Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 10 May 2009 20:00:44 -0700

May 2009

Freedom Quote of the Week

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:37:26 -0800

Week of December 14, 2008

The Freedom Quote of the week is taking a vacation.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:25:53 -0800

Week of November 23, 2008

In reviewing the Ten Commandments, my Mom and Dad � who are, I hasten to observe, just like countless other decent people in this respect � saw fit to qualify only one of them, the commandment against murder.

They didn't specifically tell my children that it is acceptable to lie, steal, covet, dishonor one's parents, or commit adultery if the government requires such conduct of them. They did, however, take special care to emphasize that the government can order them to kill other human beings who have done them no harm, in direct contradiction of God's unqualified commandment not to murder. Of course, if government can make a nullity of that commandment, it can revise the others to suit its purposes as well.

Indeed, government � particularly the despicable state that rules us � is little more than a perpetual organized assault on the Ten Commandments. The defining act of a government is extracting wealth from people through the threat of lethal violence, and swaddling such acts in invidious rhetoric about "social justice." Thus at its very foundation, the State institutionalizes violations of the commandments against theft, murder, and covetousness.

The State's fundamental function � killing, or the threat to do so � is intimately connected to a claim of ownership over its subjects. This is revealed in ways both vulgar and oblique. The best example of the former is the practice of conscription. Any government that can "make" an individual a soldier against his will is one richly deserving to be overthrown. A milder version of the same presumption can be seen every time a politician in a storm-threatened community issues a "mandatory evacuation" order to its residents, as if their lives were his, rather than theirs.

� William N. Grigg "Idolatry and State-Sanctioned Murder," Pro Libertate, September 1, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:22:19 -0800

Week of November 9, 2008

Democracy, in order to appeal, must whisper to every man a fundamentally undemocratic falsehood: that he can choose his government. Therein lies a confusion of democratic thought: the confusion of the power of the people with the liberty of the person. When a man says he is free under a democracy because he can choose his government, already the falsehood is fully grown. He cannot do any such thing. He is given a say in how his country is to be governed, but this degree of power is so tiny as to be almost non-existent; and yet for this, he is willing to give up his fate to an overwhelming power, and he calls his subjection to this power � freedom!

� "Deogolwulf," "The Democratic Tendency," The Joy of Curmudgeonry, September 11, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:03:02 -0700

Week of October 26, 2008

A government building you regard as a charnel house, which in fact it is; you enter always under duress, and you never demean yourself by curtseying to its living or dead statuary. The stars on the general's shoulders merely signify that the man might have been a useful member of society; you pity the boy whose military garb identifies his servility. The dais on which the judge sits elevates the body but lowers the man, and the jury box is a place where three-dollar-a-day slaves enforce the law of slavery. You honor the tax dodger. You do not vote because you put too high a value on your vote.

� Frank Chodorov, quoted in Bill Kauffman, Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists, 2006.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:27:06 -0700

Week of October 5, 2008

The other night, Barack Obama said, "I think [health care] should be a right for every American." You don�t need to see his membership card to some dinky club. He's a f___ing Socialist. Universal health care is a f___ing Socialist panacea. One of many f___ing Socialist panaceas that Barack Obama turns his noble chin toward every f___ing day of his life.

Is there something hard to understand about any of that?

� Mike Soja, "Just how much of other people's stuff do you have to confiscate to be called a Socialist these days, anyway?," Kayak 2 U Blog, October 9, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:30:13 -0700

Week of September 28, 2008

Remember this point the next time somebody tells you that "free market madmen" caused the current financial crisis that is threatening to undermine the economy. There is no free market. There is no "laissez-faire capitalism." The government has been deeply involved in setting the parameters for market relations for eons; in fact, genuine "laissez-faire capitalism" has never existed. Yes, trade may have been less regulated in the nineteenth century, but not even the so-called "Gilded Age" featured "unfettered" markets.

� Chris Matthew Sciabarra, "A Crisis of Political Economy," Notablog, October 1, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:47:43 -0700

Week of September 21, 2008

"Politics, under democracy," Mencken wrote more than 80 years ago, "resolves itself into impossible alternatives. Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other." And in a declaration even apter now than it was at the time, he concluded that what democracy "needs beyond everything is a party of liberty."

