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Roberts Higgs (2008) - "The powers that be like to pretend that they have solved all the problems that brought down previous empires, but we may rest assured that they have not actually done so. As the U.S. government taxes, spends, borrows, regulates, mismanages, and wastes resources on a scale never before witnessed in the history of mankind, it is digging its own grave."
Edwin Vieira Jr (in 2008) - "Although the Federal Reserve System is fatally flawed, the wealth and power of elitists in high finance, big business, and the political class depend on maintaining it -- or replacing it in a timely fashion with something of equal serviceability for their ends."
Michael S. Rozeff (in 2008) - "The government has no bank account. It has no money of its own. The government is a gang with a collection agency and enforcers. It cannot and does not provide a real safety net on its own. It cannot and does not save those [banks] that are too big to fail."
Darryl Schoon (in 2008) - "My study of the causes of the Great Depression have led me to believe that America has now gone too far to go back, that Americans because of their foolishness, the duplicity of their leaders, or a combination thereof are today incapable or unwilling to understand what is now about to occur. The lack of understanding, however, will not prevent its occurrence."
Edwin Vieira Jr (in 2008) - "Silver and gold are not merely valuable commodities, investments, and media of exchange. More importantly, they are key 'checks and balances' in America's legal and political institutions."
Michael S. Rozeff (in 2008) - "Bank regulation is actually in the interests of the banks, not the public. The banks are running an operation in which they print fiat money and lend it out. Their goal is to run that system as long as possible so as to make as much profit as possible for themselves. The goal of regulation is the survival of this arrangement and the sustenance of the banks’ ability to print fiat money and lend it out at interest indefinitely."
Sean Corrigan (in 2008) - "If the basic tenets of free-market "capitalism" include the full recognition of property rights, the sanctity of voluntary contract, and the relegation of government to a minimalist role as arbiter – and, reluctantly, as enforcer – of last resort, it can hardly be argued that we have ever actually lived under such a regime. Indeed, the roots of today’s woes – as of those suffered innumerable times in the past – lie not in whether this or that regulation was sufficiently well-crafted or implemented, but rather go deeper into the issue of whether banking as currently instituted is – in any way, shape, or form – an activity consonant with such principles."
Gary North (in 2008) - " All of the posturing by politicians about the exploited borrowers who lost their homes – liars – and the need for new laws to be passed by Congress to prevent unscrupulous mortgage brokers – liars – from ever exploiting the poor again, and also preventing them from endangering the solvency of the nation's financial institutions – liars – is nothing but election-year politicking by the biggest liars of all: politicians."
Catherine Austin Fitts (in 2008) - "The reason why it is difficult for sophisticated financial people to discern that a slow burn [boiling frogs slowly] is taking place is because we have not yet collectively mastered the operational detail of how it is implemented. One of the most important aspects of the Paulson Plan to re-engineer US financial regulation is the assertion of complete control of payment systems by the Federal Reserve and gaining access to the data of essentially any financial institution. Combined with 1) the ability to print money and 2) digital communication payment and surveillance technology (satellite), this will consolidate greater power into fewer hands than at any time in recorded history."
Fred Sheehan (in 2008) - "Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has proposed the Federal Reserve be given broad powers to regulate the financial industry. He could not have nominated a more incompetent body. The Coast Guard would do a better job."
Ron Paul (in 2002) - "To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political parties. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names — Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism."
Michael S. Rozeff (in 2008) - "Central banking must be destroyed before it totally destroys us."
Catherine Austin Fitts (in 2008) - "The future is something to be created, rather than feared. Allocating our time, networks, and resources to deal with a variety of high-risk scenarios frees us to become proactive and to build positive futures instead of negative ones. I like to understand what these scenarios mean in terms of managing risk and to know how we can succeed within all possible futures."
Butler Shaffer (in 2008) - "If you were to ask others to identify the purposes for which governments were created, you would likely get the response: 'to protect our lives, liberty, and property from both domestic and foreign threats.' This is an article of faith into which most of us are indoctrinated since childhood, and to suggest any other explanation is looked upon as a blasphemous social proposition. 'But what,' I ask, 'are among the first things governments do when they get established? Do they not insist upon the power to take your liberty (by regulating what you can/cannot do), and your property (through taxation, eminent domain, and regulations), and your life (by conscripting you into their service, and killing you should you continue to resist their demands)?'"
Butler Shaffer (in 2008) - "Political systems thrive on [contradictions] them. If the police system fails to curb crime, or the government schools continue to crank out ill-educated children, most of us are disposed to giving such agencies additional monies. The motivations for state officials become quite clear: 'the more we fail, the more resources we are given.'"
Ron Paul (in 2002) - "Preserving our system is impossible if the critics are allowed to blame capitalism and sound monetary policy is rejected. More spending, more debt, more easy credit, more distortion of interest rates, more regulations on everything, and more foreign meddling will soon force us into the very uncomfortable position of deciding the fate of our entire political system."
Ron Paul (in 2002) - "We cannot depend on government to restore trust to the markets; only trustworthy people can do that."
John Rubino (in 2008) - "Our leaders lie about unemployment, inflation, growth and the deficit. Because Social Security payments are indexed to inflation, government statisticians suppress reported inflation, and thus their need to increase monthly Social Security checks, by arbitrarily eliminating from their calculations products that are rising too quickly in price. If they were adjusted for the true cost of living, today's Social Security checks would be 70% higher and the Federal deficit would be exploding. (Questions for seniors: Why haven't you burned down the White House? Are you waiting for the Baby Boomers to do it?) "
Kevin Phillips (in 2008) - "Almost four decades have passed since the United States scrapped its last currency ties to precious metals. Since the 1960s, Washington has been forced to gull its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics: the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured. The effect, over the past twenty-five years, has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed."
Eric Sprott (in 2008) - "We are in a systemic financial meltdown. There are probably ten companies that are broke that are still trading, banks and financial institutions....The brokerage companies, the investment banks are the easiest to short. Do I understand what is happening in the business? Yes, there is no business....Government bonds are a joke at the interest they are paying. You can buy gold, or other real things: gold, silver, platinum, palladium, things that hold value."
Michael Gaddy (in 2008) - "When a people choose to worship the idol called the state as their savior, the natural progression will require that eventually they sacrifice themselves or members of their family to insure the growth and survival of this false god."
