End the War on Freedom

"If your state does not require me to do or pay anything, except voluntary fee for service, and does not forbid me from doing anything that does not harm a non-consenting person or their property, I have no problem with it. Not really a state then, though, is it?" -- Bill St. Clair

"My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!" -- Harry S. Truman

From Brian Bowman:

"When a child hits a child, we call it aggression. When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility. When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault. When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline." -- Haim G. Ginott

From TLE:

Have you ever watched a snake eat? As it swallows its prey whole, the jaw stretches wide open. The bottom jaw separates at the chin so that each half can work somewhat independently. Then one side will slide forward a ways, then pull backwards while the other half slides forward. The snake's teeth are backwards curving so that the prey will only move in one direction; down the snake's throat. This is similar to our situation. The Democrats are the left jaw and the Republicans are the right. Bureaucracy and counterfeit "laws" are the top jaw, pressing down on us. Any evidence that they are not all part of the same snake's mouth are an illusion. First one party gets into office and slides forward, then waits when the other party gains control. It is a dance of death for us, the prey. Slowly, inexorably leading straight down into the belly of the beast.

--Kent McManigal

From TMM:

"How many Carl Dregas does it take to change a tyranny?" -- Bill St. Clair

From GeekWithA.45:

"Obama. Longest lame duck presidency. Ever." -- GeekWithA.45

From Ceres, Chapter Forty-Three by L. Neil Smith:

You can discover everything you need to know, about a people or their culture, simply from their attitude toward torture. Any group or nation with a policy that encourages—or even tolerates—torture is worse than any evil it claims to be fighting.

The ends do not justify the means. The means help to insure that the ends are just.

--The Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu

From Twitter:

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged." -- G.K. Chesterton

From Twitter:

"Regarding the Obamacare Cash for Cloture Vote: One small step for the US Senate. One giant leap for Karl Marx." -- Stephen Gordon

From Ceres, Chapter 39, by L. Neil Smith:

A person had better be prepared to defend himself in this world, because, thanks mostly to the laws of Physics, nobody—not your neighbors, not your friends, not even your family, and especially not the police—can be counted on to be there when you need them.

I’ve repeated this observation many times in speeches I’ve given over the years. When the day comes that someone in the audience asks me, “What’s the police?”, I’ll know that someone was listening.

—The Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu

Posted here:

"If the law is just, juries will naturally rule on the facts of the case. The criminal nature of intentional physical harm to person or property, and theft of property, by force or fraud, is nearly universally agreed upon. The common law has little to fear from nullification. The problem arises only when legislators criminalize failure to obey their statutes, many of which (every tax statute, every gun statute, every drug statute, every registration and licensing statute) are themselves criminal. These statutes could not be enforced if juries were told of their age-old right and duty to judge the alleged law as well as the alleged law-breaker. May it become so." -- Bill St. Clair

From Twitter:

"If there's anything a public servant hates to do it's something for the public." -- Anonymous

From Classical Liberalism: Fail:

"People create orderly markets through cooperation, and are eager to do so. Where there is no free market, people will risk a great deal to create a black market - called black by those scum in government who aren't getting their cut. But really a golden market, a market of free and equal sovereigns cooperating in finding market clearing prices." -- Jim Davidson

From lew:

"The state is a coercive monopoly managed by a huge committee (of parasites) and populated by those who consume looted wealth and produce bads (e.g. murder, disorder, war, victimless criminal statutes) instead of goods." --David Calderwood

"The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects -- his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity." -- Henry Hazlitt

From tmm:

"... it is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state." -- Bruce Schneier

From this speech on receiving the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism at Harvard University's Memorial Church:

"Faith is something we have to embrace. Faith in God means believing, absolutely, in something, with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are the true believers."

-- Joss Whedon

From Twitter:

"A depression is a recession that the government tried to fix." -- Grover Norquist

From Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand:

"Are we to understand," asked the judge, " that you hold your own interests above the interests of the public?"

"I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society of cannibals."

From Ceres, by L. Neil Smith:

Visitors from Earth often ask me why Pallatians have no flag. We have no flag for the same reason West America, the Moon, and Mars have no flag, for the same reason Ceres never will. Flags are the calling-card of plunderers, rapists, and murderers in funny hats and clown-suits, pretending to be benefactors, protectors, and healers. If history demonstrates anything more clearly than that, I don’t know what it is.

We would no more have a flag than we would have a king, a President, a Prime Minister, or any of the stuff that comes with them. If you ever hear that Pallas has adopted a flag, you will understand that Pallatians are no longer a free people.

—The Diaries of Rosalie Frazier Ngu