Monday, May 30, 2011

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“It's amazing that people demand more accountability from their favorite sports team. Any head coach who notoriously overspends a team's budget and has no strategy for success other than eloquent speeches about ‘victory’ and ‘sportsmanship’ would quickly be shown the door... .. and yet, a political system in which malignant forces steal resources from the productive, waste the vast majority on folly, and redistribute the breadcrumbs in order to buy votes and maintain the status quo, is hailed as 'rule of the people.’”
Simon Black

“When we say ’John is a patriot,’ we mean ‘John is a reliable member of our dog pack,’ nothing more. The pack instinct seems more ancient, and certainly stronger, than morality or any form of human decency. Thus, once the pack – citizenry, I meant to say – have been properly roused to a pitch of patriotism, they will, under cover of the most diaphanous pretexts, rape Nanking, bomb Hiroshima, kill the Jews or, if they are Jews, Palestinians. We are animals of the pack. We don’t admire patriotism. We admire loyalty to ourselves.”
Fred Reed

“Government is a blunt instrument that works in top-down fashion. Freedom is something that must bubble up from the grassroots if it is to be genuine and enduring. Oppressed populations will not have decent nations built by outsiders. They will have to make their own nations decent.”
Sheldon Richman

“The state serves only itself — and demands that you serve it too. Like any parasite, it will happily kill its host to further engorge itself. Your only possible escape from that fate is to pry its teeth out of your skin, throw it to the ground, and stomp on it, hard.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“So what is all this talk about democracy that they are feeding us? Why is Obama promising billions of American dollars to support these emerging Middle Eastern democracies and “human rights”? What’s the real agenda, for it sure isn’t what he says it is. I think we all feel the real agenda intuitively or in our bones: the power to control events and keep people in their place. If the dictators no longer can control the people in these countries in accord with U.S. aims, then switch over to ‘democracy‘, in which the control rests in the hands of representatives and parliaments. America is a prime example of how that works out.”
Michael S. Rozeff

“Though the ‘United States of America’ is in a terminal condition, ‘America’ – as a social system – may yet survive. America preceded the nation-state and, if we can revisit the basic assumptions that underlay the ‘founding fathers’ efforts, we may discover why conditions in which peace, liberty, and respect for life must take precedence over edicts offered by rulers who smirk and strut as they demand obedience to their every whim.”
Butler Shaffer

“Government, we are told from earliest childhood, after all, is the very repository of peace, order, justice, and the one enabling factor that allows human progress to continue. Yet, the most cursory examination, in ways far too numerous to cover in a single essay, demonstrates conclusively that this is anything but true; that in fact government – both as an idea and manifest institution – is the polar opposite of all of these things, and further, affords the individual no choice but to comply or be harmed.”
Alex R. Knight III

“There is always some great excuse for the trashing of the human freedom that built civilization as we know it. If the state cannot find one, it is glad to invent one. A population that is ideologically gullible or afraid for its security can permit government to run roughshod over people’s rights and liberties, and a government that gains such power never gives it back on its own. Rights and liberties must be reclaimed by the people themselves, and the spark that makes this happen is reversing the conditions that permitted the rise of statism. The people must lose their gullibility through ideological enlightenment, and they must lose their sense of fear that the world will fall apart if the tyrant is not in control.”
Lew Rockwell

“Terrorists have no ships, planes or tanks. They don’t even have uniforms. Terrorism is a tactic, not a form of government. Our liberty was never threatened by ‘radical Islam‘, but rather by the establishment that has ruled this country for close to a century.
The greatest threat of all comes from the millions of Americans who have allowed this establishment so much power with no regard to the consequences.”
Doug Newman

“A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.”
Anonymous

“We kill people, that kill people, to show people, that killing is wrong.”
A comment on You Tube
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From the Darkness:
"While a policy of non-intervention is sometimes appropriate, the doctrine of non-interventionism leads to isolationist policies that limit the options available to America, weakening its ability to defend freedom. It is a limitation the Founders did not adopt, and neither should today’s lawmakers."
Marion Smith, The Heritage Foundation

"The base budget of the United States military, in my view, shouldn't shrink. The rate of growth can be slowed down, but it shouldn't shrink in absolute terms."
Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty

“He’s fighting for an amendment to protect the right – not of average citizens, but of terrorists – to cover up their gun purchases."
Sen. Harry Reid, after Rand Paul helped introduce an amendment to the PATRIOT Act on Monday that attempts to safeguard American’s civil liberties by increasing oversight of government surveillance powers

"You know, I'm 70 years old. And I can tell you, people don't like to deal with it, but the fact of the matter is, the president's problems are in large measure because of the color of his skin."
House Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn

“Do I like foreign aid? Sometimes, but not every time. Don’t like giving money to our enemies, but I love giving money to Israel. And so there’s a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God’s hand and we’re in big time trouble.”
Rep. Dan Webster

“This is where I start having problems with you Libertarians: Everything is just black or white when it comes to money and what’s worth it and how is it worth, is it being spent and so forth. Calling Israel a `welfare queen’ compared to what the kind of money we waste domestically in this country, there has to be a value attached here. There has to be …. I think they’re a great ally. We, as the superpower of the world, have to do these kind of things to maintain our own position as a superpower.”

Rush Limbaugh [I quit listening to Rush in 1998 as I outgrew him intellectually.  It looks like his head remains in the same intellectual (though profitable) rut I left him.]

“I worship the ground that [US House Budget chairman] Paul Ryan walks on.. I hope he doesn’t run for president because that would ruin a good man who has a lot of work to do.”
Dick Cheney

“We look to Pakistan, to the Government of Pakistan, to take decisive steps in the days ahead.”
Queen Hillary, per her style, dictating orders to others

“Osama bin Laden is dead but al-Qaeda and his syndicate of terror remain a serious threat to us both.”
Queen Hillary, keeping the fear and myth alive

"I want the American people to understand we've got to leave room [in the federal budget] for us to continue our tradition of providing leadership when it comes to freedom, democracy, human rights."
B. Obama, wanting to continue spending money he doesn’t have
 
“If [Texas] HB 1937 [a bill that would make invasive pat downs by TSA agents a felony] were enacted, the federal government would likely seek an emergency stay of the statute. Unless or until such a stay were granted, TSA would likely be required to cancel any flight or series of flights for which it could not ensure the safety of passengers and crew. We urge that you consider the ramifications of this bill before casting your vote.”
U.S. Attorney John E. Murphy, threatening to cripple the airline industry in Texas if legislators did not back down on the legislation

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