Michael Gaddy (in 2008) - "I continually wonder at the so-called Christian element in this country, their support of illegal wars, worship of the state, and ignorance of their cherished Ten Commandments; especially the first, second, sixth and tenth. Have they not adopted the state as their god, the flag as their graven image, committed murder in the name of the state and coveted that which belongs to their neighbors (oil and other natural resources)? What have they done with the Golden Rule?"
Justin Raimondo (in 2008) - "It's called covering your ass -- and it's the only job governments everywhere are very good at. "
Bill Bonner (in 2008) - "We can imagine that we live in a free market world. But the world’s central banks have been fixing the price of credit, fudging the numbers on inflation, and printing money all along. Now that we have a crisis on our hands – embellished and exaggerated by central bank planning – the long knives are out for ‘free enterprise.’ "
Antal E. Fekete (in 2008) - "The United States is illustrating once more how a nation, when sufficiently inept and presumptious in the area of monetary economics, pursues the course based on irredeemable credit that ends in distress, tragedy, and despair. "
Antal E. Fekete (in 2008) - "You don’t need a war on home soil to de-industrialize your country. The United States has accomplished that feat bit-by-bit since 1971, the apogee of her industrial power which, not surprisingly, coincided with severing the last link between the dollar and gold. The most astounding part of it was that nothing has been done to arrest the decline during all those years. The warnings of monetary economists have been ignored, even ridiculed. The United States persisted with the Friedmanite program of ‘floating by sinking’. The dollar has been subjected to continuous and conscious debasement ever since 1972 in spite of the obvious damage it was doing to America’s industrial capital. "
Gary North in 2008) - "Bureaucracies move slowly when they move at all. They protect themselves. They use red tape to hide their activities and smother attempts by outsiders to interfere with their operations. They use delay as their main weapon of defense. "
Gary North (in 2008) - "This unelected, tenured, money-creating, privately owned cartel will create a committee to write the rules for other committees to regulate a financial structure that is so complex that no committee can possibly foresee
everything that can go wrong. This will substitute the palsied hand of regulation for the invisible hand of the free market. "
Emma Goldman (1869-1940) - "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. "
Max Raskin (in 2008) - "When the laws of the King come into conflict with the natural law there is no question which one takes precedence."
Ron Paul (in 2008) - "The belief that money created out of thin air can work economic miracles, if only properly “managed,” is pervasive in D.C."
Jim Willie (in 2008) - "My most concise form of advice is: THINK LIKE A THIEF, since your adversaries are often thieves, and worse, they are protected by the USGovt."
Jim Willie (in 2008) - "A powerful trend is in progress, the merger of mafias with state government on a global basis, both East and West, United States and Europe, Russia and China. The United States and Russia are by far the worst offenders. A hidden cost comes from the key Wall Street corrupt agents and key defense contractors within the Fascist Team, who are permitted either gargantuan ill-gotten gains, or free passes on huge losses laced within their balance sheets. Never in modern history has the US state power been so thoroughly interwoven with private mafias, otherwise described as private crime syndicates. Never in modern history has truth been so tarnished. Liberty seems only a word."
G. Edward Griffin (in 2002) - "The Federal Reserve needs to be abolished for seven reasons:
1. The Federal Reserve is incapable of accomplishing its stated objectives.
2. It is a cartel operating against the public interest.
3. It's the supreme instrument of usury.
4. It generates our most unfair tax.
5. It encourages war.
6. It destabilizes the economy.
7. It is an instrument of totalitarianism."
Jim Willie (in 2008) - "Only in America can the thieves and criminals knee deep in colossal fraud be active in administration of remedy when they should be in defense against felony charges, face heavy billion$ fines, restitution orders, and prison sentences."
Karen Kwiatkowski (in 2008) - "We are returning to constitutionalism whether we like it or not. I only hope we don't return the long way through a series of mad dictators and fascist nightmares -- the way to avoid this future is to immediately abandon our empire with honor and for the right reasons."
Lew Rockwell (in 2008) - "People [and politicians] need to look around at what private markets are doing today. Instead of destroying other people's wealth, they are cooperating with all nations of the world, serving the consumer, and finding innovative and better ways to feed, clothe, house, heal, and entertain us. And what has Washington done? Rob us, badger us, and take us to war."
Bob Chapman (in 2008) - "There is no free lunch. M3 is up 15.75% and the Fed is feeding the system $80 billion a month. Has it occurred to anyone that in order to bail out the banks and Wall Street inflation is headed over 20%? Every American is going to pay in inflation to keep these crooks in business. "
Dan Denning (in 2008) - "You cannot measure some of the most important things in life. How much utility does a wheel of cheese have? How badly can a heart be broken? What is the price of a happy marriage? Not all of human behaviour can be reduced to a number or a price. And there are some general axioms worth remembering that seem to always be true in all places at all times. You cannot get rich by spending more than saving. Nations don't become powerful consuming more than they produce. Debt is not wealth. War is not peace. Freedom is not slavery. And ignorance is not strength."
U.S. Supreme Court Marbury v. Madison, (in 1803) - "All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void."
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "What we really have to combat is all statism, and not just the Communist brand. To take up arms against one set of Socialists is not the way to stop socialism – indeed it is bound to increase socialism as all modern wars have done."
G. Edward Griffin (in 2008) - "Would you rather be a Neoconservative or a Progressive? That is a trick question. The trick is in the fact that, although there may be differences between the rhetoric and short-term agendas of these groups, their long-term goals actually are the same. They may differ over how to fight a war in the Middle East but not over the right of the President to wage such a war empowered by the UN instead of Congress. They may differ over what kind of speech should be forbidden ("subversive" speech vs. "hate" speech, for example) but not over the right of the government to forbid it. They may differ over how fast to bankrupt the nation to provide benefits for its citizens but not over the assumption that providing benefits is what governments are supposed to do. They disagree over tactics, timing, and style, but not objectives. They fight for dominance within the New World Order, but they work together to build it. That is because both groups have embraced the underlying ideology of global collectivism."
Lew Rockwell (in 2008) - "It seems that Washington wants us to believe that they have some magic machine that can turn up $150 billion in new assets without anyone having to do anything to make these assets appear. One wonders, then, why we need to wait until a recession to stimulate the economy. Why not magically create hundreds of billions every day, and not just for this country but for the entire world? Why are we holding back? "
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "To attempt to stamp out heresy by force is the method of vindictive children, rather than the method of rational human beings."
