockdowns, lied by the devastation wrought by school and church closures, lied about masks and social distancing, lied about seasonality, lied about super spreader events, lied about all the science, lied about the stimulus, lied about monetary policy, and lied about the history of the virus.
What’s more, after 18 months, reporters all know this. They are aware of the alternative point of view. It is everywhere on Twitter...until it is banned. It is on Medium...until it is banned. It is on Facebook...until it is taken down. It is on LinkedIn...until the company blocks it. It is on websites...until the server company is forced to stop providing service. We are truly living through the worst and more egregious ocean of untruth ever to wash over humanity. It happens daily, hourly, minute by minute. And there are ever fewer venues around even to call it out."
Jeffrey Tucker
"Labeling the unmasked and unvaccinated 'selfish' is nothing but pure projection. Have you noticed that those who might as well have 'inclusion' tattooed on their foreheads are the same people who wish to exclude anyone who doesn’t buy into the hype? 'Conform to the insanity or else!' After all, 'the right thing' is 'for your own good.' That’s not compassion; that’s totalitarianism. Bullies don’t grow tired of bullying; they stop bullying only when shown that ceasing their antisocial behavior is in their best interest. It’ll get uncomfortable, but if you hope to ever pursue what you deem right, it’s well past time to stand up to the vicious mob."
Casey Carlisle
"Sickness, mayhem, medical martial law, economic destruction, censorship, extreme wealth transfer to the richest among us, and death have been the result of all the state’s orders, mandates, restrictions, regulations, and 'Covid' rules. This is no pandemic, it is a long-planned coup meant as war against all of society. It is the plot of eugenicists and murderers whose intent is to depopulate the earth, while building a society made up of slaves controlled by a technocratic master class.
This absurd phenomenon is only possible because of the collective madness of the masses, and their inability to grasp the truth and then act accordingly to stop this onslaught of murder by the state. In other words, the people are their own worst enemy.
The truth is much more powerful and compelling than fiction, so find and accept truth, ridicule the rulers, accept no assault on freedom, disobey every state mandate, and avoid all dangerous attempts of division and isolation sought by the totalitarians bent on gaining total control of society."
Gary D. Barnett
"Wokeness set the stage for full-blown covid tyranny—the lockdowns, the masking, and now the demonization of the unvaccinated and the institution of the vaccine passport. The weaponization of fragility by the snowflake totalitarians has been extended and amplified by the covid regime, which construes all who oppose it as 'domestic violent extremists.' The unvaccinated are the new 'dangerous persons,' reprobates who should be locked down, quarantined, and, according to some, shot."
Michael Rectenwald