The trouble is, however, that now, even more than then, the American people have little interest in liberty. Instead, they want the impossible: home ownership for those who cannot afford homes, credit for those who are not creditworthy, old-age pensions for those who have not saved, health care for those who make no attempt to keep themselves healthy, and college educations for those who lack the wit to finish high school. Moreover, they want it now, and they want somebody else to pay for it.

� Robert Higgs, "Ticking time bomb explodes, public is shocked," The Beacon (blog of The Independent Institute), September 10, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 18:42:06 -0700

Week of September 14, 2008

Kill six millions Jews in Germany, your name becomes a synonym with evil. Kill between 44 and 72 million Chinese, you get a caf� named after you. It's a funny old world, eh?

� Jill Murphy, commenter, "Yes but our mass murderers are important to us," Samizdata.net, January 15, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:44:03 -0700

Week of August 31, 2008

Thus the educational free-for-all sentiment got a very powerful endorsement. It was democratic. Poverty-stricken Tom, from the slashes, should go though school, college and university hand in hand with Dick the scion of Wall Street, and toplofty Harry of the Back Bay. Democracy so willed it, in spite of Nature's insuperable differentiations whereby Tom had no first-rate school-ability, Harry had excellent ability in other directions but no school-ability, and Dick was a Dummkopf with no ability of any kind. Privately these differentiations might be recognized, indeed must be, but it was of the essence of democracy that there should be no official or institutional recognition of them. The unspeakable silliness of our truant laws, which make compulsory attendance a matter purely of school-age instead of school-ability, appropriately expresses this limitation.

� Albert Jay Nock, "American Education," Free Speech and Plain Language, 1937.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 18:49:57 -0700

Week of August 24, 2008

Think about "The United States." These days, you hear politicians and other mouthy twits rattling on about "unity." Of course, this is part & parcel of the entire socialist theme, but it also has a most unfortunate aspect in its standing in the American political heritage. It's a long-bone in our political lexicon. What's grievously unfortunate is that the only thing about American politics that "united" this country was dying lip-service (known as "the Constitution") to the ideals originally set forth in the Declaration of Independence. It was the essential idea of freedom that was the object of the "union" -- no matter how badly it was served, ever after.

No socialist idea was ever a part of that, and this is the ghastly perversion of the concept of "union" that we face now: the socialists have something in mind that is simply not American. When they talk about "unity", they are not talking about agreement on fidelity to the idea of freedom. They're talking about a hive. <...>

The essential political conflict of our time is between collectivism and individualism. Very few people can see the thing in those truest terms, and this is why most individuals' practical politics can't be distinguished to precisely one or the other of those two sides: the nice lady who wants free meds doesn't know "socialism" from a tuna sandwich, and the gun-toting farmer usually has only the dimmest concepts of "rights" or the implications of his stand on weapons. They don't know the fullest context or implications of their politics. However, the power of principles does not diminish from ignorance.

Very roughly, the "sort" is taking place along the individualist/collectivist divide. It has all kinds of distortions (for instance: instinctive individualists joining pressure groups -- e.g., NRA) compounded by cultural geography, etc., but I say that what you're really seeing is the last stand of the American idea.

� Billy Beck, "Right Bloody Hell," Two--Four, July 17, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:17:01 -0700

Week of August 17, 2008

[Barack Obama's] agenda is an admirable one. Yet to imagine that installing a particular individual in the Oval Office will produce decisive action on any of these fronts is to succumb to the grandest delusion of all. The quadrennial ritual of electing (or reelecting) a president is not an exercise in promoting change, regardless of what candidates may claim and ordinary voters believe. The real aim is to ensure continuity, to keep intact the institutions and arrangements that define present-day Washington. The veterans of past administrations who sign on as campaign advisors are not interested in curbing the bloated power of the presidency. They want to share in exercising those powers. The retired generals and admirals who line up behind their preferred candidate don't want to dismantle the national security state. They want to preserve and, if possible, expand it. The candidates who decry the influence of money in national politics are among those most skilled at courting the well-heeled to amass millions in campaign contributions. ...