G. Edward Griffin (in 2008) - "Collectivists on the so-called Left and Right agree that:
1. Rights are derived from the state;
2. The group is more important than the individual;
3. Coercion is the preferred method to bring about reform;
4. Laws should be applied differently to different classes;
5. Providing benefits (redistributing wealth) is the proper role of government. "
Lew Rockwell (in 2008) - "No matter where or when, the essential prerequisite for economic growth is capital accumulation in a framework of freedom and sound money. The consequence of price control is shortage and surplus. The effect of money expansion is inflation and the business cycle. The effect of every form of intervention is to make society less prosperous than it would otherwise be. "
David Ricardo (1772-1823) - " Experience, however, shews, that neither a State nor a Bank ever have had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money, without abusing that power: in all States, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose, as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes, either in gold coin or bullion."
Lew Rockwell (in 2008) - "The monetary issue can be understood by analogy to orange juice. The more water you add, the less substance it has. If you keep adding, eventually you come to the point when you can no longer tell that it was ever orange. This is the same with money. If you print enough – literally or electronically through the credit markets – it will continue to lose value. If money grew on trees, it would be about as valuable as autumn leaves. "
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "It is a fundamental libertarian proposition that a state only has the right to use force to defend the person and property of individuals against force."
Gary North (in 2008) - "Central banks are the exclusive cause of price inflation. From 1938 until now, there has been only one year – 1955 – where America's prices fell, and then by only 1%. That is because the FED has increased the money supply every year since 1933."
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "Surely we have all heard of and ridiculed the racketeering 'protective syndicates' which force merchants to purchase "protection" at an exorbitant fee. Yet the State syndicate manages to impose its own 'protection,' and to collect from Peter, with nary a single eyebrow being raised against it."
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "The only advantage of a democracy is that it provides scope (strictly limited) for peaceful change of state rulers via ballot boxes, instead of requiring bloody revolutions, coup d'etats, etc. Instead of having bloody civil wars over the spoils of state, the robber gangs have their subjects vote every few years as to which gang will rule them. Never, however, do they so much as hint that the people may have a choice as to whether they wish to retain the state system itself."
Ted Rall (2008) - "In a country whose legal framework authorizes the government to kidnap, torture and murder them, opponents of U.S. policy must decide whether getting out of line--anything from a letter to the editor to direct action--is worth the risk of getting kidnapped, tortured and murdered."
Eric Englund (2008) - "Short of visiting America’s prisons, I can’t think of a better place, than our airports, to witness the heavy hand of government and its resulting incivility."
Charley Reese (in 2008) - "A patriot is a person who loves the land and the people and is loyal to the Constitution. Patriots are not those who blindly click their heels and salute whatever current politician temporarily occupies the office. Such heel-clickers are generally described as having the makings of a fascist, but a kinder description is that they are people who have misplaced their faith."
Glenn Greenwald (in 2007) - "There is increased desperation that is palpable among our political and media elites to protect and defend their system. The extent of their wrongdoing over the last several years -- political, legal and economic -- is so extreme that the potential for upheaval in the event of accountability is extreme as well. Their chief weapon to protect those privileges is immunity from the rule of law, and most of our political controversies -- over presidential power and state secrets and executive privilege and torture and eavesdropping and these CIA videos -- really share the same root: the effort of the establishment to maintain their immunity from impropriety-exposing legal proceedings and, thus, from political consequences."
Ron Paul (in 2007) - " Few Americans understand that all government action is inherently coercive. If nothing else, government action requires taxes. If taxes were freely paid, they wouldn’t be called taxes, they’d be called donations. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion. So when a politician talks about freedom for this group or that, ask yourself whether he is advocating more government action or less."
Wes Alexander (in 2003) - "If you [U.S. Congress] want to destroy liberty and prosperity, just hold your present course. Success is near. America is quickly becoming the latest version of a USSR style police state with a stalled Japanese economy. "
Wes Alexander (in 2004) - "A restitution based system is simply more effective than stand-alone rehabilitation and punishment. Focusing on restitution leads to private investment in an incentive based criminal justice system. The net result is more justice, cheaper justice, and higher quality justice. "
Wes Alexander (in 2002) - "The ignorance of our federal representatives is astounding. This fact becomes obvious whenever they accidentally drop out of double talk mode and attempt to make a real point or take a real position. Most of them should stick to blabbering away incessantly about nothing. All of this would be laughable except for the fact that they actually think they know what they're doing. They think they're qualified to make decisions about how our property and lives should be expended. "
Wes Alexander (in 2003) - "Try to imagine a country where theft was the principle means of survival. It is easy to see how such a society would soon become bankrupt. Whenever people urge government to create laws that rob Peter to pay Paul or themselves, they participate in legal theft. Whenever politicians pander to expedient demands for access to the public treasury, they participate in legal theft. The farmer paid not to farm, the homeowner and college student given below market loans, the industry tariff that limits access to competitive markets, and the federal giveaways for everything from Amtrak to zygote research are legal theft. Over the last 80 years we have evolved into a population of thieves and yet; we wonder why our society is failing. "
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) - "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."
Edwin Vieira (2007) - "The self-styled 'best and brightest among American's present gaggle of 'leaders' are being exposed as perhaps the worst and stupidest ruling class ever known--a true kakistocracy. For only the worst and stupidest 'leaders' of all time could have come to the point of destroying a country so exceedingly rich in human talents and natural resources."
Roberts Higgs (2007) - "The state's most fundamental purpose, the activity without which it cannot even exist, is robbery. The state gains its very sustenance from robbery, which it pretties up ideologically by giving it a different name (taxation) and by striving to sanctify its intrinsic crime as permissible and socially necessary. State propaganda, statist ideologies, and long-established routine combine to convince many people that they have a legitimate obligation, even a moral duty to pay taxes to the state that rules their society."
Robert Higgs (2007) - "What chance does peace have when millions of well-heeled, politically connected opportunists of all stripes depend on the continuation of a state of war for their personal financial success?"
Robert Higgs (2007) - "Our rulers have led us from one unnecessary slaughter to the next; and, to make matters worse, they have exploited each such occasion to fasten their chains around us more tightly. Like the ancient Israelites, we Americans shall never have real, lasting peace so long as we give our allegiance to a king--that is, in our case, to the whole conglomeration of institutionalized exploiters and murderers we know as the state."
Plaque in Cheney's White House office - "I have flying monkeys and I'm not afraid to use them."
