text:
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.We should have listened to Albert Jay Nock when he warned us over 60 years ago.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Our Enemy, the State
Previous Quotes
Of course, the politicians can't solve economic problems for a very simple reason: they are the cause of them. ~ Bill Bonner
"When a system is corrupt it will attract only corrupt people and only the corrupt will flourish. We have provided history with a wonderful example of that. Look at the legislators who sit in not only the American Congress, but in the UK and Australian parliaments, and in governments all across the western world. Only an utterly corrupt system could elevate and reward such second-rate people." Sam Mathid
"What did lasting damage to the nation was not 9/11, it was remembering 9/11. Not only did overreaction to 9/11 play a substantial role in bankrupting the country…it also made Americans fearful and sheepish. They're convinced the towel-heads are trying to kill them. They believe they can protect themselves by spending trillions of dollars they don't have on military campaigns that don't work." ~ Joel Bowman and Bill Bonner
"To inflate a currency is to steal the money citizens have earned and saved and entrusted their government to protect. Any government that betrays that trust and steals that wealth is not only unworthy of support. It is worthy of being overthrown." ~ Pat Buchanan
"Again, circumstances differ and details vary. The principle remains: Disengage, cut your expenses, seek the interstices, and don't believe in anything unless you are sure it was your idea to believe in it. What is coming looks to be ugly. If so, it will be every man for himself, his family, his friends, and what principles he believes. The government doesn't give a wan, eitolated damn about you." ~Fred Reed
"Hahaha! Do? What can government do, now that it has borrowed itself into bankruptcy and after having encouraged the population to do the same so that everyone faces bankruptcy and ruination unless an inflationary hell created from stimulus spending somehow saves them all? What can they do? Hahaha!" ~ Richard Daughty
"God help this country when someone sits in this chair who doesn't know the military as well as I do." ~ Dwight David Eisenhower (1961)
"I'm angry. Waste always makes me angry and that's what this is, sheer waste!" ~ Rhett Butler
"The U.S. national debt problem simply cannot be fixed under the current system. U.S. government debt has been mathematically designed to expand forever. It is a trap from which there is no escape." ~ The Economic Collapse Blog
"Before the dollar reaches zero Americans should demand a national conversation about the debauchery of the once mighty U.S. dollar." ~ Potiphar Gride
"The political establishment tells us that we are caught up in a "war on terror" which, unlike previous wars, is destined to continue forever. As with all other pronouncements from the state, this characterization of events is grounded in lies. It is not "terrorism" – whatever that word may mean – that threatens the existing power structure, but the collapse of the institutional hierarchies that have ruled mankind for so many years. The struggles that now consume the energies, lives, and material resources of the nation can more accurately be considered as a "war to preserve the institutional order."" ~ Butler Shaffer
"What matter civil rights when the Moslem is at our throats? The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and the vigilance ends liberty." ~ Fred Reed
"WikiLeaks will doubtless try to struggle on. And Assange says he has given the entire diplomatic trove to 100,000 people. By dribs and drabs, shards of truth will get out. But the world's journalists – and those persons of conscience working in the world's governments – have been given a hard, harsh, unmistakable lesson in the new realities of our degraded time. Tell a truth that discomforts power, that challenges its domination over our lives, our discourse, our very thoughts, and you will be destroyed. No institution, public or private, will stand with you; the most powerful entities, public and private, will be arrayed against you, backed up by overwhelming violent force. This is where we are now. This is what we are now." ~ Chris Floyd
"We are kidding ourselves when we believe spying, intrigue, and outright military intervention can maintain our international status as a superpower while our domestic economy crumbles in an orgy of debt and monetary debasement." ~ Ron Paul
"The New York Times tells us that astronomers had seriously underestimated the number of stars in the universe. They can't see the little ones. Which means, their last count was probably a few trillion off. Or maybe a few gazillion off.
Which suggests to us that astronomers and federal debt analysts must be using the same calculators. Both are trillions off the mark." ~ Bill Bonner
"As long as the Federal Reserve system exists, the national debt will keep going up, the money supply will keep going up and the U.S. dollar will continue to decline in value.
This is not because of some big mistake. This is what the Federal Reserve system was designed to do." ~ The Economic Collapse Blog
"Congress always finds money for emergency spending, in the form of supplemental appropriations bills for TARP bailouts, troop surges, and the like. Why is there never an emergency that justifies less spending???" ~ Ron Paul
""The terrorists have won" is a refrain I don't like using. It's sensationalist and ignores inherent complexities. But for the moment, I can't think of a better way of putting it." ~ Patrick Smith
"Quantitative easing has been tried before. Has it ever worked? Nope. Never. Do you dispute it? Give us an example." ~ Bill Bonner
"I think it's like they said during the war with Viet Nam: suppose they had a war, and nobody came? I also like to say: suppose they levied a tax, and nobody paid? And at this time of year: suppose they gave an election, and nobody voted?" ~ Doug Casey
"The leviathan state is the great enemy of American prosperity, the monster that devours wealth. Every bit of economic growth that we experience is due not to the presence of this leviathan, but to the ingenuity of American enterprise in getting around the barriers." ~ Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
"I believe most Americans find the ideals and principles of socialism, communism and progressivism repugnant, but by our sanctioning greater government centralization and its control over our lives, we become their dupes or, as Lenin said, "useful idiots."" ~ Dr. Walter Williams
"In the 100 years before the Fed was formed, the dollar lost not a penny of its value. In the almost 100 years since, it has lost almost all of them. If the greenback were to lose another 5% of its 1914 value, there would be nothing left at all." ~ Bill Bonner
"If we were to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and if the government would then transfer to American voters all of the gold presently said to be in the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Fort Knox, we would see the restoration of liberty." ~ Gary North
"Casting a single vote, among over 100 million, is an act of futility." ~ D.W. MacKenzie
" People, as we know, are imperfect. Governments, composed top to bottom of imperfect people wielding power, are very imperfect." ~ Peggy Noonan
" The failed "war on drugs" should be abandoned in favor of legal control." ~ John Wrisley
"[P]rosperity foregone is invisible. In other words, we can never tell how much richer we would have been without today's level of congressional interference in our lives and therefore don't fight it as much as we should." ~ Walter Williams
"The result is self-serving myopia, of which there is plenty in the Tea Party movement. They want to cut spending – but not for their Social Security benefits. They want less government – but they want the government to protect or "create" jobs. They want to close the borders – forgetting that we're all immigrants. They want a "strong national defense" – but they forget that fear has turned the U.S. into a paranoid "national security" state." ~ Doug Casey
"When many people start transferring their wealth from dollars into gold, that restricts the ability of politicians to steal from them through inflation." ~ Thomas Sowell
"Americans have to learn that the government isn't "us." It's an entity that has its own interests, its own life, its own agenda. It views citizens as milk cows – or perhaps even beef cows – strictly as a means to its ends." ~ Doug Casey
"Pay no attention to the little men on the TV screens. That's because they are the little men behind the curtain of coercion. It is not an iron curtain. It is a fiat-money curtain. They believe in the wisdom of men with badges and guns." ~ Gary North
"No wonder we are broke! We spent all our money on free lunches for ourselves, and now we are spending it on delivering "free lunches" to more than half of the population!" ~ Richard Daughty (The Mogambo Guru)
"The moral collapse came when voters trusted governments to tell them the truth. Voters trusted government promises to fund the majority in old age at the expense of the rich. This is a widespread moral collapse." ~ Gary North
"So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?" ~ Paul Krugman, Liberal Keynesian Economist
"A day after 9/11, I was asked on CNN if Osama bin Laden was behind the attack. "We have yet to see the evidence," I replied. I maintain this position today." ~ Eric Margolis
"We get the government we want. If we want a government that meets our every need, we will live as beggars and slaves." ~ Patrick Samuels
"The tyrant is but one person, and could scarcely command the obedience of another person, much less of an entire country, if most of the subjects did not grant their obedience by their own consent." ~ Murray Rothbard
"The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as individuals. That is where it should be and that is where it is safest. Governments can promise something for nothing but they cannot deliver." ~ Henry Ford, 1922
"People just aren't coming in the way they used to, not these past couple of years, anyway. Things are bad. Folks are worried." ~ A Restaurant Owner in Savannah, GA.
"The plethora of stimuli by government fiat have created nothing more than the illusion of economic activity. They are attempts to disguise the chaos caused by political shenanigans." ~ Bumpy Road
"Does it make sense that by printing more pieces of impressive looking green paper that you can create wealth? If that were the case, why aren't the Zimbabweans the richest people on the planet? Yet, this is what economists believe and this is what the Fed practices." ~ Jeff Harding
"I don't think the Federal Reserve should exist – it would be best for congress to exert their responsibilities and that is find out what they are doing." ~ Ron Paul
"Times change." ~ Fred Reed
"America isn't even running on fumes at this point. It is running on delusions." ~ Jim Quinn
"The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing ... it's a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach -- balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline -- is needed more than ever." ~ David Stockman
"The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us." ~ Peggy Noonan
"It would have been better if the feds had let the market clear…
Let it happen. Let it be. Let the chips fall where they may…so that others can pick them up and get to work again." ~ Bill Bonner
"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take a civil service examination." ~ Ronald Reagan
"Remember the military's frantic efforts to suppress the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, photos of prisoners lying in pools of blood while grinning girl soldiers play with them? These had zero tactical importance. They did however threaten to arouse the Pentagon's worst enemy.
The American public." ~ Fred Reed
"Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam." ~ Liam Byrne
"[W]ar is the health of the state. The last thing big government proponents want is for peace to break out in the world." ~ Ron Paul
"The money the federal government borrows comes from Americans' savings. So does the cash that Americans invest in private sector growth. There comes a point where there just aren't enough savings to satisfy both masters. Unfortunately for economic growth, the government always helps itself first." ~ Veronique de Rugy
"When free market economist Ludwig von Mises was asked what he would do if he were put in charge of the economy, he replied with one word: "Resign." That was the correct answer." ~ Gary North
"[L]iquidity seeps through the economy like acid, corroding US living standards and industrial competitiveness. Because what Wall Street calls 'liquidity,' Main Street calls 'inflation.'" ~ Hemant Kathuria
"Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution." ~ Ron Paul
"It is now easy to see the enthusiasm of the federal government and its economic advisers for the new scheme for a VAT. It allows the government to extract many more funds from the public — to bring about higher prices, lower production, and lower incomes — and yet totally escape the blame, which can easily be loaded on business, unions, or the consumer as the particular administration sees fit." ~ Murray N. Rothbard
"We are no longer dealing with a constitutional republic or even a democracy but an authoritarian oligarchy. In our fight against our government we do no disservice to the vision of Adams, Madison, Jefferson or Washington. The beast trampled their vision long ago. I would think they would be rather proud of our efforts to resist the [sic] its tyranny." ~ Patrick Samuels
"We are in the end stages of the societal and financial system destruction. When you get to the end of a fiat currency system, more and more elements of it become a fraud." ~ Ty Andros
"Americans may have finally given up on big government." ~ Chris Stirewalt
"You are the one who gets up every day to go to work. You're the one who puts in long hours. You're the one who makes your job what it is.
What have the politicians done to earn that money?