Paradoxically, the belief that all (or even much) will be well, if only the right person assumes the reins as president and commander in chief serves to underwrite the status quo. Counting on the next president to fix whatever is broken promotes expectations of easy, no-cost cures, permitting ordinary citizens to absolve themselves of responsibility for the nation's predicament. The same Americans who profess to despise all that Washington represents look to � depending on partisan affiliation � a new John F. Kennedy or a new Ronald Reagan to set things right again. Rather than seeing the imperial presidency as part of the problem, they persist in the fantasy that a chief executive, given a clear mandate, will "change" the way Washington works and restore the nation to good health. Yet to judge by the performance of the presidents over the past half century, including both Kennedy and Reagan (whose legacies are far more mixed that their supporters will acknowledge), a citizenry that looks to the White House for deliverance is assured of disappointment.

� Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, 2008, pp. 170-172.

Or as cartoonist R. Stevens put it recently:

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:37:37 -0700

Week of August 10, 2008

Whenever I speak of Chinese collectivism, given their communist legacy in the 20th century, I often am met with a response like "Oh, China... sure they're ruled by a communist party, but they're not really communists. Look at all of their economic reform and liberalization!" This response seems to miss the mark altogether. The distinctive feature of communism was the view that individual interests could be curtailed for the sake of promoting class interest. Under Mao and his communist successors, collective interests took priority over individual rights and the liberties they secure. This view is precisely the same view held by the current Chinese regime, though they're replaced "class interest" with "national interest." The principle that one can see manifested everywhere throughout contemporary Chinese politics and public policy is the same collectivist principle invoked by the communists: that individuals exist to serve the state, that the interests of the state take priority over the interests of the individual.

It was indeed China's coming out party, and the opening ceremony was supposed to communicate a message of friendship, cooperation, and human unity. It was supposed to show how China was willingness to engage in civilized participation with the rest of the world. It included a performance by 810 figures in Han-dynasty era clothing, who joined together to communicate the question "Isn't it great to have friends coming from afar?" and sent "All men are brothers within the four seas."

Despite the inclusion of elements like this, I couldn't find myself convinced that the opening ceremonies should be viewed positively. Regardless of all the razzle-dazzle, what we witnessed was a calculated attempt by an oppressive government to justify itself through a mesmerizing performance on the world stage. It's a variation on the old Roman "bread and circuses" theme, except, of course for the bread (think how many capital goods $300,000,000 could buy to increase worker productivity and thus help to alleviate the wide-spread poverty in China). The ceremonies were a debut ball for China as a nation, with all this implies for a country ruled by a nationalistic authoritarian regime; they were a thinly-veiled celebration of the state. In this respect, I found the 2008 opening ceremonies eerily similar in tone to the 1936 games in Berlin.

All this is to say, I found China's ceremonial pleas for friendship and cooperation to be disingenuous. To the extent that a person, culture or political system preaches collectivism, its hostility to individual human life makes it necessarily "unfriendly" (to say the least). A friend is someone who shares our values, and one cannot genuinely befriend anyone who advocates the destruction of individual liberty for the sake of the state. A friendly nation is one that does not oppress and censor its citizens. No amount of fireworks or electronic displays could change that.

� Brandon Byrd, "China, Collectivism, and the Opening Ceremonies," NoodleFood, August 13, 2008.

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:56:32 -0700

Week of August 3, 2008

The only thing I want to know about a man is which side he would like his ancestors to have fought on at Marston Moor.

� Isaac Foot (by way of The Monarchist)

Freedom Quote of the Week

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:47:08 -0700

Week of July 27, 2008

Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

� H.L. Mencken

Let me state this as plainly as possible. The enemy is the state. There are other enemies too, but none so fearsome, destructive, dangerous, or culturally and economically debilitating. No matter what other proximate enemy you can name � big business, unions, victim lobbies, foreign lobbies, medical cartels, religious groups, classes, city dwellers, farmers, left-wing professors, right-wing blue-collar workers, or even bankers and arms merchants � none are as horrible as the hydra known as the leviathan state. If you understand this point � and only this point � you can understand the core of libertarian strategy.

� Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., "The Enemy is Always the State," Mises Institute Daily Article, May 20, 2008.

AndrewRogers.net

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