Antal E. Fekete (in 2007) - "People appear to be forgetful that the dollar is steadily losing value, losing purchasing power, losing the all-important respect of foreigners. They have been brainwashed into thinking that inflation, like continental drift, is God-ordained. There is nothing human beings can do about it. It would never occur to people that they are victims of deliberate plundering by their own government, and deceitful pilfering by their banks, covered up by the mendacity of academia and the financial media. "
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "When people owe money and can't pay it back, someone is going to take a loss. You can diddle with the details all you want....all you're going to do is to shift the loss from someone who deserves it onto someone else."
Lew Rockwell (in 2007) - "Without sound money, there is no protection for savings and property, nor capital accumulation, nor long-term investment, nor entrepreneurship, nor social advance. Without the right to own and control property, we have no real say over our lives. "
Judge Andrew Napolitanio (in 2007) - "The law is whatever those in power say it is.... Under positivism, whoever or whatever controls the government, whether a majority or a minority, always rules and always gets its way."
William H. Huff (in 2007) - "Most Americans have believed the Lie for so long that they have come to expect it; to lust after it. They want politicians to tickle their ears. The last thing they want to hear is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They want things from government that are unlawful for government to provide. They have a messianic complex when it comes to government. It is their god surrogate."
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "America never got the hang of empire; it invades countries but forgets to steal the treasure."
Joshua Katz (in 2007) - "There will come a time....when men will not be controlled by others but will live for themselves. Civilized men do not kill those who don’t conform."
Wilton Alston (in 2007) - "Anarchy is all around us all the time. This fact can be discovered via two rather pedestrian methods of investigation: 1 – being awake; and, 2 – looking around. "
Joshua Katz (in 2007) - "So, widely disparate worldviews, sharing only a distrust of centralized power, are being drawn together, being shown that they really aren’t all that different because they agree on the primary, most central issue for any political theory – just who will get to shoot whom, and why?"
Butler Shaffer (in 2004) - "Almost all of your daily behavior is an anarchistic expression. How you deal with your neighbors, coworkers, fellow customers in shopping malls or grocery stores, is often determined by subtle processes of negotiation and cooperation."
Sandra Hamilton (in 2007) - "I call it hostage taking when after you have paid off your house you still have to pay the government rent in perpetuity just to able to stay there--they call it property taxes. Worse yet, you have no power to be able to negotiate with your abductor. You are truly powerless."
Wes Alexander (in 2006) - "The 'reset' button is being pushed whether we like it or not. This is similar to the dissolution of the USSR. The only difference will be the scale of impact. The dissolution of the dollar-oil empire will have a world wide impact. Economic law and moral truth cannot be repealed; and they will not remain on the sidelines indefinitely. "
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "As the U.S. emits dollars, the rest of the world's nations emit their own paper.....trying to keep up. What we are seeing in the currency markets is merely relative, but important, degrees of badness. One currency stinks. Another is rotten. A third is crummy. A fourth sucks. They are all going down...but some faster than others. What they are going down against is the things that don't come out of printing presses or the imaginations of central bankers. According to the Economist, the average of these things....'all items'....is rising by more than 16% per year, against the dollar. But some things are rising even faster. Oil, for example. And gold."
Michael S. Rozeff (in 2007) - "We think that we can do good by intervening overseas or by making war. We are trying to achieve the Kingdom of God using the Kingdom of Satan, and we don’t even know it. "
Jim Willie (in 2007) - "Modern day financial engineering has built a lunatic contraption, not subject to adjustment or repair. It spews toxins by conmen and masters of fraud with the collusion of compromised USGovt and US financial sector gatekeepers."
Wilton Alston (in 2007) - "There is no scenario under which authority trumps morality."
Glen Allport (in 2007) - "The division of labor is what allows modern life. Money is what allows for the division of labor. Money is thus a critical element in the maintenance of civilization. When governments and banks are allowed to degrade and ultimately destroy the integrity and value of money, a danger is created that exceeds even the dangers of outright war."
Wilton Alston (in 2007) - "We must treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated, not treat them as harshly as our authority allows. Violence begets violence. It always has. It always will."
John Doe (in 2007) - "A society ignorant of the fact that violence is only capable of generating evil will accept the expansion of violence as the ‘logical’ remedy for the failure of violence."
Robert Higgs (in 2007) - "The state is the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised — a fire that, at best, can be controlled for only a short time before it o'erleaps its improvised confinements and spreads its flames far and wide. "
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1947) - "The State has no money. It produces nothing. Its existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. 'Government money,' of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing."
Lew Rockwell (in 2007) - "Normalcy is too boring to the organized right and left, who want to keep the population in a wild frenzy of fear in order to impose a massive state that will do their ideological bidding. "
Charley Reese (1984) - "Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?"
Joel Bowman (in 2007) - "The only things more spurious than a promissory note with a dead president on it are the promises made by whatever goofball occupies the White House when the survey is taken. The national debt provides about 9 trillion examples of these broken promises. "
Robert Higgs (in 2007) - "States, by their very nature, are perpetually at war — not always against foreign foes, of course, but always against their own subjects. The state's most fundamental purpose, the activity without which it cannot even exist, is robbery."
Charley Reese (1984) - "One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country."
Joel Bowman (in 2007) - "Such is the confusion between the synapses of the brain and the impulses of the heart that men of sound and reliable judgment have begun using the word “belief” as an adequate synonym for “knowledge.” We confuse the notion of a
man’s right with his need. Not only do we interchange these vastly different concepts, we’ve come to favor need over right. Anyone who’s had their right to their own property infringed upon to pay for another’s need can tell you that."
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "Blame consumers. They spend money they don't have on things they don't need. Who do they think they are, members of Congress?"
Jim Willie (in 2007) - "The fascist merger of state, the penultimate banking sector out of New York City, and certain corporate groups (see oil industry, military defense) stands as the most glaring threat to free market capitalisom in the modern history of the nation."
Charley Reese (1984) - "When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist."
Thomas J DiLorenzo (in 2007) - "Unfortunately for us, murderous thugs like bin Laden apparently believe all the tripe about democracy being 'the will of the people,' and so they equate us with the government."
Frank Chodorov (1887-1966) - "Is not the State an idol? Is it not like any graven image into which men have read supernatural powers and superhuman capacities? The State can feed us when we are hungry, heal us when we are ill; it can raise wages and lower prices, even at the same time; it can educate our children without cost; it can provide us against the contingencies of old age and amuse us when we are bored; it can give us electricity by passing laws and improve the game of baseball by regulation. What cannot the State do for us if only we have faith in it? And we have faith. No creed in the history of the world ever captured the hearts and minds of men as has the modern creed of Statism."
