Tag: The State

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”

Benjamin Franklin

“Trusting the government with money creation is like trusting a drunk with a whiskey factory.”

Doug Casey

“No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes-naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.”

Frederic Bastiat

Guest Post by Simon Black

Today we’re continuing our new weekly feature, where each Friday we highlight a number of often bizarre stories from around the world that we’re closely following.

Texas tries to pass a law to legalize lemonade stands run by children

When it comes to business, this story pretty much sums up how far the Land of the Free has fallen from its free-wheeling economic golden age.

We’ve covered a number of stories over the years of cops shutting down lemonade stands, and teens being stopped from mowing lawns and shoveling driveways because they don’t have proper licenses and permits.

In this case, two children (ages 7 and 8) had their lemonade stand shut down by local police because they lacked a ‘Peddler’s Permit’, along with approval from the health department, and who knows how many other government permissions.

Continue reading “SWAT team seizes children because their parents disagreed with a doctor”

“Support for the arts – merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!”

Robert A. Heinlein

“Armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”

James Madison

“Love your country but fear its government.”

Daniel Webster

“The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.”

Albert J. Nock

“There are two principles between which there can be no compromise — liberty and coercion.”

Frédéric Bastiat

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.”

William S. Burroughs

“A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.”

Eric Hoffer

“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”

Henri Frederic Amiel

“Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.”

Frederic Bastiat

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.” — Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

The U.S. government, in its pursuit of so-called monsters, has itself become a monster.

This is not a new development, nor is it a revelation.

This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

Mind you, there is no greater good when the government is involved. There is only greater greed for money and power.

Unfortunately, the public has become so easily distracted by the political spectacle coming out of Washington, DC, that they are altogether oblivious to the grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions that have become synonymous with the U.S. government.

These horrors are being meted out against humans and animals alike.

Continue reading “The Making of a Monster: We’re All Lab Rats in the Government’s Secret Experiments”

Guest Post by The Zman

If you were to transport someone from the 1980’s to our age, they would be amazed by some things, like HD TV’s and streaming services. They would probably be a bit disappointed that the internet has not advanced very far or that cars are still pretty much the same as they were forty years ago. Of course, even the most jaded man of the 80’s would be shocked at the cultural revolution that has taken place. The thing that would be most shocking though, is the total collapse in social trust.

Continue reading “The Custodial State”

“Power tempts even the best of men to take liberties with the truth.”

Joseph Sobran

“A standing military force, with an overgrown executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”

James Madison

“Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.”

Henry Steele Commager

“The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.”

Murray Rothbard

“A tyrant is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”

Plato

“Fear is the foundation of most governments.”

John Adams

“High-toned humanitarians constantly overestimate the sufferings of those they sympathize with.”

H. L. Mencken

“The idea that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure for crime is more crime.”

H. L. Mencken

“The supply of government exceeds the demand.”

Lewis H. Lapham

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”

Oscar Wilde

“What does censorship reveal? It reveals fear.”

Julian Assange

“It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on.”

John Taylor Gatto

“The crying need today is not for more laws, but for fewer. The world must be saved from its saviors. If the friends of liberty and law could have only one slogan it should be: Stop the remedies!”

Henry Hazlitt

“The plans differ; the planners are all alike.”

Frédéric Bastiat

“The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.”

Murray Rothbard

“To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!”

H. L. Mencken

“These so-called governments are in reality only great bands of robbers and murderers, organized, disciplined, and constantly on the alert.”

Lysander Spooner

“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”

Thomas Jefferson

“The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime.”

Max Stirner

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.”

Frédéric Bastiat

“Every government intervention creates unintended consequences which lead to calls for more government interventions.”

Ludwig von Mises

“The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.”

H. L. Mencken

“It is states that are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and immeasurable destruction in the 20th century alone. Compared to that, the victims of private crimes are almost negligible.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

“O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.”

Alexander Pope

“The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.”

Friedrich Hayek

“Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.”

Harry Browne

Continue reading “THE STATE”