Absolutely nothing." ~ Harry Browne
"The areas of life that remain outside the government's participation, regulation, surveillance, or manipulation by means of taxes and subsidies have become so few and so trivial they scarcely merit mention." ~ Robert Higgs
"If your intuitive sense is that there is something fundamentally wrong with such high levels of debt and low levels of savings, then you are right." ~ Mark Lutter
"[Y]ou should never confuse the state with a friend. Remember your Miranda rights; any information you give can and will be used against you." ~ Doug Casey
"The Right and the Left are agreed on central banking. This goes back to 1848: the anonymously published Manifesto of the Communist Party, wherein Marx and Engels recommended the creation of a central bank as one of the ten steps to socialize a society." ~ Gary North
"The Constitution's protections... conveniently disappear when the government considers an emergency important enough." ~ Jacob Huebert
"O! Ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe... . O! Receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind." ~ Thomas Paine
"As government grows, it deprives the private sector of the resources it needs to survive and grow. The result is a lower overall standard of living. Not only are government jobs less productive than private sector jobs, but bureaucratic interference actually makes the remaining private sector jobs less efficient as well." ~ Peter Schiff
"We do not want to see the Fed with more power. We want to see the Fed out of business as well as the end of the SEC and CFTC. As you can see our government and Wall Street are totally corrupt and unless we do something about it they will destroy our country." ~ Bob Chapman
"I don't know about you, but I consider the IRS and federal mandates to be hostile." ~ Linda Brady Traynham
"Once you accept the precept that government, or anyone, has dominion over you, you are no longer free." ~ Bumpy Road
"When opposing views, theories, and facts are suppressed... then democracy becomes a curse and not a blessing. The idea of democracy as a guardian of freedom rests on this: if we all fear government rule, then we all have a more or less equal interest in keeping government modest, tame, and neutral." ~ Bruce Walker
"What the Federal Reserve still fails to realize is that intervention in the economy is always harmful." ~ Ron Paul
"Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state."" ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"As health insurance premiums rise - as people start clogging doctors offices - as the quality of care gradually declines - there will be more and more cries from the dumb masses for the government to "do something."" ~ Neal Boortz
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~ C. S. Lewis
"In 1776, the American Republic boldly announced its birth with the Declaration of Independence. In 2010, it quietly expired with a declaration of dependence - on government, on entitlement, and on the Democratic party." ~ Matt Patterson
"[A]t some point, the bill-payers are going to resist the payments that previous generations have legislated. What one generation can legislate, a subsequent generation can repeal." ~ Gary North
"It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty. " ~ John C. Calhoun
"The only remedy short of armed rebellion is civil disobedience at the level of the states. Clear constitutional justification for refusal to obey Washington lies in the Tenth Amendment..." ~ Fred Reed
"We know we have to go somewhere. We know that something like history is leaving us behind. We have no idea how to get to a new place. And we're spending most of our mental energy gaping into the rear-view mirror, which is the last place to look for your destination." ~ James Howard Kunstler
"Social Security's financial problems have been looming for years as the nation's 78 million baby boomers approached retirement age. The oldest are already there. As that huge group of people starts collecting benefits — and stops paying payroll taxes — Social Security's trust funds will shrink, running out of money by 2037..." ~ Stephen Ohlemacher
"We keep hearing that our kids and grandkids will have to pay for the reckless spending spree we've been on, but the bill has arrived earlier than expected and we will be required to make the preliminary payments." ~ Bumpy Road
"One source of politicians' confusion on this score may stem from the related belief that wealth can simply be created out of thin air. After all, if politicians fund their quixotic job creation schemes with newly-printed dollars, they needn't raise taxes, right? But unfortunately for them, inflation is in reality just a hidden tax. The devalued dollars left in people's pockets after monetary inflation will buy fewer actual goods and services." ~ Bradley Doucet
"The majority is wrong on economics because they still, laughably, believe in the proverbial "free lunch", a childish fiction where somebody gets something and nobody has to pay for it, and the majority are willing to bankrupt themselves, and destroy their own country, by letting Congress try to provide a free lunch to anyone and everyone who walks up with a hand out or a sad story." ~ The Mogambo Guru aka Richard Daughty
"The nation is looking to government for solutions and demanding action. DC has no way out of the dilemma it has created. It cannot afford to continue to appease the dependency it has produced nor does it dare to stop - rebellion would ensue." ~ Bumpy Road
"The status quo and entrenched interests in a two-party system dictate that the sort of change that is now needed won't come voluntarily and, no matter which party is in power, when it comes to spending, they'll both keep doing what they've been doing until the system just stops working." ~ Tim Iacono
"Around the world, politicians have bankrupted their nations, by spending and creating huge welfare states. Welfare states, which cost so much, and once in place, can never be revoked, because of all the created dependents." ~ Don Stott
"Here is the issue in a nutshell. By keeping derelict firms like General Motors afloat, not to mention spending billions on worthless "stimulus" projects and "green jobs," the government also is drawing resources away from the very sectors of the economy that have real strength." ~ William Anderson
"In every nation, it is the same story. The politicians centralize power. The bureaucrats exercise this power. Politicians come and go. Political parties exchange the trappings of authority. The bureaucrats keep their jobs, extend their reach, and consolidate power." ~ Gary North
"Unconstitutional government spending, after all, is doubly an evil: it not only means picking the taxpayer's pocket, it also means subverting the system of limited and divided government that the Founders created. Just look at how federal spending has corrupted American education." ~ Ron Paul
"The US is trapped. Caught between rising expenditures and the need to borrow more, outstanding US debt is incapable of ever being repaid and should the credit rating of the US ever reflect its actual state, sovereign default, not devaluation would be the result." ~ Darryl Robert Schoon
"An honest appraisal of our country's downward spiral is necessary to begin the process of redemption. We have continually voted ourselves increased benefits, dependent upon the printing presses of the Federal Reserve to sustain our country's ponzi scheme. We have pawned our future and the bill will eventually come due." ~ John Eberhard
"At its very core, nullification is mass civil-disobedience to the federal government with the support of the state apparatus. It's about "We the People" exercising our rights whether the politicians or judges in Washington D.C want to give us "permission" to exercise those rights or not." ~ Michael Boldin
"Once a chap's enjoying the fruits of government health care, government-paid vacation, government-funded early retirement, and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest. He's got his, and to hell with everyone else. People's sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense." ~ Mark Steyn
"There is nothing wrong with telling people that taxation is robbery, that regulation is trespass, that drug laws are assault and robbery, that politicians are criminals, and that the state is a monstrous criminal agency." ~ Ben O'Neill
"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people." ~ Ron Paul
"It is time to choose. If Americans truly are heirs to the Jeffersonian legacy, than it has always been and must always be, not only our right, but our duty as citizens to withdraw consent from any government that becomes destructive of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness." ~ Josh Eboch
"A maelstrom of government debt, unfunded liabilities, looming energy catastrophe, and consumer collapse is about to hit the United States. There is no politician in Washington DC willing to stand up in front of the American people and tell them the truth about the storms on our horizon." ~ JimQ
"[W]e are repeatedly lied to by our government, on everything, but particularly on the real lack of success, the real cost and the extreme risk of our ongoing and endless "War on Terror."" ~ Karen Kwiatkowski
"With our elected representatives having no resources of their own to dispose, what they give now must be taken back at some point." ~ John Tamny
"Economics itself is a self-correcting system under most circumstances. However, in a world where government is unconstrained, politicians see every minor discomfort as an opportunity for an intervention and a means to gain more power." ~ Monty Pelerin
"Never underestimate the power of a handful of rural red necks, duty-bound, born-again to the Constitution and hell-bent on a free vision of starting the world again. 'Twas ever thus." ~ Bernie Quigley
"People are freshly aware and concerned about the real-world implications of a $1.6 trillion dollar deficit, of a $14 trillion debt. It will rob America of its economic power, and eventually even of its ability to defend itself. Militaries cost money. And if other countries own our debt, don't they in some new way own us?" ~ Peggy Noonan
"[T]he federal government isn't a charity; it is a forced transfer machine. The less fortunate, and society as a whole, would be better off if the taxes paid to support inefficient, counterproductive government programs were instead left in the hands of supportive individuals and organizations." ~ Tad DeHaven
"Any solution that doesn't pay off until we're all dead is no solution at all. It's a way of avoiding a solution…which is what Congress desperately wants to do. A real solution will come. But not from Congress. Instead, it will come unbidden. And unwelcome. Like the plague." ~ Bill Bonner
"Without the limitations of sound money, governments will spend without limit. They will spend money to hire their cronies, pay off special interests, give out favors, create dependence and generally distract from the terrible job they do at their chief mandate, which is to protect the liberties of the people. Fiat money is a blank check to government, which is very dangerous, and we are witnessing the death throes of the system as the bills come due and the underlying capital is squandered away." ~ Ron Paul
"You will be forced into another Social Security-like scheme with the proposed mandatory Guaranteed Retirement Annuity, with 5% of your salary confiscated into the program. You will also eventually find your existing retirement funds forced into the government program and you will lose your ability to invest and protect your retirement funds outside of the dollar, government bonds, and the US investment markets at some time in the future. The only questions are when and what the final details of this, the greatest potential wealth confiscation in the history of the world, will be." ~ Ron Holland
"The presidency has systematically stolen the liberty won through the secession from Britain. From Jackson and Lincoln to McKinley and Roosevelt Junior, from Wilson and FDR to Truman and Kennedy, from Nixon and Reagan to Bush and Clinton, it has been the means by which our rights to liberty, property, and self-government have been suppressed." ~ Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"Who are ever taxed? Individuals only. Who have property that can be taxed? Individuals only. Who can give their consent to be taxed? Individuals only. Who are ever taxed without their consent? Individuals only. Who, then, are robbed, if taxed without their consent? Individuals only. If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury." ~ Lysander Spooner
"There is no solution to Bernanke's manifold dilemmas other than to end the Fed. Economies are too complex to be handled by a central authority. This lesson was learnt by the central planners of the socialist economies at a high price." ~ Antony Mueller
"When I see people like Paul Ryan addressing large tea party conventions and receiving standing ovations for his budget plan, maybe I will begin to think it is possible to avoid a massive tax increase. But right now, I don't see even the tiniest glimmer of understanding among the tea party crowd about the true nature of our budget problem and what it would take to avoid a major tax increase." ~ Bruce Bartlett
"Their 300 year-old system of credit and debt concocted to drain the productivity of others has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; but it has come at a cost - their host, society, upon which their profits depend is now collapsing." ~ Darryl Robert Schoon
"If this recovery gets any better nobody will have a job." ~ Neil Charnock
"Washington needs to change its thinking and adopt some common sense priorities. The Constitution gives some excellent limitations that would get us back on the right path if we would simply abide by them." ~ Ron Paul
"[W]hat we are seeing is good times for the public sector and the growing prospect of a continuing and perhaps even deepening recession for everybody else." ~ The Examiner
"The lesson of the history of the U.S. census is this: Any power ceded to a government will be abused, given time. Today, the long-form of the census asks for details of your life that you would never tell a neighbor or a private business." ~ Lew Rockwell
"The stock market is artificially propped up through government purchases of Dow stocks with tax money deposited in broker accounts at such money centers as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, among others. They can levitate the markets indefinitely with Fed Reserve account funds. The U.S. stock market is a fraud. Surely you must understand that." ~ Anonymous Blog Comment
"A politician who has no politically acceptable answer to an inevitable problem is safe for as long as his potential opponents also have no politically acceptable answers. Everyone kicks the can." ~ Gary North
"The two political parties birthed in arrogance play a game of chicken. Neither will risk political suicide to undertake the necessary hard choices. As long as politicians can buy votes with your money they will and they'll win." ~ Bill Flax
"The optimist's brain filters out bad news. They know their dreams of prosperity will come true. Then, when they finally do see that the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train, it's always too late.