Anonymous Silver Surfer (in 2007) - "I have seen the money powers intervene in the markets and yet I don't see anyone talking about the robbery and theft involved. I really do not like thieves and I dislike even more, those thieves who try to con me into thinking that what they are doing isn't theft."
Anonymous Silver Surfer (in 2007) - "When intervention causes a market to move opposite the natural direction, not only are the right made wrong, the wrong made right, but the movers are made rich. This is so immoral, so wrong and so illegal. This hidden manipulation is a crime. A very dangerous crime. A very damaging crime, affecting the whole world, but specifically harming those least able to protect themselves, the old, young and poor, who pay most of the cost of inflation. It is the action of a coward. It is the action of a callous killer. It is the action of a psychopath. If there were a fire you would drop everything and race to put it out. There is a fire burning right now."
David Walker comptroller general of the US (in 2007) - "The US government is on a 'burning platform' of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare under funding, immigration and overseas military commitments."
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) - "The eminence and usefulness of the gold standard consists in the fact that it makes the supply of money depend on the profitability of mining gold, and thus checks large-scale inflationary ventures on the part of governments."
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) - "The gold standard did not fail. Governments deliberately sabotaged it, and still go on sabotaging it. But no government is powerful enough to destroy the gold standard so long as the market economy is not entirely suppressed by the establishment of socialism in every part of the world."
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "The age-old success of the ideologists of the State is perhaps the most gigantic hoax in the history of mankind."
Michael Nystrom (in 2007) - "Central banks = centralized economic planning. If you thought that centralized economic planning disappeared with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, think again. Eight times each year, a group of twelve men meet to make secret decisions that have a profound impact on the US and global economies. None of these men are elected. Their meetings are closed to the public. Even members of the US Congress and the Senate Banking and Finance Committees are barred from attending, or even knowing what is discussed. "
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "Throughout history groups of men calling themselves 'the government' or 'the State' have attempted – usually successfully – to gain a compulsory monopoly of the commanding heights of the economy and the society. In particular, the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land ('the public domain'), streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail."
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "Aside from other sound arguments against enforced morality (e.g., that no action not freely chosen can be considered 'moral'), it is surely grotesque to entrust the function of guardian of the public morality to the most extensive criminal (and hence the most immoral) group in society -- the State."
Richard Russell (in 2007) - "They're worried [central banks] that the world will get wise to the central bank/fiat money racket, and maybe kill the beast. In other words, the central banks are afraid that voters will finally get rid of the whole private money busines along with its nonstop production of intrinsically worthless fiat money. You see, a real headwind of inflation would anger the public, in which case a few intelligent journalists might start putting the blame where it belongs -- on the central banks, not the least of which is our own Federal Reserve. No, too much inflation, surging inflation, would be dangerous -- it might expose the Fed and the central bankers for what they are -- engines of inflation. When you've got a great racket going, like taking control of a nation's money, you want to protect that racket."
Natalie Angier (in 2007) - "Order, by definition, has restrictions and limitations, while disorder knows no bounds. "
Howard Ruff (in 2007) - "In the last ten years, the Fed has manufactured trillions of dollars out of nothing at the fastest pace in history by far, and it's now accelerating. The Fed has loaned the dollars into circulation, or given them to politicians to spend. Congress has been spending like a drunken sailor. The difference between Congress and a drunken sailor? A drunken sailor spends his own money!"
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "Impeaching Bill Clinton was relatively easy, because state power was not threatened in any way. But in the case of George W., his malefactions go to the essence of power. He has dismantled any semblance of constitutional government, with its 'separation of powers,' into a 'unitary presidency' which, in any other society, would correctly be labeled a 'dictatorship.'"
George W. Bush (in 2000) - "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
Mogambo Guru (in 2007) - "If your income doubles, but all prices double, too, then you are not better off, are you? No. But if your income stays the same and prices go down, then you ARE better off, right? Of course your are! Welcome to the gold standard! "
Mogambo Guru (in 2007) - "In short, thanks to our money being gold, the standard of living of was increasing! People's lives were getting better! And they had more! And they bought more, although their nominal wages were exactly the same! And in fact, things were so good that workers were becoming overpaid! Overpaid labor! What a Utopia!"
Mogambo Guru (in 2007) - "Who is so evil, so dastardly, so despicable as to screw with such a successful system? Note the dark and gloomy soundtrack of wolves howling and the distant screams of people being eaten alive. The banks and the government! It's always the damned banks and the damned government!"
Peter Schiff (in 2007) - "Despite the tendency of central bankers to argue that consumers are better served by rising prices rather than falling prices, "deflation" was never a real threat to Japan. On the contrary, falling consumer prices are one of the natural rewards that people enjoy in market economies. The fact that this benefit has been denied to most people in modern times as a result of government created inflation is one of the great tragedies of our time. "
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "We have acted like country bumpkins at the state fair with the egg money who, having been fleeced by a bunch of carnival sharpies, look everywhere for someone to blame other than ourselves. We have been euchred out of our very lives because of our eagerness to believe that benefits can be enjoyed without incurring costs; that the freedom to control one’s life can be separated from the responsibilities for one’s actions; and that two plus two does not have to add up to four if a sizeable public opinion can be amassed against the proposition."
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "By identifying ourselves with any abstraction (such as the state) we give up the integrated life, the sense of wholeness that can be found only within each of us. "
U.S. Declaration of Independence (in 1776) - "...That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,...."
Francois Tremblay (in 2007) - "The problem is not that we have 'the wrong people in power,' but the fact that the power exists in the first place. As long as the State remains in place as it is, war, whether military or social, will continue to be its prime means of expansion, and taxes will continue to be its reason for being and the means to wage these wars."
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "No problem is so pressing and so monumental that heads of state can't get together and turn it into a carnival sideshow."
Lew Rockwell (in 2007) - "Truly there is an actual conflict at the root of history but it is not the one most people understand or see. It is the great struggle between freedom and despotism, between the individual and the state, between the voluntary means and coercion."
Francois Tremblay (in 2007) - "Political means have never achieved anything but more political means."
