Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:
"Thanks a lot, Europe, for giving us two world wars, socialism, communism, fascism, Nazism, and for perfecting racism as exemplified by the Holocaust. You have done so much for the world in the last century. No wonder 'progressives' think Americans should be more like you.
Europeans lived for centuries under kings and emperors. They came to believe that power flowed from the top down. So they felt comfortable when their new rulers called themselves Führer, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Council of the European Union, or whatever."
David C. Stolinksy
"The only way to avoid some of the repercussions of the malfeasance of the U.S. federal government is to leave the federal system altogether. States like Texas that are more than capable of taking care of themselves would do well to consider if saving their own state via independence is preferable to whistling past the graveyard and foolishly remaining in a federal union that will likely never have the political will to save itself. Only time will tell if the people of Texas and their politicians will take action before the damage is done."
Ryan Thorson
"The political Left has taken its lessons in the abuse of language straight from the campus 'post-structuralist' workshops, where novelties of narcissism get churned out by striving grad students in the ceaseless pursuit of cutting edge prestige (and academic career advancement). The game is to produce a never-ending chain of self-referential, status-enhancing world-views as a replacement for consensual reality. The more 'marginalized' one can claim to be, the more deserving of high status (including tenure, grants for attending echo-chamber conferences and symposia, and a claque of attending assistants to actually teach those pain-in-the-ass classes). The goal is to get to feel special, and especially deserving of special privileges based on special grievances.
The net effect is to destroy whatever remains of an American common culture, to divide and conquer the polity in the hope that society might advance into a state with no rules and no boundaries — except for whatever capricious actions the 'Progressive' authorities might choose, based on how they feel at any particular time. It must be obvious that this all comes down to a vicious sort of sentimentality. It’s exactly what turned the governments of the Bolsheviks and the Nazis into killing machines. It’s Kafka’s nightmare of the murderous bureaucratic state that disposes with the rule-of-law."
James Howard Kunstler
"Manipulating minorities who are naturally drawn to socialism is a basic political strategy to justify government politics and plunder.
The principle of government is that political power is maximized by forcibly leveling every individual to the same status of conformity, collectivism, ecumenicalism and serfdom. The truth goes deeper. Because of perceived social, cultural, racial and psychic inferiority, minorities desire to parasite on government force and socialism to subvert those they envy and wish to imitate.
It would never succeed except for the very sophisticated propaganda of altruism. Altruism has a double meaning. To the unsuspecting public, it appears good. But it is hypocrisy with a hidden agenda to cover evil. It is the philosophical basis of democracy and benevolent totalitarianism.
Altruism cleverly hides the depravity of human nature. It makes evil appear good and good appear evil. See no evil, hear no evil, do no evil permeates the propaganda. It conceals the political agenda, promotes ignorance of public health, creates a state of mind of dependence on government and the medical establishment and quashes every form of individualism, independence and creative thinking.
The people must be controlled without being aware. Non-awareness is the key."
Bob Livingston
"As long as inquiries into the nature of political systems extend no further than exploring their 'deep state' implications (i.e., the covert organizational framework, and persons – be they elected or appointed officials or career bureaucrats who constitute the government-within-the-government) they will never get to the core of the problems they pose to human well-being. They will tend to be seen, rather, as flaws to be remedied within the system itself by 'responsible' men and women; the kinds of reforms criticized by Frank Chodorov as wanting to 'clean up a brothel and yet leave the business intact.' It is the nature of the state itself, including the identity of the persons who own and control its operations, that requires focused, in-depth examination."
Butler Shaffer
"The principle or right of secession may be suppressed by the application of bloody bayonets, but the principle of self-determination and self-government is an inalienable right and therefore can never be destroyed. Rivers of blood may be drawn to suppress this precious right, but it cannot drown this inalienable right. As Jefferson Davis noted, 'The alternative to secession is coercion.' [6] But even the coercion of massed, bloody, Yankee bayonets cannot extinguish an inalienable right! The right remains, and even Yankees in modern day California may claim it. The right of self-determination is not a Southern thing, it is a universal human right."
James Ronald Kennedy
"I form my friendships based upon neither diversity nor a lack of diversity, although there’s a natural tendency to associate with people like yourself. I form my friendships based upon the character and the beliefs that a person has. The attributes that create diversity are stupid accidentals. The fact that diversity is emphasized draws attention to incidentals like race, sex, and gender, and diverts it from important things like character and beliefs. Diversity has become destructive. Cultural Marxists love it because they hate people."
Doug Casey
"Taking is not productive, not like making. Anything made can be stolen, which is not productive. To defend against theft is a matter of survival. Sooner or later, the idea will be articulated that property belongs to people who first produce it from resources and resources are the property of those who first appropriate them for some sort of production. Property will at some point be seen as a matter of right. This idea will rest on a foundation that survival is at stake in maintaining what one has made.
Sooner or later, the idea of individual property within groups will arise, as opposed to ownership by the tribe or community or state. This institution will be seen 'To permit the peaceful, cooperative, productive, conflict-free use of scarce resources…' That is, experience will accumulate that demonstrates greater production when property belongs to individuals. At some point, even more productive ways will be devised that meld individual ownership with delegated control, as in corporations.
The root of the property institution, the reason for this permitting and its allocating processes, will still be survival."
Michael Rozeff