I will say it again, gently: A new meltdown is coming. The Great Depression II is coming, soon. And yet, I know your mental filters are working, blocking warnings of a bomb." ~ Paul B. Farrell
"All paper money falls into one of two catagories, those that have failed and those that are going to fail." ~ Ray Elliott
"A refresher course in the study of The Constitution would be useful only to museum curators and historians interested in ancient documents as today's politicians make up their rules as they go with no regard to that quaint old charter of yore. Still, we recommend the perusal of it now and again, if only to ascertain how far we have deviated from its concept and purpose." ~ Bumpy Road
"Don't imagine what you want the Constitution to say or pretend it says something it does not. If you, like the president, don't like what the Constitution says, amend it." ~ Thomas Mitchell
"It should be fairly obvious to anyone who's paying attention that neither President Obama nor the US Congress can be trusted to even slow the growth of, let alone actually freeze or reduce, government spending." ~ Thomas L. Knapp
"This is what Washington fears most: grass-roots political mobilization. That would threaten the concentration of power, the growth of the debt, and the permanent immunity of the Federal Reserve System more than anything else." ~ Gary North
"[P]eople in this country...have literally been programmed not to see things as they are, but to see them the way the government wants them to see them." ~ Don Cooper
"They do one dumb thing," said our gardener, speaking of the feds. "Then they do two dumb things so they don't have to admit they did something dumb in the first place." ~ Bill Bonner
"In 1913, when the Fed was created with the duty of preserving the dollar, one 20-dollar bill could buy one 20-dollar gold piece. Fifty 20-dollar bills are needed today to buy one 20-dollar gold piece. Under the Fed's custody, the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its value." ~ Patrick J. Buchanan
"[T]he problem is that the capacity to imagine freedom – the very source of life for civilization and humanity itself – is being eroded in our society and culture. The less freedom we have, the less people are able to imagine what freedom feels like, and therefore the less they are willing to fight for its restoration." ~ Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"[T]he government can not continue to take from Peter, the producer, to spend on Paul, the consumer, at ever higher amounts, in perpetuity. One must produce before one can consume, lest there is nothing left to consume." ~ Michael Pollaro
"[W]elfare at home has rendered a burgeoning social subgroup unable or unwilling to pull its (now grotesquely bloated) weight. The middle class pays dearly—housing these people, schooling them, nursing them for their myriad addictions and self-induced complaints, and then being mugged by them as they trudge home from their highly-taxed jobs." ~ James Jackson
"At the moment that the whole world has accepted that government will centrally plan all of the economy, take care of its citizens from cradle to grave, and rule a worldwide military empire --all with money that comes from nowhere -- at that very moment the age of government will end." ~ Tom Mullen
"Ponzi schemes always hook a generous share of the public. Getting something for nothing is as primitive an imperative as breathing and eating to the free-lunch-craving majority." ~ Stephen Mauzy
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the United States since the days of Andrew Jackson." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
"It is obvious to everyone but an economist that spending twice as much as you earn is not a formula for real prosperity." ~ Bill Bonner
"There are no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." ~ Ludwig von Mises
"What we notice in our brush with America's intellectual and political elite is that they are very smart, very well informed, but too busy to stop and think.
They are thinkers. They are always thinking about what to do. But they cannot afford to think radically…about why they should do anything at all." ~ Bill Bonner
"The American people today are fatigued, and while their political leadership promises to lead the nation out of the long, dark tunnel of conflict, there continues to be no light emerging in the distance, only the ever-darkening shadows of wars without end or purpose." ~ Scott Ritter
"The playing field is no longer level. Government is no longer focused on our desires as constituents. It passes laws and regulations to benefit the big businesses and big labor regardless of how much they cost us in money and freedom. This is not the people's government, it is no longer even a representative republic." ~ Patrick Samuels
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." ~ Thomas Paine ~ Common Sense
"The ObamaCare monstrosity, stuffed with pork and deception, claiming to do what it does not and pretending to do good while inflicting harm, is a national disgrace, an insult to the intelligence of every American and a fitting monument to President Obama's first year in office." ~ Ernest S. Christian AND Gary A. Robbins
""For many progressives it all seems to be about how they feel about themselves and the sense of self-righteousness that their "generosity" affords them. Of course, self-righteousness is hardly the domain of the left. Having lived through the reign of terror of the "religious right" and their devotion to their belief that they are God's true representatives on earth, well, it was scary stuff. The left thinks they are on the side of the angels and the right thinks God is on their side." ~ Doug Carkuff
""Pardon me, but when has the post-1912 Republican Party even tried to repeal a major plank of the enervating socialist welfare state, whether it be the Federal Reserve, the income tax, Social Security, Medicare, or the government's role in the youth indoctrination camps known as "public schools"?" ~ Vin Suprynowicz
"I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." ~ Henry David Thoreau
"The long train of abuses is clear: the constitution has been and is being used every day against the freedoms and rights it is supposed to protect and against the principles and trust that created it." ~ Timothy Baldwin
"If it's not one thing, it's another. It's always something." ~ Roseanne Roseannadanna
"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it." ~ Henry David Thoreau
"Voters aren't much attracted to traits such as responsible statesmanship in their politicians. The candidate who promises to keep spending money he doesn't have and sending the bill to posterity will win. For now." ~ John Wrisley aka Potiphar Gride
"Goldman Sachs (the final recipient of most of those Government "loans" is borrowing money from the Fed at near-zero interest rates and reinvesting at higher rates in more distant instruments. They are rolling in dough. Right now, you don't even know that you have been robbed, and you won't know it until there is a massive rise in prices." ~ Howard S. Katz
"It is impossible to be charitable with someone else's money. Charity comes from your own heart, not from the government spending your money. When we pay our taxes to the government and it gives that money away, that's not charity, that's welfare. When the government takes more from us than it needs to secure our freedoms, so it can have money to give away, that's not charity, that's theft. And when the government forces hospitals to provide free health care to those who can't or won't care for themselves, that's not charity, that's slavery." ~ Andrew P. Napolitano
"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright. But we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you; we'll so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands." ~ Nikita Khruschev
"The Fed created the bubble. The White House and Congress goaded banks into making all those subprime mortgages. Fannie and Freddie bought up the lousy paper and turned it into securities. Wall Street banks bought them up and put them on their books as Triple A assets. Federal regulators looked the other way." ~ Patrick J. Buchanan
"Every law enacted is an increase of centralized power and a decrease in individual power. In essence, every time you ask the government to enact a law, even if it is with the best of intentions, to force another to do the "right" thing, you inevitably tighten the noose around your own neck." ~ Jessica Pacholski
"No one today even pretends that the Bill of Rights serves its intended purpose of restraining the Federal Government." ~ Kevin R.C. Gutzman
"[T]he usurpations of power, the encroachments upon liberty, and the arrogant tax-and-spend policies emanating from Washington, D.C., and Wall Street these days are far more egregious than what George Washington and the boys were enduring in 1775–76 at the hands of the British Crown." ~ Chuck Baldwin
"[G]old and silver are anathema to governments. A supply of gold and silver that is limited in supply by nature cannot be inflated, and thus serves as a check on the growth of government. Without the ability to inflate the currency, governments find themselves constrained in their actions, unable to carry on wars of aggression or to appease their overtaxed citizens with bread and circuses." ~ Ron Paul
"Remember this, and remember it well: Government serves itself first and foremost. We're an afterthought at best and, more often than not, an obstacle to be overcome. Government is inherently an alien institution and its employees are at all times an occupation force. It's about time we recognized that and started treating them accordingly." ~ Thomas L. Knapp
"Unless there is another Social Security tax increase in 2010, the system will go into red ink mode and stay there." ~ Gary North
"Call 911 only after your shotgun is pumped because the cops will only get there in time to tape off the scene of the crime and stare at your dead body." ~ Karen De Coster
"One of the major problems with the government's response to the crisis has been the failure to understand that the bust phase is actually the correction of previous errors." ~ Steven Horwitz & Peter Boettke
"Beware of the supposed gifts offered to you by government, for when it gives you things with one hand, the other hand takes away your liberty and independence." ~ Ron Paul
"All the penalties will not be light, nor evenly distributed. There is no way of making them so. There is no instant step from disorder to order. We must face a condition of grim reality, charge off our losses and start afresh. It is the oldest lesson of civilization." ~ Warren G. Harding
"No one owes us gasoline, medicine, food, jobs, or anything else, so why should we criticize the person for the price he charges us or the wage he offers for something that he was not obligated to provide for us in the first place?" ~ Louis Carabini
"To restore a free society to our land requires the abolition of many departments and agencies of the federal government. Chief among these are the twin jugular veins of the welfare-warfare state -- the income tax and the Federal Reserve." ~ Jacob Hornberger
"Even the Supreme Court ought to recognize the "you exist, therefore you're regulated" rationale as a bridge too far. But court-watchers have learned never to underestimate the justices' creativity in inventing new rationalizations for constitutionalizing the unconstitutional." ~ Gene Healy
"What is stupid is believing that politicians are trying to solve our problems, instead of theirs." ~ Thomas Sowell
"By the time today's 30-year-old gets a family…a house…and a mortgage, he will also have his share of a $20 trillion dollar deficit – not to mention the "off budget" obligations of the US government, a total of more than $100 trillion!" ~ Bill Bonner
"No legal tender law is ever needed to make men take good money; its only use is to make them take bad money." ~ Stephen T. Byington
"A culture that turns a blind eye to government failure, but is quick and unrelenting to blame society's ills on business, will naturally and subliminally embrace socialist solutions. The problem is that when one intervention fails, the government attempts to fix its errors with yet more intervention — a sort of creeping socialism that results in a compounding of waste and inefficiency." ~ Robert J. Herbold and Scott S. Powell
"Anything the government does to discourage capital formation automatically diminishes job creation. By running the largest federal deficits in history, Barack Obama is diverting all available capital to the Treasury, and is in effect waging a war against private capital formation." ~ Peter Schiff
"When an individual acts, he acts with diligence because he needs to achieve the most satisfaction, based on his scale of utility, for his limited dollars. The bureaucrat knows no such limit. He is financed with your money." ~ Fred Buzzeo
"Few realize that fear alone is bringing about our transformation into a country driven by constant warfare to the detriment of our constitutional liberties." ~ Philip M. Giraldi
"Where do you think the $36 billion of money poured into country by the international community have gone? This money went into the pockets of the drug lords and the warlords. There are 18 million people in Afghanistan who live on less than $2 a day while these warlords get rich." ~ Malalai Joya
"[T]he welfare state retards moral and intellectual development. We expect the State — our surrogate parent — to make it all right. The demagogues we call politicians are happy to feed this attitude because it provides occasions for the expansion and exercise of raw power while seeming, like Santa Claus, to give away free goods. Of such things long political careers are made." ~ Sheldon Richman
"The mirage economy can't return until after the pendulum has swung its full travel to the other side of the arc. That path leads through the valley of a crushing economic depression, one that will radically and permanently alter the lives of middle-class Americans who are almost universally unaccustomed to hardship." ~ David Calderwood
"The TSA bureaucrats expend tens of thousands of committee man-hours to make sure nobody can ever hijack a plane again, or hide explosives in their shoes, or smuggle in explosives in shampoo bottles — stuff that Al Qaeda would never try twice anyway, because they turn on a dime to come up with the next thing the TSA bureaucrats haven't thought of yet." ~ Kevin Carson
"No statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government…" ~ Warren G. Harding
"We can understand that cattle may lick the hand of the farmer who lowers an axe to its neck, because cattle are dumb beast that cannot comprehend their real relationship with the farmer, and his imminent plans for them.
What is our excuse?" ~ Stefan Molyneux
"Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits, when America, if not quickly recovered by its real citizens, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a rapid and final descent into oblivion ... her many resources saved for whom?" ~ Edwin X Berry, PhD
"[A] new patriotism is needed. As a start, let's stop worshiping the military and flag and bring back the founders' old-fashioned respect for liberty and the Constitution." ~ Ivan Eland
"When one is in a deep hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. That means dispensing with the artificial means to prop up the economy when serious medicine is needed, medicine that will be painful but ultimately will lead to economic recovery." ~ William Anderson
"Americans have no greater enemy than their own government. " ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"We have ended up with an incomprehensible maze of laws and regulations that severely constrains the people and expands the government – the exact opposite of what our founders intended." ~ Ron Paul
"War is Peace" ~ George Orwell
"If the American people are to fight expensive wars, provide care for the domestic masses as well as immigrants, subsidize almost anything and anybody who demands it, and keep the pork barrel brimming, they must cough up some big bucks to pay for it." ~ John Wrisley
"We (The USA) are a Paper Tiger...