Gary North (in 2007) - "Ever since the formation of the Bank of England in 1694, central banks have purchsed government debt. This was part of the original quid pro quo. The government gave the central bankers--a private cartel--monopoly status in issuing or controlling the nation's currency. In exchange, the central bank guaranteed--not in writing--that it would be a lender to the government."
Lew Rockwell (in 2007) - "The old liberal view lives in the writings of such people as John Locke, Frédéric Bastiat, Lord Acton, Alexis de Tocqueville, and, in the 20th century, in the work of Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard. Hayek himself traced the liberal tradition from Cicero, through the Middle Ages, to John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. The thread that connects all their thought is the idea that society is more capable than government elites in shaping a prosperous order."
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "America – in its traditional forms – is in its death throes, and no amount of institutional wizardry, halftime pep talks, or magic elixirs, will reverse the present course. As with the decline of prior civilizations, however, our future is not necessarily a bleak one. Humanity is now confronted with the choice of whether “society” is to continue being thought of in terms of institutionalized interests, or is to reflect the varied and spontaneous relationships that emerge from the interactions of free men and women?"
Lew Rockwell (in 2007) - "Even after all the evidence that the war on terror has produced ever more terrorism – and this evidence is offered up by the government’s own statistics – the champions of the war on terror cannot think their way out of the intellectual trap into which their ideology of force has locked them."
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "Since those who orchestrated, directed, and cheered on this criminal act [the invasion of Iraq] will never be held to account for their wrongdoing in any meaningful way, they ought to at least suffer public humiliation for their behavior. To fail to see the moral implications of what America has become; to regard the deaths of over one million innocent Iraqis – if one includes the half-million children who died from earlier U.S. embargoes on food and medicine – as nothing more than a failure of “intelligence” or “poor planning” or “mismanagement,” is symptomatic of the moral and spiritual pathology of a once-great nation."
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "The media and the activists march along with the serene confidence of a religious cult, convinced that the world is in imminent danger [global warming] and only they can save it. Politicians, corporate do-gooders, and investors are not far behind...each hoping to get something out of the whole thing. And bringing up the rear guard are the yeomen soldiers....the poor grunts who will go along with anything, so long as it's sufficiently idiotic."
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "Many Americans have become embarrassed by the war in Iraq, but not out of any awakening as to its immoral nature. It is a highly personal matter, arising from identifying one’s very sense of being with a nation-state that employs lies, forgeries, and other deceptive practices in the continuing slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people; which uses torture as a routine practice not so much to gain information as to gratify sadistic dispositions; and denies trials to persons held, for years, on what amounts to suspicion of being suspicious."
Gary North (in 2007) - "But what if a central bank, or the government that just sold debt to its central bank, then chooses to purchase equity of privately owned companies--not just debt, but actual ownership? What if this process has begun?"
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) - "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
Nelson Hultberg (in 2007) - "We as a country can no longer allow money to be created by a fascist cartel of bankers and bureaucrats in Washington via printing presses and computer entries."
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "If physical and human nature are too complicated to be predictable, the rationale for state control is swept away. To the controllists, the expression of this fact is a heresy that must be exorcised from our thinking."
Gary North (in 2007) - "The nanny state rests on the presupposition that the state must not allow people to learn from their mistakes. They must instead be prohibited from making mistakes. Result: They make far more mistakes and far worse ones."
Ty Andros (in 2007) - "The central banks, sovereign finance officials and politicians have worked hard to keep the price of gold from unmasking their irresponsible inflation by selling their reserves into the markets--they are failing. They will continue to fail as more and more people realize what’s unfolding and move into things that cannot be stolen with the printing presses. "
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "Over many decades, the American government has spent – and continues to spend – tens of billions of dollars in so-called 'intelligence agencies,' whose functions are to gather as much information as possible on the forces at work within foreign countries – and, disturbingly, within America itself. Despite the virtually unrestrained powers enjoyed by such agencies, and the resources put at their disposal to gather information, they have been able to predict almost nothing of major significance."
Ron Paul (in 2007) - "Few Americans give much thought to the Federal Reserve System or monetary policy in general. But even as they strive to earn a living, and hopefully save or invest for the future, Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank are working insidiously against them. Day by day, every dollar you have is being devalued."
Frank Chodorov (in 1887-1966) - "Economics is not politics. One is a science, concerned with the immutable and constant laws of nature that determine the production and distribution of wealth; the other is the art of ruling. One is amoral, the other is moral."
Ron Paul (in 2007) - "The greatest threat facing America today is not terrorism, or foreign economic competition, or illegal immigration. The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. It is this one-two punch – Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Fed printing money to make up the difference – that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars."
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "In the purely free-market society, a would-be criminal police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, since there would be no organized State apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command."
Frank Chodorov (in 1887-1966) - "The presumably rational human animal has become so inured to political interventions that he cannot think of the making of a living without them; in all his economic calculations his first consideration is, what is the law in the matter? or, more likely, how can I make use of the law to improve my lot in life?"
Bill Bonner (in 2007) - "People say they value liberty, but they can't stand what it produces. They can't stand the fact that - left to their own devices - some people will have more than they do and some will struggle to survive. Redistribute income, tax, control, regulate - they will support almost any measure that promises to make the outcome more to their liking. They will ask (and in some cases demand) that their leaders control everything - income levels, interest rates, health care, parking, handicapped access, what the schools teach, what language people speak, who can marry whom, what goes into the sausages - even the weather!"
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as being in a state of impermissible 'anarchy,' why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighborhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? But, of course, if each person may secede from government, we have virtually arrived at the purely free society, where defense is supplied along with all other services by the free market and where the invasive State has ceased to exist."
Steven Latulippe (in 2007) - "All statist political systems exist primarily to perpetuate the power and privilege of the elites who control the system."
Steven Latulippe (in 2007) - "The depredations of our own ruling class are eroding the foundations of our society. Our massive, unsustainable deficit spending, our geometrically expanding regimen of stifling regulations, and our never-ending series of military misadventures are slowly but inexorably grinding toward a destructive climax. Our rulers are unable to address these problems because doing so would undermine the very privileges they seek to perpetuate."
Steven Latulippe (in 2007) - "President Bush and his dark retinue of feathered priests have, through a series of misjudgments and tactical errors, run the empire into a ditch in Mesopotamia. The president cannot go forward, and he cannot go back. "
Steven Latulippe (in 2007) - "Even the remote possibility of reconstituting our republic strikes dread into our rulers’ hearts. It is the one thing to which they will never voluntarily consent. Anything – even starting another war or enduring a nuclear terror attack – would be preferable."
