Speaking of malign influences: since when does an American military officer make foreign policy pronouncements, as if he were the president? It’s an indication of the advances militarism has made in what used to be a republic that no one has so much as blinked at the brazenness of such blatant Caesarism.

     - Is War With Iran Imminent?- by Justin Raimondo

This is what prompted Justin’s quote:

“The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for ‘potential military courses of action’ as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s ‘increasingly lethal and malign influence’ in Iraq. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be ‘extremely stressing’ but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.”

Now Bush is using the military brass as cheerleaders for a public relations campaign to further destructive foreign aggression.

Government, National, Quote of the Day, World | No Comments »

A genuinely free market favors no one except those who best can produce the goods desired by consumers, and no participant in the market process can gain an elevated status in society that is exempt from the necessity to continue to serve the interests of consumers in the future.

— Gene Callahan, “Is Fair Trade a Fair Deal?” [March 2008]

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Jefferson should be considered one of the greatest and most accurate prophets throughout history.

I sincerely wish… we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. Bad men will sometimes get in and with such an immense patronage may make great progress in corrupting the public mind and principles. This is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied.

— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Moses Robinson [1801]

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It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.

— Robert Houghwout Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg

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In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human All-too-Human [1878]

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A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

— James Madison, Federalist No. 10 [November 22, 1787]

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We are in our present position because government has burdened us with taxes, spending, debt, regulations, subsidies, guarantees (to lenders, for example), trade restrictions, fiat money, and other impositions. Between the endless domestic schemes and war, we are being crushed by the weight of the state. We don’t need a stimulus. We need freedom.

— Sheldon Richman, “An Unstimulating Idea” [January 25, 2008]

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The way to make adjustment to economic change as swift and painless as possible is to maximize workers’ options, self-employment included. And the way for the government to do that is to stop interfering with market activities.

— Sheldon Richman, “Paul Krugman, Doctor of (Bad) Economics” [January 4, 2008]

 

People, this is common sense, it is easy and it will give you real opportunities to improve your life!  Why are people so resistant?  Why do people continuously look toward the government, and its failing programs, for an answer?

If someone wants to cut hair to earn a living, why should they need all kinds of licensing from the government?  The worst thing you would end up with is a bad haircut.  Are people that stupid that they would continue patronizing someone who doesn’t know what they are doing?

The answer is out there and he is running for President as a Republican. 

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There is but one defensible social ideal, and that is a world in which every individual is free to work out the inner impulses of the Spirit, without aggression on his part or interference on the part of others. A State which accomplished this simple, primal duty, the protection of all its citizens, would accomplish something greater than has yet been historically recorded, and something which no State, preoccupied with illegitimate and paternalistic activities, is ever likely to accomplish.

— Hanford Henderson

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Persons with no desire for self-control, anxious for the security of lives planned and controlled for them by others, may view with patient resignation the prevailing trend aways from freedom in the United States and in most other lands. Things are going their way. But anyone who views with alarm the growing interventionism will want to plan his escape soon. By tomorrow, or next month, or next year, he might have lost the will — and the capacity — to be free. The escape route, the path to freedom, lies in self-help, self-control, self-responsibility, self-reliance, self-improvement. And slow starters are unlikely to make it.

— Donald W. Shorack

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“Do you ever pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?” “No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country.”

— Edward Everett Hale, New England Indian Summer [1940]

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Remember that the British government permitted its soldiers to execute self-written search warrants. They called them “writs of assistance,” and they were one of the last straws that caused American colonist to rebel. It’s bitterly ironic that 230 years later a popularly elected government would authorize its own agents to do the same thing that when a monarchy did it, we fought a war of rebellion in reaction—which we won!

— Andrew P. Napolitano, “Americans: Sheep to the
Constitutional Slaughter?” [November 15, 2007]

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Real freedom is lack of coercion — and this lack of coercion brings prosperity. Together, “safety” is endowed and expanded. The road to freedom is the simple minute-by-minute pursuit of life, liberty and happiness by millions of people — in America, in the Middle East and elsewhere — unbothered, undirected, uncontrolled, unmanaged, unconstrained and unterrorized by central forces of government.

Karen Kwiatkowski, “What the Neocons Need” [November 2, 2007]

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Fear is the foundation of most governments.

John Adams, Thoughts on Government [1776]

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[Some people] have a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. I believe that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are equal, than amongst any other; and I think that, if such a government were once established amongst such a people, it would not only oppress men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism, therefore, appears to me peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic times.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America [1835]

That quote fits virtually every presidential candidate, except Ron Paul.

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