We have only the power that fear breeds. The Bric countries are seeing that 'power' for the facade that it is.
We are weak; Socially, economically, morally.
Weak. " ~ Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
"Periods of growth…and periods when the mistakes made during the boom are corrected. There's a time for every purpose under heaven. That's the way it works. The economy breathes in and it breathes out.
And there's always some dumb economist trying to smother it with a pillow!" ~ Bill Bonner
"Voting for the lesser of two evils has brought us the promised product: evil." ~ Michael Gaddy
"Let them discover, in the operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it — and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't." ~ Dr. Thomas Hendricks (Atlas Shrugged)
"There are precisely no answers to be found in legitimizing the inherent illegitimacy of government by pandering to it as an institution. The only effective means of reducing government at all is by advocating its fullscale dissolution." ~ Alex R. Knight III
"[I]t is too late here in the USA, and just like it is too late almost everywhere else, too, where years and years of increasing government spending and control means that government IS the economy, and shrinking the size of government obviously shrinks the economy! Hahahaha! Oops!" ~ Richard Daughty aka The Mogambo Guru
"Either we lost it, forgot it, or we deliberately discarded it. Either we decided that freedom was not worth the responsibility of being free, or we forgot that, to be free, a man must assume and maintain and defend his right to be responsible for his freedom." ~ William Faulkner
"Rarely are liberty and prosperity at greater risk than when politicians feel they must "do something"." ~ Ron Paul
"[O]ne ironic result from 9/11 has been that, insofar as the terrorists truly hate our freedom, the government has given the terrorists what they wanted. Our freedom has been under continual attack for the last eight years in the name of fighting terrorism." ~ Anthony Gregory
"[I]n politics, the worst get on top. And there is no accountability: the higher the office, the more criminal wrongdoing a person can get away with." ~ Lew Rockwell
"China is a confirmed large buyer of gold, along with Russia." ~ Adrian Douglas
"If you don't want kids to die in Afghanistan, don't send them there." ~ Fred Reed
"How easily we put on those robes and crowns. How casually we wield the scepters of little gods, passing out life and death, determining who is worthy of what and how much, deciding what's right on the most intimate levels for people we don't even know." ~ Robert Hawes
"To most of us, bloated central governments seem inevitable because they have been the norm for generations. They have been the norm because they have been stable. Are they still that way? Or is this noisy summer of Tea Parties and townhalls the trickle of a flood that will be upon us soon?" ~ Stewart Browne
" Unfortunately, whatever Obama's talents, he is not a businessman and certainly not an economist – of any stripe. He has put his faith in a bunch of economic quacks and the result is, and will remain, a moribund economy for years to come." ~ Chris Clancy
"Instead of economic growth and stable prices, (The Fed) has given us a system of government and finance that now threatens the world financial and political institutions. Pursuing the same policy of excessive spending, debt expansion and monetary inflation can only compound the problems that prevent the required corrections. Doubling the money supply didn't work, quadrupling it won't work either. Buying up the bad debt of privileged institutions and dumping worthless assets on the American people is morally wrong and economically futile." ~ Representative Ron Paul questioning Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke
"There will always be apologists who by glib fabrication and wily use of words, as well as appeals to emotion, will affirm that there is no such thing as an absolute right, and that government is justified in placing "reasonable" limits on our rights. This line of reasoning is wrong, dead wrong. A right, by definition, is absolute. That is why it is a right, and not something else." ~ John Sampson
"[W]e are in the third and fatal stage of a great country – the political stage. In this stage, the parasites take over. Government governs a lot. And governing a lot costs a lot of money." ~ Bill Bonner
"Profit is the key to competition. Anyone who claims to favor competition but looks down at profit has no idea what he is talking about." ~ John Stossel
" If we are to regain our liberties, we must reassert our responsibilities for ourselves, accepting the consequences of our own actions without appealing to the government for salvation. To continue on the road we Americans have traveled for the past century is ultimately to deliver ourselves completely into the hands of an unlimited government." ~ Robert Higgs
"The basic business model of government is to keep order, protect campaign contributors and lure supporters with the promise of other peoples' money. The game plan of the typical citizen is even simpler: to be on the receiving end, not the paying end. Over time, more and more of them get into position. And the whole society becomes more costly, and more corrupt." ~ Bill Bonner
"So it isn't just the rudeness and bullying of Immigrations people, or the confiscation of toothpaste and shampoo and bottled water. It is the sense that the government, if not quite an enemy perhaps, is not friendly, and is endless trouble. For a large and, I thank [sic], growing number of people, the most fervent wish is that the government leave them the hell alone." ~ Fred Reed
"Yes, politicians are malevolent or stupid, most likely the former in my view, but everyone who votes for them is complicit, up to his neck, actively taking part in the most humongous act of armed robbery in the history of man. That is not "insurance"--a perfectly sound idea involving the voluntary sharing of the risk of heavy but unpredictable loss--this is theft, neither more nor less." ~ Jim Davies
"The political divide among freedom activists is between those who want to save the system, and those who are willing to let the system fall." ~ Kyle Bennett
"The radical empowerment and enrichment of Wall Street has transformed our democracy into an aristocracy, making the debt dealers the nation's new royalty, the government its feudal barons, and the citizens mere serfs who endlessly sweat and toil in fields of debt weeds that grow so fast they can never, ever be harvested." ~ Stewart Dougherty
"The only thing life has taught us is that government programs are unsustainable and threats to our freedoms." ~ Bernard Chapin
"Through our inactions and apathy we have acknowledged the state to be the masters of our lives;... Remember, we traded our rights for security. It is turning out to be one heck of a bad bargain." ~ Michael Gaddy
"We are seeing the worst unemployment rate since 1982. Tens of millions of workers have no memory of that era. They have borrowed and spent on the assumption that nothing like this could happen to them. But it has." ~ Gary North
"Consumers are cutting back…raising chickens in their back yards…driving less…planting gardens and squeezing their nickels. The private sector is de-leveraging. And there won't be any durable economic boom or lasting bull market on Wall Street until this process is finished." ~ Bill Bonner
"Nothing man can do will stop the out of control Leviathan State from continually expanding. It will devour itself." ~ Jim Paynard
"As Bastiat explained, government doesn't create wealth; it only diverts it. When government controls wealth it inevitably tends to serve political ends rather than consumers." ~ Larissa Price
"These monsters, who have been given extraordinary powers to rule over you, have become so used to ramping up their powers and stomping their legislative jack boots down on your head, that they are not the slightest bit tolerant of resistance. They loathe your disobedience, your verbal challenges, your hostility to their supremacy." ~ Karen De Coster
"[T]he competition of social power with State power is always disadvantaged, since the State can arrange the terms of competition to suit itself, even to the point of outlawing any exercise of social power whatever in the premises; in other words, giving itself a monopoly." ~ Albert J. Nock
"[t]here is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of the people." ~ Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
"Prices are going up because the dollar is going down. That is all ye know and all ye need to know." ~ Howard S. Katz
"Real demand increases only when real wages increase. Then, people have more purchasing power. Trying to increase demand by borrowing – or stealing – from the future is a scam at best. Even if it works now, it fails later." ~ Bill Bonner
"[I]n exchange for a reliable vote come election time – the government keeps the public satiated and sedated by providing them with an ever-increasing list of "public services."" ~ James Quinn
"Most of what we now call "government" is unconstitutional." ~ Bill Huff
"By its very nature, the state will persist in looking upon human beings as "assets," as "resources" to be cared for in much the same way as a rancher cares for his cattle. Problems that arise within the herd will be dealt with mechanistically and collectively: anthrax vaccinations and uniform diets for all; individual tastes and preferences being irrelevant to the "greater good."" ~ Butler Shaffer
"The recession is over; long live the depression!" ~ Peter Schiff
"Socialized healthcare is not really free, of course; the true cost is merely hidden, since it is paid for by taxes." ~ Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat." ~ George Orwell
"My daily observances of people never leave me wondering why we live in such a violent, decivilized world where the state is the parent and the religion, and the masses turn to the state to provide for every facet of their lives." ~ Karen De Coster
"One wishes that the nation's policymakers would realize that their actions to sustain the boom not only are ineffective, but downright harmful." ~ William Anderson
"If we can learn anything from The Fed, it's that the best way to succeed as a politician is to stretch one's failure over a long enough period that people won't remember it." ~ Erik Voorhees
"It was not the millions of now homeless homeowners who were bailed out. It was not the scant remains of American manufacturing--General Motors and Chrysler--that were bailed out. It was the Wall Street Banks." ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"Americans need, not to give up on the Constitution, but instead to stand up for it—because that is what their enemies themselves admit, by their own actions, would be the most effective defense against them." ~ Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr.
"Cars do not run on water, they run on gasoline. Economies - civilizations themselves - cannot function on simulated money, money that is fraudulent, fictitious and imaginary (in the case of bank money)." ~ Hugo Salinas Price
"What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?" ~ Pat Buchanan
"Madoff caused people to lose billions of dollars. The U.S. government has caused people to lose trillions of dollars, and it's not finished yet." ~ Robert Higgs
"If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone." ~ Thomas Szasz
"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their powers; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." ~ Thomas Jefferson
"How often does the government have to be wrong, and how wrong do they have to be before people and the media stop taking them seriously?" ~ Gerald Celente
"America's position relative to the rest of the world is weak and in decline. She is not a creditor, she is a debtor. She is not a low-cost competitor; she is a high-cost competitor. She no longer has a free and flexible economy; she has one freighted with central planners, regulators and busybodies." ~ Bill Bonner
"[T]here is no hope for change through peaceful means. When change finally does come, it will be through violence. When the economic pain inflicted on the people reaches unbearable heights, law and order will break down, anarchy and chaos will ensue." ~ Antal E. Fekete
"It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." ~ Charles A. Beard
"Our government ultimately gives us what we ask for. For the past century, we have increasingly asked it to make us slaves, seduced by the siren's song of comfort and security without responsibility." ~ Tom Mullen
"And if we must have government, let it remain small and insignificant, spending its time cutting ribbons and bickering over nonsense like the color of street signs. Let the rest of us enjoy the freedom to pursue our own happiness." ~ Jim Fedako
"Government is inherently incompetent, and no matter what task it is assigned, it will do it in the most expensive and inefficient way possible." ~ Charley Reese
"H. L. Mencken long ago defined democracy as the "the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." The problem is that those who don't want it get it, too. When it comes to government programs, there's no opt-out provision. Alas, what distinguishes "free" from unfree countries is the freedom to speak out, not to opt out. In the latter respect, all are unfree." ~ Sheldon Richman
"I'm sure there must be a historical precedent for the folly that Waxman-Markey represents--ordering the weather to change!--but I can't think of one offhand." ~ John Hinderaker
"We recall coming down with an ailment as a child that prompted our grandmother to call a doctor. Her own poultices and other remedies were not working. A lady physician arrived with a large black leather bag containing vials of pills of all kinds. She looked us over carefully and prescribed something. The cost of the in-home visit - - $2.00! That would be $33.60 in the dollars of 2009. Any doctors making house calls at that rate today?" ~ John Wrisley
"[A] fundamental misconception that underlies all of the societal problems that American society faces today: the belief that there is a conflict between individual rights and the "needs of society." This conflict doesn't exist. Protecting the rights of every individual serves the needs of society. Violating those rights, for whatever purpose, destroys society. In fact, it is by violating the individual rights of its constituents that government causes nearly every societal problem we face." ~ Tom Mullen
"The so-called "watchdog media" is a myth, for pointing out the lies of politicians is the best way to end one's career as a "prominent journalist." Do this, and your sources of governmental information will be shut off." ~ Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt." ~ Chris Hedges
"The Chinese have expressed their skepticism by starting to accumulate some gold and commodities. We should do the same." ~ Richard Daughty, aka The Mogambo Guru
"It's easy to understand the lure of government offering to provide everything - whether during the Clinton years or in today's economically vulnerable times. However, as Thomas Jefferson warned, a government big enough to supply you with everything you need is a big enough to take away everything you have." ~ Mark Sanford / Scott W. Atlas
"Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them." ~ Joseph Sobran
"Our whole Constitution has been abrogated. The president simply writes an Executive Order to do whatever he wants. Nationalize the banks, take over the insurance industry, automobile industry, health care industry…
None of it is constitutional." ~ Gerald Celente
"You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul." ~ Gandhi
"Spending money someone else earned is like eating a big slice of Black Forest cake and watching someone across the table get fat. You're likely to ask for seconds." ~ Bill Bonner
"Unfettered democracy -- not unfettered capitalism -- has brought us here. We must choose respect for our inalienable rights over the loot that unfettered democracy can provide us with." ~ Tom Mullen
"Congress, 535 commoditized temple monkeys pawing through the ruins of America in search of bribes. The bicameral whorehouse on Capitol Hill works like a vending machine. You put coins in the slot, select your law, and the desired legislation slides out." ~ Fred Reed
"Most people will not change. Too radical. Not going with the flow. Not betting against the herd.