Ron Paul (in 2007) - "Everyone suffers from price inflation, and it is evil!"
Jim Willie (in 2007) - "A grand banking system crisis is in its early stages in the United States which can no longer be denied. Herculean efforts are being accomplished to protect the core bank business (commercial, cars, credit cards) from the infection. The USFed and Dept of Treasury are monetizing mortgage bonds secretly and illicitly, without much doubt whatsoever. A bank crisis an order of magnitude worse than the 1989 Savings & Loan debacle awaits, probably in full bloom by 2008. The bank distress will reveal itself in wave after wave of component breakdowns, from subprimes to adjustables, then feedback loops in reaction. This crisis in not even one third done."
Butler Shaffer (in 2007) - "The mindset of most Americans regarding property is beset with confusion and contradiction. It could probably be reduced to the following proposition: property owners insist upon the inviolability of their interests while, at the same time, being ardent collectivists when it comes to the property of others. Most will strenuously object when the state interferes with what they own, but cheer when the interests of their neighbors are under attack."
Russel Munk (Asst Gen Counsel, Dept. of the Treasury in 1977) - "Federal reserve notes are Not dollars."
Mogambo Guru (in 2007) - "And while one can argue whether technology has made the guillotine passe as the weapon of choice of rioting mobs of angry people made destitute by price inflation, or whether the Uzi and the shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade are an advancement or not, but there it is."
Bill Bonner (2007) - "Today, the average man can barely tell the difference between a fact and a campaign slogan. And so the new ersatz knowledge leads him into error. Modern politics turns the voter into an enabling dupe....makes the amateur investor a chump for Wall Street....and sends the poor, hapless foot-soldier off on a fool's errand where he can only get himself killed."
Karen Kwiatkowski (in 2007) - "In a republic, a congress may represent the people, and in ours, holds the sole charter to declare wars and to impeach incompetent and corrupt officials. If we were a kingdom, we would have something similar, perhaps a parliament that exists to advise the king, but rarely if ever overrule him. It might be called a parliament of whores...If we were a kingdom, we would be in dire straits. We would be saddled with a crazed and warlike fantasist as king, a powerful warlike fantasist as his right hand man, a perfect peter as top military man, an über-loyal diplomatic advisor, and a parliament of whores standing alert and ready like trained dogs."
Jim Willie (in 2007) - "Never in the history of central bankers has the hidden coordination, influenced pressure, gargantuan money creation, doctored statistics, and interference with financial markets been so broad, so deep, and so profound. The more heavily the counterfeit press dispenses electronic dollars, devoted to operations, to credit, to consumer spending, to military adventures, to good old fashioned fraud, the gold bull benefits from ample new oxygen and blood flow."
Jeremy Locke (in 2007) - "It is a simple truth that there is no reason to use force against people unless you are trying to steal something from them. All of the paper promises of law are worthless, because there is no intention of them being kept. If law was willing to live up to its promises, it wouldn’t need to force people to accept them. The reason it must force people is because it has no intention of returning equal value for that which it takes. It issues phantom promises to quiet the minds of its victims, lest they rebel."
Manuel Lora (in 2007) - "Political centralization is the concentration of power onto a small group of people called the state. The state is an institution which excels at nothing except the violation of rights. It has monopolized many entrepreneurial functions. These functions, ranging from the production of law and security to the management of money and banking, must be returned to entrepreneurs and provided by the free market."
Michael Nolan (in 2007) - "Don’t wonder if a fascist takeover of the United States government can happen here. It has happened here. This administration can wage war when, where and how it pleases, for as long as it pleases, for whatever reason it wants and – under current conditions – there is nobody in America, within or without the government, who can stop it. The US Government is effectively a dictatorship in all matters of war and peace."
Albert Jay Nock (1870-1947) - "Democratic State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little more left to learn."
Becky Akers (in 2007) - "When will politicians quit insulting us by implying that we and they are the same, despite their incompetence, thievery, murder, lies, and corruption?"
Patrick Buchanan (in 2007) - " Almost all the neoconservatives have now departed the seats of power in the Bush administration and retreated to their sinecures at Washington think tanks, to plot the next war – on Iran. Meanwhile, brave young Americans, the true idealists and the casualties of the neocons' war, come home in caskets, 20 a week, to Dover and, at Walter Reed, learn to walk again on steel legs."
Carl Watner (in 1983) - "Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power; and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy."
Mogambo Guru (in 2006) - "The Fed actually stands in front of the cameras all the time and says that they really, really think that constantly creating more and more money with which to buy government debt, so the government could deficit-spend and expand, is great, great stuff, as their precious little equations and models have, they say, 'proved'. But let me, The Mogambo, stand in front of these same cameras, pick a big ol' juicy Mogambo booger out of my nose, hold it up for all to see, declare that it has thus turned into money, and everybody laughs! My face burns red with humiliation every time, but Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke will brazenly shoulder me aside, stand up there, basking in the limelight, and say that they will simply eschew the booger part, and not only create money and credit out of thin air, but also create a corresponding equal amount of debt out of thin air, and everyone applauds and goes wild with excitement! But which is actually more disgusting?"
Carl Watner (in 1988) - "If people think their activities influence the outcome of elections and policy, they are complacent in accepting the outcome. The appearance is political freedom gives power to the people to direct their own political destiny, when in reality they are being manipulated by a system designed to minimize the effects of their input and insulate the decision-making process. Political freedom is no freedom at all."
Bill Bonner (2006) - "The United States can set up puppet governments in third world hellholes; it can whip any conventional military force on the entire planet; but it can’t force investors to take dollars at par."
Carl Watner (in 1992) - "Common sense and reason tell us nothing can be right by legislative enactment if it is not already right by nature. If the politicians direct us to do something that reason opposes, we should defy the government."
Carl Watner (in 1987) - "Moral action alone is sufficient to nullify State legislation. Legislation is not needed to abolish other legislation. Harmful and unjust political laws should simply be ignored and disobeyed. We do not need to use the State to abolish the State, any more than we need to embrace war to fight for peace. Such methodology is self-contradictory, and self-defeating, and inconsistent."
Carl Watner (in 1976) - "Individuals make the world go round; individuals and only individuals exist. No man has any duty towards his fellow men except to refrain from the initiation of violence. Nothing is due a man in strict justice but what is his own. To live honestly is to hurt no one and to give to every one his due. Justice will not come to reign unless those who care for its coming are prepared to insist upon its value and have the courage to speak out against what they know to be wrong. Let it not be said that I did not speak out against tyranny."