The best examples in the 20th century were Jews in Germany in 1933. They stayed. This included Jewish bankers, all of whom could have left. They thought they could deal with Hitler. They did not read Mein Kampf. They did not take it seriously." ~ Gary North
"We're out of money now." ~ Barack Obama, May 2009
"[L]ook at the results of the governments' policies, those policies representing the antithesis of freedom. The US populace is probably dumber than it has been at any other time in history, even though a greater number of people are graduating from public high schools and attending colleges than ever before. Our economy teeters on the brink of collapse. Our government is larger, more intrusive and more corrupt than it has ever been. It is also effectively bankrupt minus its monopoly power to print money..." ~ Benjamin Weingarten
"A successful politician is a person who is an expert at winning elections. That's how he gets the job - by winning elections. That is his skill, his career, his area of expertise. Winning elections. In other words, to be president, he needs to be highly skilled at illusion." ~ Richard J. Maybury
"If a society is to change and thrive, it cannot and will not tolerate the state. The state has no creative purpose, only a destructive one." ~ Jeffrey A. Tucker
"I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens." ~ Britney Spears
"[W]hatever good or service the State claims it can provide, we can provide ourselves without the State. Whatever good or service the State claims that it provides that we do not want, we can live without." ~ Michael S. Rozeff
"It's time to don your lifejacket." ~ John Pugsley
"I will tell you there are going to be some people - and it gets to be fewer and fewer - who dislike my tone and forthright comments, but, that is to be expected. Some people hate that my words are in-your-face, and that is because they are looking for a soft solution. They want cotton balls and I pull out a hammer." ~ Karen De Coster
"[T]he current economic crisis is said to be caused by the "excesses" of economic freedom and "too little regulation" of the economy, especially financial markets. This is said by the president and numerous other politicians, with straight faces, despite the facts that there are a dozen executive-branch cabinet departments, over 100 federal agencies, more than 85,000 pages in the Federal Register, and dozens of state and local government agencies that regulate, regiment, tax, and control every aspect of every business in America, and have been doing so for decades." ~ Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"We have the right, as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity, but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money." ~ Davy Crockett
"To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so…" ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon - 1851
"Did you know... that the people who make Hotwheels and Matchbox cars made more money last year than the people who make Fords, Chryslers and Chevys?" ~ Neal Boortz
"The economy cannot be coerced back into growth with tons of money manure." ~ Gerald Celente
"[T]ime by itself does nothing. It is what we do with time that matters." ~ Thomas Sowell
"If an activity is licensed by the state, then it is a privilege conferred and controlled by the state, and not a right." ~ Jeff Snyder
"A dollar defined in gold terms would not erase all economic mistakes, but it's a certainty that they would be reduced exponentially." ~ John Tamny
"For all the recent talk of "greed", the greatest stain on our economy comes not from the imprudent executive. His fate awaits him in the marketplace. Rather, the real shame comes when the state saves the reckless and the venal at the expense of the upright and the decent." ~ Troy Senik
"Like so many disasters, the current economic crisis grew out of policies based on good intentions and mushy thinking." ~ Thomas Sowell
"Without the right to secede, state's rights are meaningless." ~ Ron Paul
"I began to turn the hours in the car to my advantage, using the time to develop a plan of escape. When it came, it sounded like madness: I was going to leave my job and journey into the wilderness, turning my back on convention in the hope of discovering a new path." ~ Guy Grieve
"The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising." ~ Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun
"The reality of the state is it will take whatever they want from you because they have the guns, the jails and the military." ~ Stefan Molyneux
"We're all Soviet snitches now." ~ Karen De Coster
"The nanny state, supported by whiners and snivelers, has changed the American psyche from self reliance to state reliance." ~ Bumpy Road
"Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that 'Freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license'; and they will define and define freedom out of existence." ~ Voltairine de Cleyre
"The terror of the Great Crash has been the failure to explain it. People were left with the feeling that massive economic contractions could occur at any moment, without warning, without cause. That fear has been exploited ever since as the major justification for virtually unlimited federal intervention in economic affairs." ~ Alan Reynolds
"Virtually every political movement in America is based upon a promise to provide its followers with other people's property." ~ Tom Mullen
"We had a bubble economy; we had an economy based on Americans spending money they didn't have and buying products they couldn't afford or that they didn't make. We had an economy built on debt, consumer debt, and financial engineering, and our companies were generating profits from accounting rather than from production. And the whole thing was phony; the prosperity was phony." ~ Peter Schiff
"For a sliver of what we currently spend, the U.S. could easily have the leanest, meanest fighting machine on earth, while also getting serious about taking care of our veterans and active military -- but this can happen only if we give up on the notion of a worldwide American empire." ~ Jack Hunter
"Capital is gone; production is no longer supported by the prerequisite quantity and quality of tools and equipment. The economy is literally devouring itself through debt." ~ Antal E. Fekete
"Here in Mexico, unless you break a major law or do something awesomely stupid, the government isn't much interested in you. This lack of interest is perhaps government's greatest virtue." ~ Fred Reed
"The sad fact of the matter is that those people who spend their entire careers in so-called public service do not regard themselves as our servants, but as our masters." ~ Burt Prelutsky
"If knowledge sets one free, the first thing the people need to know now is that the current economic emergency was not an accident; it was a crime. It was the theft of a nation, and the victims are its people." ~ Stewart Dougherty
"Those in power want to retain power and get re-elected. Their time horizons are rather short. It hardly pays them to do something for the long-term good, even of the government, especially when that something involves large political risks. To upset one or two constituencies by cutting back their benefits may mean losing office." ~ Michael S. Rozeff
"No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains." ~ Sheldon Richman
"Shift taxes? Increase taxes? Tax the rich? Impose new taxes? Use the tax code to influence public policy? What kind of libertarian tax reform plan is this? How about reduce, cut, eliminate, and abolish taxes? Not deductions, not exemptions, not credits, not shelters, not loopholes — taxes." ~ Laurence M. Vance
"What this administration seems to believe is that on one side, it can decrease the production capacity of the U.S. economy, but on the other side, stimulate it by printing new money. Perhaps this seems like a sound economic plan to a politician, but to anyone with a whit of common sense, it is madness." ~ William Anderson
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction." ~ E.F. Schumacher
"[F]iat money – it is the root cause of our problems. Without it not only would they have to live within their means, thereby restricting their growth, but also they would not be able to manipulate its supply and price via central banks, thereby eliminating the booms and slumps which follow. " ~ Chris Clancy
"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." ~ Mark Twain
"Interventions into the free market invariably cause unintended distortions and destroy wealth. These translate into economic and social problems that interventionists tend to blame not on themselves but on the market economy, concluding what is needed is yet more intervention." ~ Anthony Gregory
"Government is now an insolvent enterprise. Government is a Ponzi scheme. Government is a fraud. Government is a bubble that must burst." ~ Michael Rozeff
"Along the 10 blocks closest to my home, the banks (with one exception), the fast-food restaurants (Subway, Dunkin' Donuts, Blimpie), and above all the chain drugstores that crowd onto successive blocks (Rite Aid, Walgreens, Duane Reade) still stand. It's the small places that seem to be dropping like flies. " ~ Tom Engelhardt
"The truth is inflation completely destroys an economy by wiping out savers, crushing those who exist on a fixed income and crippling those at the lowest end of the income scale by raising prices of the most basic goods." ~ Michael Pento
"Call it socialism, fascism, welfare-statism, central planning, inflationism, wealth equalization, or just massive government involvement in the economy, the fact remains: the heavier the hand of government in people's pocketbooks and business activity, the poorer people will be." ~ Jacob Hornberger
"The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity." ~ Henry Hazlitt
"The FED's very existence attacks the public welfare. The FED serves only bankers and the federal government, and the latter only because it must. To the extent that inflation ever temporarily changes employment, it is incidental to the FED's goal of maintaining or building up bank profitability." ~ Michal Rozeff
"If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." ~ Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918–1956
"How on earth could rational people believe that the same state responsible for plundering us through taxation, stealing the value of our earnings and savings through inflation, and subsidizing Wall Street's multi-trillion-dollar crime spree, will actually protect us from the violence of common criminals when our ongoing economic collapse begets widespread social turmoil?" ~ William Norman Grigg
"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." ~Henry Ford
"We who espouse human responsibility, we who decry envy, we who are educated and refined, have we by our neglect enabled those who would tyrannize us?" ~ Graham Dugas
"As Lord Keynes observed, "In the long run we're all dead." Well, most of us will be. But not you youngsters, not for a while. So we've figured it out: You're the ultimate credit market, and the rest of us are all preapproved!" ~ Mark Steyn
"The majority of the voters are just dull and mentally inert people who dislike thinking and are easily deceived by the enticing promises of irresponsible pied pipers." ~ Ludwig von Mises
"The truth is that the current system has become corrupted beyond possibility of repair, and needs to be allowed to collapse. It will do so anyway, whether we 'allow' it or not." ~ Sam Mathid
"Government sees a crisis. Government sees an opportunity to get votes. Government rides to the rescue of the "oppressed" by blaming some and oppressing others. The others don't notice until it is too late and then they blame the rich or the greedy. Government sees a crisis..." ~ Bumpy Road
"While Congress does not have constitutional authority for most of what it does, it does have police and military power to inflict great pain and punishment for disobedience." ~ Walter E. Williams
"The commentators have it all wrong. Look on the bright side. The world economy is not in a period of negative growth. It's in a period of positive collapse! That's why the Great Depression was so great, after all. What's positive about this depression is that it is clearing away a generation's worth of mistakes, misallocations of resources and misplaced confidence." ~ Bill Bonner
"By the end of Bush's presidency, "the dream" had become a nightmare; millions of Americans were living in homes they could not afford. Obama's response was to reward irresponsible behavior with taxpayer money. From Wall Street to Main Street, the more irresponsible your behavior the more taxpayer money you received! Can you see a moral hazard here?" ~ Michael Beitler
"Experience shows that experience is often a very poor teacher indeed. Hence the ghastly spectacle of a President of the United States in 2009 behaving like a shell-shocked socialist circa 1935." ~ Roger Kimball
"This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." ~ Rahm Emanuel
"A sound society needs sound money." ~ Paul Hein
"If people are struggling to make ends meet, why should taxation to support government be the number one priority? Why does a state have a right to our property to support itself before we do? Why in the hell do they have these big budgets to support in the first place? If we are having trouble paying our own bills, then forget about the state's bills. Let it wither away! If I sound angry, it's because I am." ~ Benjamin Weingarten
"If Americans wish to save America, we must couple our outrage at the government bailouts with a positive vision of a properly limited government." ~ Paul Hsieh
"[T]he economy is subject to public control, and should be wrested from the domination of the ruling class. The bailing out of the system right now is going on with taxpayer funds but without the say of the public. A revolt to gain popular control of the political economy is therefore necessary." ~ John Bellamy Foster
"Mark my words – the establishment is only making matters worse and prolonging the pain. Moreover, by printing insane amounts of paper, the politicians are setting everyone up for an inflationary nightmare!" ~ Puru Saxena
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" ~ Peter Townsend
"[A]dding trillions of dollars in new debt while also printing trillions from thin air will accelerate and deepen the disaster as surely as the dark of night follows sunset. The carefully-misnamed "stimulus" that so many are cheering is the death knell for what remains of this nation's prosperity and freedom." ~ Glen Allport
"Consumers are now so indebted that they cannot increase their spending by taking on more debt. Thus, whether or not the banks resume lending is beside the point." ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"I don't trust my bank anymore. I was talking to them about a loan, but I decided not to give them one." ~ Guido Cantz
"The leaders of our imperial government are not content to leave the poor masses of the world to their own devices (or, to put it differently, to treat foreigners like human beings capable of taking care of themselves); rather, they are convinced that they have a divinely-ordained mission to take money from their own population of increasingly impoverished and unemployed workers and either use that ill-gotten money to invade foreign lands or give it to other governments." ~ Mark R. Crovelli
"There are two Americas. One America is full of moochers, big and small, corporate and individual, trampling over themselves with their hands out demanding endless bailouts. The other America is full of disgusted, hardworking citizens getting sick of being played for chumps and punished for practicing personal responsibility." ~ Michelle Malkin
"The civil liberties that Bush stole from us are now in Obama's pocket." ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"What about the latest coup in Africa, referendum in Latin America, and social disorder in the South Pacific?... There is much tragedy in the world, but rarely is there cause for the American government to make these problems America's problems." ~ Doug Bandow
"What would be enough, then? A quadrillion dollars? A googol dollars? Infinity minus one dollars? It'd be interesting to know what "stimulus" figure might make a Keynesian declare, "Now that's too much!" ~ Tom Woods
"Is the stimulus bill a coordinated logical economic program or a hodgepodge assortment of liberal brainfarts?" ~ Bumpy Road
"[B]oth sides of the political aisle represent a grave threat to liberty — though each of a different sort. It is like two people tugging at a turkey's wishbone: the turkey is liberty, and you are the bone." ~ Lew Rockwell
"We have more than enough troops to mind our own business and defend ourselves. It is only for world domination that we have a troop shortage." ~ Ron Paul
"We're done. Pack up and get out. Better yet, don't pack – all that stuff belongs to us in the first place. Just get out. And when you finally, mercifully, do kick the bucket, please make sure it is in some place far away from us, where we won't have to smell the stench of your hideous, rotting corpse." ~ Every Normal Human Being in America and the Rest of the World to the Federal Government of the United States
"You can't fight city hall, but you can pee on the steps and run." ~ Gary North
"To all the chattering class, that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments .. the American people really don't care." ~ Charles Schumer
"Government has been growing insidiously for many years, taking small baby steps to increase their dominion over you and hoping you may not notice what is happening. Today, with the nationalization of banks and corporations and a huge trillion dollar plus spending spree bill, they are taking giant leaps in broad daylight and, because they have invoked mass hysteria and fear, are unconcerned about the outcry from the squeamish few." ~ Bumpy Road
"When you take the king's schilling, you do the king's bidding." ~ Gary North
"You can't spend enough for the Democratic base, or cut taxes enough for the Republican. But in a time when all the grown-ups of America know spending is going to bankrupt us and tax cuts without spending cuts is more of the medicine that's killing us, the same old arguments, which sound less like arguments than compulsive tics, only add to the public sense that no one is in charge." ~ Peggy Noonan
"Each great assault on the free market, whether it be denominated a bailout, a stimulus, or some other species of purported salvation, brings us visibly closer to the complete ruin of an economic order that required centuries to build." ~ Robert Higgs
"Cassandra's curse was to always tell the truth about the future, but never be believed. If you add to that curse that she would be ridiculed, derided, and shunned for making her predictions, you have a pretty fair approximation of what it feels like to be a libertarian." ~ John Hasnas
"The truth is that we are not threatened by Communism, by drug lords, or by Muslim Jihadists in any serious way. Rather, we have become our own worst enemy." ~ David Lindorff
"Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry." ~ Thomas Paine
"A visual representation of the stimulus package is: Imagine you see a person at work taking buckets of water from the deep end of a swimming pool and dumping them into the shallow end in an attempt to make it deeper. You would deem him stupid. That scenario is equivalent to what Congress and the new president proposes for the economy." ~ Dr. Walter Williams
"The Congress, which had an approval rate of 14% and which just passed a $700 billion bailout over the objections of a majority of Americans, had a re-election rate exceeding 95%." ~ Will Groves
"Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire." ~ Thomas Sowell
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Why is it that the gluttons for power who are constantly preaching their dogmas of "sacrifice" are never willing to apply it to themselves? When I see the statists "sacrificing" their pet taxpayer-funded programs and projects; making massive reductions in government spending; cutting back on wars; and firing tens of thousands of bureaucratic slugs - as private firms must do - then, perhaps, we can believe in some semblance of sincerity on their parts. They might begin by sacrificing the Federal Reserve for the common good!!" ~ Butler Shaffer
"So where do we go from here? Well, here's my post-Inaugural advice. Build up some cash reserves. Got that? Hold Cash! Cash in the mattress. Cash in the bank. Certificates of deposit. Don't try to get too fancy. Just save some cash where you can get hold of it in case you need it pronto." ~ Byron W. King
"We need to wake up and recognize the importance of sound money. We need to reintroduce the work ethic. We must once again cherish savings over consumption. We must recognize that an overextended foreign policy has been the downfall of all great nations.Above all else, we need to simply believe once again in the free society that made America great." ~ Ron Paul
"When the government seeks to circumvent the market with noble goals financed with other people's money, the result is always a trail of tears." ~ Wilt Alston
"I predict that there will be nights when Obama will wish he were still in Springfield." ~ Spengler
"Keynesian theory sounds good, and it would be nice if it made sense, but it has a rather glaring logical fallacy. It overlooks the fact that, in the real world, government can't inject money into the economy without first taking money out of the economy." ~ Daniel J. Mitchell
"Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen." ~ Ayn Rand
"The best stimulus might be to trim — or temporarily eliminate — the payroll tax. That would put money in the hands of the people who need it — and know best how to spend it. But that would be "too ideological" because it rejects the assumption that government knows best, and it would reward taxpayers, not politicians." ~ Jonah Goldberg
"When America's economy was young and competitive it survived slumps and crashes without medical intervention. Now, every passing cold requires feeding tubes. And this latest bout of influenza has the doctors in a panic. They are casting aside warnings and giving the patient masses doses of the old quack treatments. They'll increase the dosage - until they run out of supplies - and then switch to those new, experimental medicines that have recently been used in field trials by Dr. Gono in Zimbabwe. Since they cannot leave well enough alone - the public won't stand for it - they will keep giving bigger and bigger doses, of more and more dangerous medicines, until the patient dies." ~ Bill Bonner
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work... I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started -- and an enormous debt to boot." ~ Henry Morgenthau (FDR's Treasury Secretary)
"Really, he [George W. Bush] is the most damaging president to this country that we have seen. He'll go down in history. ... It's a history of disasters but they're all paid for by others. He didn't pay for them; the country's paid for them. They're a history of lies; they're a history of lack of respect for the Constitution, lack of respect for the separation of powers. I mean, this is a one-man destruction derby." ~ George Miller
"The time is nearing when a cluster of demands will be placed on government that it is entirely incapable of meeting." ~ Michael S. Rozeff
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant." ~ John Stuart Mill
"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the long effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups." ~ Henry Hazlitt
"You want the impossible? You got it. Politicians don't get elected by saying "No" to voters." ~ Thomas Sowell
"Now, the typical household needs a job in order to eat. No, they need two jobs. They don't have gardens. They don't know how to can food…or how to dress a pig. They have bills to pay - not just food, but mortgages, insurance, student loans, health care, gasoline, car payments. Today, usually, both husband and wife work…and they've increased their expenses to the point where if they lose either job they're soon going to run out of money." ~ Bill Bonner
"You can wonder what God or Darwin had in mind. Whatever goes on at corporate, it is well above our pay grade." ~ Fred Reed
"They say we live and learn. Often what we learn is what damn fools we have been." ~ Thomas Sowell
"America is like a formerly grand billionaire, living on a palatial estate that could be foreclosed any day now, blithely carrying on in the same old extravagant way in order to keep up appearances." ~ Justin Raimondo
"Tragically, it is in the nature of government, when its failures are exposed, to claim that if only it had more power it could have performed its duties in the manner it had promised." ~ Briggs Armstrong
"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." ~ George W. Bush
"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!" ~ Henry David Thoreau
"With a budget of over $600 billion and more than 62,000 workers, the SSA is one of the largest pyramid-Ponzi schemes in existence." ~ Tim Swanson
"Don't take on a dime's worth of unnecessary debt...pay off existing debt as fast as you can...learn to live within your means, even if it means eating at home more and cutting costly vacations...and then relax. The world isn't ending. Only adjusting to reality." ~ Potiphar Gride
"It's seems unlikely, but maybe someday they'll figure out what has been done to them, and by whom. When that happens, if it ever does, you might not want to be near any Federal Reserve buildings." ~ Larken Rose
"Politicians never accuse you of "greed" for wanting other people's money – only for wanting to keep your own money." ~ Joseph Sobran
"What is left of liberty in America faces an extremely dangerous threat. It is all the more serious because it is not widely recognized as a threat." ~ Michael S. Rozeff
"Once a country in which each man could by and large make the decisions for his own life, we have become a land where the state holds and exercises life-and-death power over every person, group, and institution. The great Moloch government, once confined and cabined, has burst its feeble bonds to dominate us all." ~ Murray N. Rothbard
"Once the problem or crisis is visible, however, it becomes very necessary for politicians to appear to be in charge and to be doing "something" useful to hopefully "fix" the problem. That is the stage we are at currently. I like to call it the phoney fix phase. It is phoney because much of the activity and money spent is primarily a public relations exercise." ~ Arnold Bock
"To be free, the slave must first refuse the master's gruel." ~ Vin Suprynowicz
"Has it occurred to anyone that the government is now creating dollars in increments of hundreds of billions at a time? It leaves me speechless.
I don't think I need to tell you that there can be nothing good that comes out of this, and the first casualty will be the US Dollar." ~ Enrico Orlandini
"If things are to change, one must realize the extent to which the foundation of tyranny lies in the vast networks of corrupted people with an interest in maintaining tyranny." ~ Étienne de La Boétie
"The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." ~ Margaret Thatcher
"There are limits. A country cannot forever depend on a central bank to keep the economy afloat and the currency functionable through constant acceleration of money supply growth. Eventually the laws of economics will overrule the politicians, the bureaucrats and the central bankers." ~ Ron Paul
"Franklin Roosevelt began removing the dollar from its moorings in 1933. Richard Nixon finished the job in 1971. From a monetary unit based on something of intrinsic value we're now doing business with "money" backed by nothing of value. We're about to be punished for allowing it to happen. " ~ John Wrisley
"Desperate times can call for desperate measures, so maybe you will try to find out from some economist what is going on. You may not get any much better explanation than "There is no free lunch" — which is one of many reasons why economists are not popular.