Will and Ariel Durant (The Lessons of History in 1968) - "The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints."
Carl Watner (in 1989) - "The use of coercion to compel virtue eliminates its possibility, for to be moral, an act must be uncoerced. Freedom of choice is a necessary ingredient for the achievement of virtue."
Butler Shaffer (in 2006) - "Our vertically-structured world is collapsing into horizontal networks of alternative, autonomous, and spontaneous systems of order. It is, I believe, a desperate effort on the part of the 'old order' to forcibly resist its collapsing fate that is the underlying purpose of the 'war on terror.' The political establishment--well aware of the decentralist trends confronting it--has been busy trying to reinforce the crumbling walls of its citadels."
Carl Watner (in 1989) - "Violence contains none of the energies that enhance a civilized human society. At best, it is only capable of expanding the material existence of a few individuals, while narrowing the opportunities of most others."
Carl Watner (in 1989) - "It is impossible to 'wage a war for peace' or 'fight' politics be becoming political."
Carl Watner (in 1989) - "The power to do good to others is also the power to do them harm. Might does not make right; the end never justifies the means; nor may one person coercively interfere in the life of another."
Ned Beaumont (in 2002) - "America 2002 is an occupied country, occupied by a predatory State, and shunning of the enemy is one way to drive him away."
Butler Shaffer (discussing anarchy in 2004) - "But an even better understanding of the concept can be derived from the Greek origins of the word (anarkhos) which meant 'without a ruler.' It is this definition of the word that members of the political power structure (i.e., your 'rulers') do not want you to consider. Far better that you fear the hidden monsters and hobgoblins who are just waiting to bring terror and havoc to your lives should efforts to increase police powers or budgets fail."
Butler Shaffer (in 2004) - "Are there murderers, kidnappers, rapists, and arsonists in our world? Of course there are, and there will always be, and they do not all work for the state."
Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867-????) - "If freedom is the condition of progress, all invasion of that freedom is bad and should be resisted, whether it is practiced by one upon another, by one upon many, or by many upon one."
Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867-????) - "The freedom of each individual denies all the freedom to invade. For when one individual invades, the activities of another are restrained."
Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867-????) - "The only freedom of speech that is worth having is the freedom to preach dangerous doctrines. In no age, no matter how benighted, in no country, no matter how tyrannical its form of government, has the freedom to preach harmless doctrines ever been denied. It was for preaching dangerous doctrines that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, that Bruno was burnt, that the Chicago Communists were hanged. Thousands of others have been tortured and put to death for a similar reason. Nothing but the freedom to preach all doctrines, no matter how dangerous they seem, is worthy of the name of liberty."
Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867-????) - "If the State collects taxes from you to save your house when it is on fire, insurance companies will, if you pay your premiums, reimburse you for all your loss. The former thrusts its services on you unasked, and makes you pay for them whether you want them or not. The latter is a purely voluntary arrangement, and is perfectly willing to leave you alone if you do not molest it."
Francis Dashwood Tandy (1867-????) - "Many people still cling to the idea that the main function of the State is to maintain Equal Freedom, an idea which has already been exploded, by showing that the State is the greatest violator of the law - in other words, the greatest criminal."
Madame Roland - Prior to losing her head in Paris (1754-1793) - "Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!"
Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) - "Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government… for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence."
Jim Willie (in 2006) - "US politicians have no idea of how severely they have harmed the Middle Class and the domestic corporate landscape. They have bought time while importing lower costs, only to undermine the system."
Butler Shaffer (in 2006) - "It is quite irrational – to the point of being pathological – to embrace the doctrine of a malevolent universe; to live in constant fear of everything and everybody at all times."
Butler Shaffer (in 2006) - "Fear is a condition the state cannot allow to enervate; it must be constantly revitalized."
Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) - "The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave."
Lew Rockwell (2003) - "The state is the least essential of any institution in society. It has the same relationship to society that a parasite does to its host."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (in 2006) - "For a rule to aspire to the rank of a law – a just rule – it is necessary that such a rule apply equally and universally to everyone."
Cyd Malone (in 2006) - "Fed officials 'fight' inflation in the same manner that Ted Bundy 'dated' women; they pummel the dollar into a pulp, then do their best to avoid blame."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (in 2006) - "Once the principle of government – judicial monopoly and the power to tax – is incorrectly admitted as just, any notion of restraining government power and safeguarding individual liberty and property is illusory. Rather, under monopolistic auspices the price of justice and protection will continually rise and the quality of justice and protection fall."
Robert Higgs (in 1994) - "Redistribution of income by government coercion is a form of theft. Its supporters attempt to disguise its essential character by claiming that democratic procedures give it legitimacy, but this justification is specious. Theft is theft whether it be carried out by one thief or by 100 million thieves acting in concert. And it is impossible to found a good society on the institutionalization of theft."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe (in 2006) - "States, as powerful and invincible as they might seem, ultimately owe their existence to ideas and, since ideas can in principle change instantaneously, states can be brought down and crumble practically overnight."
Ron Paul (in 2006) - "When the Federal Reserve increases the supply of dollars in circulation, both paper and electronic, prices must rise eventually. What other result is possible? The supply of dollars has risen much faster than the supply of goods and services being chased by those dollars. Fed policy makers have more than doubled the money supply in less than ten years. While Treasury printing presses can print unlimited dollars, there are natural limits to economic growth. This flood of newly minted US currency can only increase consumer prices in the long term."
Robert Higgs (in 1994) - "People respond to a reduced cost of idleness by choosing to be idle more often. When they can get current income without earning it, they exert less effort to earn income. When they expect to get future income without earning it, they invest less in education, training, job experience, personal health, migration, and other forms of human capital that enhance their potential to earn income in the future."
Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) - "The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the 'nonaggression axiom.' 'Aggression' is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion."
Carolyn Baker (in 2006) - "... no longer entertain the delusion that your so-called government is anything but institutionalized organized crime ensconced in an empire now teetering on the precipice of collapse. If you can digest that reality and still vote in federal elections, God help you, because you still haven’t gotten that what you are voting for are hired liars, mobsters, and murderers."
William Blackstone (1723-1780) - "Whenever a question arises between the society at large and any magistrate vested with powers originally delegated by that society, it must be deci | 