But there really is no free lunch, except in the world of political rhetoric, a world that so many want to be in, where they can play Santa Claus without even the cost of buying a costume." ~ Thomas Sowell
"Helping one's fellow man in need, by reaching into one's own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another's pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation." ~ Walter E. Williams
"But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security." ~ Ron Paul
"While central bankers furiously try to reinflate, cheered on by the mainstream financial media, monetary authorities should deflate the money supply, pulling in their horns as consumers are doing. Deflation is a "great liberating force," writes [Jörg Guido] Hülsmann, "because it destroys the economic basis of the social engineers, spin doctors, and brain washers."" ~ Douglas French
"The seepage of government into everywhere is, we are assured, to be temporary and nonpolitical. Well." ~ George Will
"It was the science of economics that first discovered the radical incapacity of the state to make any improvements in the social order. It turns science on its head to invoke economics as a reason for the government to loot and pillage in the name of "stimulating investment." Stimulation here, there, and everywhere amounts to a diminution of freedom, security of property, and prosperity." ~ Lew Rockwell
"If we must have government, it should at least be constitutional. We get what we deserve when we support candidates who hold it in contempt." ~ Paul Hein
"[T]he best thing about John Maynard Keynes is that he is dead. For no other branch of economics sprouts quite as much voodoo logic as the Keynesians manage in their short, pointless lives (or worse, long, pointless lives). " ~ Chan Akya
"The outlook is dark, but it is not entirely without hope. Here and there one can detect a break in the clouds. More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves. Increased handouts to selected groups mean merely increased taxes, or increased deficits and increased inflation." ~ Henry Hazlitt - 1976
"[E]verything going on in Washington today is a recipe for another Great Depression." ~ Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities." ~ Michael Cloud
"It is impossible to mobilize government power on behalf of wealth redistribution without commissioning widespread and wholesale violation of individual rights – beginning, obviously, with the fundamental right to own and dispose of one's wealth and property." ~ William Norman Grigg
"By refusing to allow market forces to rein in excess spending, liquidate bad investments, replenish depleted savings, fund capital investment and help workers transition from the service sector to the manufacturing sector, government is resisting the cure while exacerbating the disease. " ~ Peter Schiff
""E Pluribus Unum" is no longer our national motto. These three words are: "Do For Me." As in: What will the government do for me?" ~ Michelle Malkin
"In the clamor for more regulation over our financial institutions, has anybody bothered to ask whether people in government know what they're doing?" ~ Walter Williams
"It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America." ~ President-elect Barack Obama
"If you have fundamental disagreements with American politics, reject the whole system. So long as most Americans are swindled by the promises of mass democracy and distracted by its insanities, we cannot be free." ~ Anthony Gregory
"If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent people and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem. You voted them in. You have no right to complain." ~ George Carlin
"Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true." ~ Anonymous
"To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. . .I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." ~ Thomas Jefferson
"It is difficult to find many proponents of democracy in the history of political theory. Almost all major thinkers had nothing but contempt for democracy. Even the Founding Fathers of the U.S. , nowadays considered the model of democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but mob-rule." ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe
"It is clear that the Framers wrote a Constitution as a result of which contracts would be enforced, risk would be real, choices would be free and have consequences, and private property would be sacrosanct.
The $700 billion bailout of large banks that Congress recently enacted runs afoul of virtually all these constitutional principles." ~ Andrew P. Napolitano
"Now my advice for those who die, (Taxman!)
Declare the pennies on your eyes, (Taxman!)
'Cos I'm the Taxman,
Yeah, I'm the Taxman.
And you're working for no-one but me,
(Taxman)." ~ George Harrison - Taxman
"We have been lulled into the nanny state by the soothing promises of corrupt politicians." ~ Bumpy Road
"(T)oday's crisis has also led to the massive federal bailout of the financial industry, with Washington picking who wins and who loses. We're told that this arrangement is only temporary. But partnerships involving almost a trillion dollars that grant even greater leverage to Washington have a way of becoming quite terribly permanent." ~ John Kass
"Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. One could readily say the same thing about participating in presidential elections." ~ Paul Armentano
"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome." ~ Robert A. Heinlein
"We should be putting the culprits in jail. Instead, we're going to elect them to Congress - and one of them to the White House. Others will be rewarded with fancy titles and plush offices in Washington and New York." ~ Chip Wood
"Be they Fascist Republicans or Marxist Democrats, one common thread runs through their thinking: there is no right or wrong. There's only a desire to impose their will on the rest of us." ~ Scott McPherson
" Charity at the point of a gun is not done freely and no one feels good about it. Those that are taken from are furious and those that receive are not grateful; instead, they feel entitled and ask for more." ~ Sandra Hamilton
"Socialism is a powerful attraction. It requires the producing classes to share their property with the non-producing classes, which is a very attractive idea for non-producers." ~ John Wrisley
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~ C.S. Lewis
"Has this country gone mad? We have presidential candidates talking about how much they can steal and how much of the loot they will share with us if we vote for them." ~Brian Wilson
"The money circle is closed. This is the ultimate in recycling. The Fed prints it and lends it to the Treasury who lends it to the banks who lend it to Americans who give it up to the Treasury." ~ Michael Rozeff
"The whole lot, every last nickel, has either been doled out in the gutter of political corruption, or flushed down Wall Street's slimy drain; all abetted by a malign, mumbo-jumbo nonsense called Keynesian economics. Nowhere is there reference to prior criminality and stupidity on such a grand scale. There is no historical precedent." ~ Sam Mathid
"A lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns." ~ Mario Puzo, The Godfather
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out." ~ President Andrew Jackson 1832
"An incoming tide of credit had made the lives of the masses buoyant for several years, but - like all tides - the flood could only rise so far before the ebb began. We're riding that ebb tide right now and government officials are trying desperately to make it stop and flood again. Nature is having none of it." ~ JW
"When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken by taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists." ~ Henry Hazlitt
"All the world's major countries are conferring, colluding, and conspiring. They're all going to do the same thing. They're all going to take over their banking systems, support their financial industries, bail out important businesses and rescue their citizens from their own mistakes. Where will they get the money for all this? Will they borrow it from each other? Don't be silly; they will print it." ~ Bill Bonner
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." ~ Norman Thomas
"With both McCain and Obama voting for the bailout bill, there is indeed virtually no difference between the GOP and Democratic presidential standard bearers. They are both subservient to the financial elites who influence the federal government's policy agenda." ~ Murray Sabrin
"Republicans. Democrats. They're all in it together, an idea those partisans and their media champions find difficult to accept, even though it seems to me undeniable." ~ Ron Smith
"So a million dollar loss in a private firm will signal the need to save money, cut employees, make better products, or cease to exist. In a bureaucracy, that same loss will result in a million dollar increase in budget for the next year with accompanying increases in staff, salaries and political power. If that same bureaucracy fails to spend/waste all of the annual budget, then that budget is more likely to be cut. Hence, failure is rewarded and success is punished." ~ Don Rasmussen
"It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones." ~ Calvin Coolidge
"Throwing more credit at a market with excess credit only worsens the inevitable economic downturn." ~ Ivan Eland
"Beware of trying to do good with other people's money." ~ Russell Roberts
"Government can't assure competition. Competition happens when government stays out of the way." ~ John Stossel
"Rulers are masters of deception." ~ Michael S. Rozeff
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion." ~ Oscar Wilde
"We have evolved into that pathetic creature, the neutered 21st Century Bourgeois – perfectly passive prey for them." ~ Marcel Votlucka
"If the government can inflate whenever it wants to spend, it can take away from the people without their agreement everything, their purchasing power, their savings, and so on. From this point of view there disappears even the fundamental principle which everybody sees as the difference between a Communist government and a government based on the idea of individual freedom, the preservation of free markets and the ability of the people to control the government." ~ Ludwig von Mises
"The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history." ~ Ron Paul
"There is nothing more dangerous than when those responsible for a nation's troubles are believed to be its savior." ~ Darryl Robert Schoon
"Everything that has been done for the last six months has been done to cope with what previous actions were supposed to prevent. A perhaps pertinent axiom: There is no education in the second kick of a mule." ~ George Will
"The solution to the problem is to end government meddling in the market. Government intervention leads to distortions in the market, and government reacts to each distortion by enacting new laws and regulations, which create their own distortions, and so on ad infinitum." ~ Ron Paul
"To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. . .I place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." ~ President Thomas Jefferson
"What the Greatest Generation handed down to us -- the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved -- the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away." ~ Pat Buchanan
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." ~ Herbert Spencer
"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves." ~ Thomas Sowell
"I discovered that America is about to have an election. Why? Every time they do that, no good comes of it. You'd think they'd learn." ~ Fred Reed
"A bond of political unity joins together Republicans and Democrats. This bond is based on moral corruption: the politics of plunder. " ~ Gary North
"In our desire to have government become our benefactor and sustainer, we have allowed it to become our taskmaster and overlord. As a result, we have become little more than well-fed, well-entertained slaves to the state. Freedom, as envisioned by our forefathers, is gone." ~ Chuck Baldwin
"We cannot expect withdrawal of troops from Iraq or the Middle East with either of the two major candidates. Expect continued involvement in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Georgia. Neither hints of a non-interventionist foreign policy. Do not expect to hear the rejection of the policy of supporting the American world empire. There will be no emphasis in protecting privacy and civil liberties and the constant surveillance of the American people. Do not expect any serious attempt to curtail the rapidly expanding national debt. And certainly, there will be no hint of addressing the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationship with big banks and international corporations and the politicians." ~ Ron Paul
"The government is in the business of stacking one monumental fraud on top of another…trying to give everyone the idea that he can live at someone else's expense. Sooner or later, the whole mountain of flimflam falls down." ~ Bill Bonner
"These supposedly brilliant people who "run" government entities lie, steal, and promise the distribution of wealth in order to secure election victory so that they can control and dictate how the plundering will take place, who will be plundered, and who will receive the spoils." ~ Karen De Coster
"Freedom isn't freedom without the right to pursue what you value -- money or knowledge, pleasure or sacrifice, God or atheism, community or misanthropic solitude -- rather than what others think you should value. It includes the right to go to hell, and the right to tell others to do the same." ~ Steve Chapman
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~ Thomas Jefferson
"The difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick." ~ Sarah Palin
"There is not a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties when it comes to peace, liberty, property, free markets, sound money, and the size and scope of government. The Republican Party is not the lesser of two evils. It is, like the Democratic Party, stupid and evil. " ~ Laurence M. Vance
"Dig deep into Sarah Palin, get all you can, talk to everybody, get every vote, every quote, tell us of her career and life, she may be the next vice president. But don't play games. And leave her kid alone, bitch." ~ Peggy Noonan
"Why don't you get out… breathe the clean air of freedom, and then take your stand, proudly and squarely, not with the despotism of the power elite and the government of the United States, but with the rising movement in opposition to that government? Then you will be libertarians indeed, in act as well as in theory. What hangover, what remnant of devotion to the monster State, is holding you back? " ~ Murray Rothbard
"After all that antiwar rhetoric, including words from Sen. Obama, it turns out that the Democratic party is not at all antiwar – or perhaps they are just spineless." ~ Philip Martin, Former US Marine and Iraq War Veteran
"We seem to be following the familiar path of history where republics slide into empire and eventually a fascist dictatorship. Too bad that freedom, like a good wife, is most appreciated in its absence." ~ Charley Reese
"We are now, for the most part, a nation of subsidized dependents crying to have our bills paid by someone else. Even if we get into a financial mess of our own making we don't want to pay the penalty. We want a bailout." ~ Potiphar Gride (aka John Wrisley)
"The outcome of the 2008 election will confirm the truth of the proposition that it really doesn't matter for whom you vote. Regardless of whether Obama or McCain prevails, the government will be re-elected, and will continue to increase its powers over you." ~ Butler Shaffer
"The Pentagon is using baseball bats to fight mosquitoes. The absurdity of using a B1 intercontinental bomber for close air support is manifest. But you've got the plane, the pilots don't want to miss the war, and so you find something for them to bomb." ~ Fred Reed
"Each and every man's "rights" being consistent and harmonious with each and every other man's "rights"; and all men's rights being immutably fixed, and easily ascertained, by a science that is open to be learned and known by all; a government that does nothing but "equal and exact justice to all men" --- that simply gives to every man his own, and nothing more to any --- has no cause and no occasion for any "political parties." What are these "political parties" but standing armies of robbers, each trying to rob the other, and to prevent being itself robbed by the other?" ~ Lysander Spooner
"Too many people in too many positions of power - including the lumpen voter himself - have too many reasons to want the system to continue unchanged. These people are getting something for nothing - and hoping to put the costs onto the next generation." ~ Bill Bonner
"By a long lure of planned grass a society of bisons may be decoyed to captivity in the Valley of Security.
In moments of uneasiness its bulls may be soothed by the voices of the herders saying: "You are free at any time to go back to the plains. Remember the grass there? It was poor and many of you were hungry."
There is no going back, because, first, these gentle herders are rough with the few who try to start a stampede, and secondly, tame grass is sweet poison. From the eating of it the way of life on the plains is soon forgotten." ~ Garet Garrett
"Old grievances are a heavy burden. Healing is a long process that requires patience and dialogue, with non-use of force an indispensable precondition." ~ Mikhail Gorbachev
"He that lives upon hope will die fasting." ~ Benjamin Franklin
"With the current crisis in American foreign policy, unless we do change our ways, the likelihood that our children, our grandchildren, the next generation is going to enjoy the opportunities that we've had is very slight because we're squandering our power. We are squandering our wealth." ~ Colonel Andrew Bacevich (Army - Ret.)
"We live in an economy that is entirely founded on debt, and we now face a national debt is growing so rapidly that there is going to be a default." ~ Gary North
"Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them." ~ Patrick J. Buchanan
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." ~ Thomas Jefferson
"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." ~ H.L. Mencken
"The only major difference between the government and the mafia is that the government calls its bill collector the "IRS" and the mafia calls its bill collector "Big Louie."" ~ Erick Erickson
"The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced." ~ Frank Zappa
"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists." ~ Ernest Hemingway
"It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth in the economy. " ~ Ron Paul
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." ~ Charles de Gaulle
"Last week, the low-IQ socialist scumbags in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. among other legislative horrors raised the debt limit of the U.S.A. by another $800 billion, taking the limit to a staggering $10.6 trillion, so that they could continue to act like the mental defective lowlife collectivist scumbags that they truly, truly are, which is destroying our money and our country, which is why I hate them, and which explains why I intend to vote against every incumbent as often as I can, and urge everyone else to do so, too, (except for the people in Texas who elect Ron Paul), unless I can successfully get the American people stirred up into an unruly mob so that I can take over the country and give myself a nice, big salary, a generous retirement package, and the awesome, unlimited powers of an emperor!" ~ Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru
"Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery." ~ Benjamin Disraeli
"You see, but you do not observe" ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)
"What's *just* has been debated for centuries but let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn *belongs* to you – and why?" ~ Walter Williams
"As long as Americans continue to accept the failed choices of the two major parties, our country is going to be served up nominees representing the lowest common denominator of acceptability. That's what the notion of voting for the lesser of two evils every four years gives us – continually declining standards of leadership." ~ Joseph Farah
"Government invariably causes problems and does harm to some at the expense of others, no matter where it treads, because it is an evil mix of power and politics." ~ Bill Steigerwald
"A nation that expects the government to prevent churches from burning, to control the price of bread or gasoline, to secure every job, and to find some villain for every dramatic accident risks an even larger loss of life and liberty." ~ William A. Niskanen
"Both presidential candidates claim to favor change. Yet neither has told us what he will do to end Washington's addiction to deficit spending. " ~ William Shughart
"If all U.S. troops were brought home from Europe and Korea, 10,000 rice bowls would be broken. They are the rice bowls of politicians, diplomats, generals, journalists and think tanks who would all have to find another line of work." ~ Pat Buchanan
"The only way to reliably become wealthier is the old fashioned way – you have to spend less than you earn. Try it: spend less than you earn. Then, you'll have more money. It's like magic...or something..." ~ Bill Bonner
"Nothing succeeds to survive like a failed government agency and its unconstitutional mission. Of course if a government program were ever successful it would issue it's own death sentence—no more budget, no more pensions, permanent layoffs, shuttered buildings, a public auction of all its assets. Just the thought gives me a warm feeling inside as a taxpayer. Well…back to reality." ~ The New Liberty
"We must get the Republicans totally out of power, or we will have no country left for the Democrats to mess up." ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"Damn, but I despise politicians." ~ Charley Reese
"Some argue that giving dictatorial powers to the President, just as we have allowed him to run the American empire, is what we should do. That's the great danger, and in this post-911 atmosphere, too many Americans are seeking safety over freedom." ~ Ron Paul
"Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." ~ P.J. O'Rourke
"Alas, no successful civilization in history -- Greece, Rome, England, France, the list goes on -- ever found prosperity through its bureaucrats and lawyers." ~ Victor Davis Hanson
"Foreign policy need do only one thing: protect America so as to allow the domestic expansion of liberty, freedom, and equality of conditions." ~ Michael Scheuer
"There is no stopping history. There's no backing up. Once the wings begin to fall off, the plane is going to crash; there's not much you can do about it." ~ Bill Bonner
"Without the Constitution we have no protection. We simply stand naked before unbridled government power." ~ Paul Craig Roberts
"Ignore the happy-face assessments of the geopolitical strategists. Ignore the happy-face assessment of the Secretary of the Treasury, Henry "Goldman Sachs" Paulson. These assessments are being issued to keep panic from spreading." ~ Gary North
"Electing even a few Libertarians to a governing board, is akin to having a designated driver in a roomful of drunks." ~ Doug Klippel
"The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice." ~ Linda Bowles
"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." ~ Douglas Casey
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." ~ Justice Learned Hand
"Something that's free isn't worth much." ~ Theodore J. Forstmann
"The war on "terror" will never be over, it will just change locations. Like the war on drugs, prostitution, pornography, and the many others that will follow, it is a war on humanity. These wars will never be won; the State will just keep creating new boogiemen to frighten us with. The sheep will anxiously anticipate the next fall guy the State offers up as a sacrifice for the war on whatever happens to be next. Be careful, the next pawn could be me or you." ~ Mike Wasdin
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." ~ The Declaration of Independence
"I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan but our own fiscal irresponsibility." ~ David Walker - US Comptroller General
"Bigger budgets, more drugs. More arrests, more deaths. More seizures, more potency. More agents, more users. For their thirty-fifth anniversary, perhaps they should change their name to the Drug Encouragement Administration." ~ "Radical" Russ Belville
"Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods." ~ H.L. Mencken
"There is no "slippery slope" toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders." ~ Alan K. Simpson
"For some years now, I've worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England – arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw." ~ Charley Reese
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." ~ Patrick Henry
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ~ The Declaration of Independence
"We must realize that our privacy and our liberty will always be threatened as long as we instruct our government to manage a welfare state and to operate foreign policy as if we are the world's policemen." ~ Ron Paul
"We have met the enemy and he is us." ~ Pogo
"Most economists believe that a gun, when held by a salaried government official and pointed at a citizen to extract his wealth, can sometimes produce economic growth, whereas a gun held by a thief and pointed at a citizen to extract his wealth always produces economic loss. The first produces something for nothing, whereas the second produces nothing for something. What is the difference? This: the person holding the gun." ~ Gary North
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace." ~ George W. Bush
"War is Peace" ~ George Orwell
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." ~ John Adams
"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life. " ~ Henry David Thoreau
"You know, I know, everybody watching this show knows that four years from today, whichever of them is elected, government will be bigger, more expensive, more obtrusive, and more oppressive. If you vote Republican or Democrat, you are giving up. You're saying 'I'm never going to be free. America will never be a free country again. I will never get smaller government. So I'm just going to vote for the one I think will take me to hell at the slowest-possible rate." ~ Harry Browne (2000)
"We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them." ~ William L. Comer
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office." ~ H. L. Mencken
"No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
"America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad. If we want to be worthy of their legacy, we must resist the rush toward ever-increasing state control of our society. Otherwise, our own government will become a greater threat to our freedoms than any foreign terrorist." ~ Ron Paul
"We Americans have no commission from God to police the world." ~ Benjamin Harrison
"Our military, the one we say fights for freedom and peace around the world, is a grand Gulliver, bound and disabled and continually amazed by what it encounters on the Island of Lilliput." ~ Karen Kwiatkowski
"(C)itizens engaged in self-government need to know what their government is doing and why to guide their political judgments and loyalties." ~ Bruce Fein
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were once our countrymen." ~ Samuel Adams
"If you were a robber or a rapist, who would you rather have as a victim? Someone who is armed, or someone who is defenseless? Even a stupid criminal knows the answer to that question." ~ Charley Reese
"Our current national debt is quickly approaching $10 trillion and the total amount of our future unfunded liabilities is approaching 60 trillion current dollars. These liabilities are literally overwhelming and continue to grow. We could simple default and ruin the future credit of the government. Alternatively, we could cut the size of government and pay off the debt, but that almost seems laughable in the current political climate. The most likely route is more inflation. " ~ Mark Thornton
"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting." ~ Ronald Reagan
"That's what a Congressman or a Senator is for -- to see that too much money don't accumulate in the national Treasury." ~ Will Rogers
"When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul never complains." ~ Greg Perry
"I don't want my children fed or clothed by the state, but if I had to choose, I would prefer that to their being educated by the state." ~ Max Victor Belz
"Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury and bankrupt the nation." ~ Karl Marx
"These days, everyone would do well to add a pinch of paranoia to his otherwise sunny disposition and trusting nature." ~ Charley Reese
"The entire world economy rests on the consumer; if he ever stops spending money he doesn't have on things he doesn't need -- we're done for." ~ Bill Bonner
". . . whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a 'government' (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against him, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future." ~ Lysander Spooner
"It is wise to take the future into account in decisions that one makes today." ~ Walter Williams
"Freedom can best be exported from the United States by our observance of our own Constitution, setting a good example of how a true republic functions for other nations to emulate." ~ Warren Mass
"More freedom can never be gained by giving up freedom, no matter the rationale." ~ Ron Paul
"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. " ~ George Orwell
"[W]hat painter has drawn Liberty…with an overflowing treasury in her lap and scattering money and exclusive privileges with her hands?" ~ John Taylor
"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody." ~ Herbert B. Swope
"Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody." ~ Agatha Christie
"Good morning, Mr. Greenspan. I understand that you did not take my friendly advice last fall. I thought maybe you should look for other employment, but I see you have kept your job." ~ Ron Paul
"The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract." ~ Robert A. Heinlein
"A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected." ~ Carl Sandburg
"Make a list of those politicians who do the most to prevent our drilling for our own oil. Then make a list of those politicians who express the most outrage about the high price of gasoline. Don't be surprised if you see the same names on both lists." ~ Thomas Sowell
"For five years, the Americans have not done anything for the Iraqis. What do they think they can do for us in one more year?
am so sick and tired of all this. We just want the Americans to go, and we will try to fix things ourselves." ~ Hussein Jabar
"I'm not one who believes that you simply get to parity by dumping more money into a Soviet-style delivery system." ~ Mark Sanford
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it's free." ~ P.J. O'Rourke
"In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." ~ Benjamin Franklin
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." ~ Blaise Pascal
"If you're not confused, you're not paying attention." ~ Tom Peters
"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." ~ Edward R. Murrow
"A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation." ~ Thomas Jefferson
"Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive." ~ John F. Kennedy
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." ~ Groucho Marx
"When all think alike, no one thinks very much." ~ Walter Lippman
"Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too." ~ Lichty and Wagner
"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." ~ George Orwell
"Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen." ~ Thomas Sowell