Some On The Left Now Criticize The Students They Created, by Dennis Prager, at townhall.com. Here is an except from the article: “It is the left that created the moral monsters known as left-wing students who do not believe in free speech, let alone tolerance. It is the left that taught generations of Americans that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist and bigoted. It is the left that is anti-intellectual, teaching students to substitute feelings for reason.”
3 Lessons Learned From Wisconsin’s War On Foreign Butter, by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. People are fighting back against Government regulations on Butter. First they are going across state lines to purchase the butter they want. Some consumers are banding together to file a suit against the law which bans this foreign butter.
The breakdown of the rule of law leads to a breakdown of a civil society.
We define the rule of law as general rules, known in advance, and pertaining to the rulers as well as the ruled. Unfortunately the rule of law does not deter our politicians and government betters. They make micro managing laws that are so numerous we can’t possibly know them in advance. They act as a ruling aristocracy who are above the laws they make.
When we the masses don’t know the rules of the game, on the one hand, and see our rulers getting away with breaking them, on the other, we start to push back. At first we use our 1st amendment rights to free speech and peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The problem starts to escalate when this doesn’t produce a desired result. We then start to resist slowly at first. This leads to an escalation on the side of Government which than leads to a reciprocal escalation by us. We are now in an upward spiral of resistance – response – resistance.
Americans don’t like to be told what to do. Each person has a different level of tolerance toward Government coercion. More and more people are reaching their limit and we are witnessing the push back.
Although government has been usurping power for a century, it has really increased under the last three Presidents. President Obama has expanded the power of government more than Bush did and Bush expanded it more than Clinton did. The number of laws on the federal registry has grown so large, a motivated government lawyer can dig deep enough in the federal registry and find a law that you have broken. Where will this lead? I hope it can be resolved peacefully.
SOME EXAMPLES
Oklahoma Cops Find A New Way To Take People’s Money, at huffingtonpost.com. As bad as civil asset forfeiture laws are, this escalates it exponentially. The ability to seize assets by scanning a persons debit and bank cards at the spot of the arrest is against the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution.
–4th –The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
–5th–No person shall……. be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law;…..
People will not stand for this.
Ex Missouri Cop Gets 4 Years For Tasering Teen and Dropping Him On His Face, at kansascity.com. Watch this video. This teens heart stopped because the cop held the taser on him for more than 20 seconds. This was far longer than what his training taught him. He than cuffed and dragged the teen to the curb where he dropped him face first on the concrete. The teen was put into an induced coma to relieve brain damage. Read the details in the article and watch the video.
In war some of the rules of engagement tell our military guys they are not allowed to fire until fired upon. This is in a war zone. What are the rules of engagement for police? Shouldn’t it be at least what our military guys have to fight under? Police aren’t in a war zone even though we are constantly told they are. My friend retired early from law enforcement because he couldn’t believe that the new officers were being taught that everyone was a criminal. When he got in law enforcement he was taught that he was there to serve the public.
The cop in this video escalated this situation right from the start. He tried to intimidate this teen and look what happened. I know this sounds like Monday morning quarterbacking but he went all tough guy right away and there is no turning back once he decided to travel down that road. If you start out in a non threatening way, you can always escalate to another level.
At some point either the cops or we have to stop this upward spiral of resist – response – resist.
Watch the video below. The child was treated better by the gorilla than teen was treated by the cop.
What The IRS Just Revealed Should Start A Wave Of OUTRAGE, at allenwest.com. The IRS used its power to keep people from exercising their rights to “peaceably assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances“. Everyone is afraid of the IRS, ergo they can intimidate people easily. Even though working for the IRS isn’t a political position, there is an incentive for the IRS to protect big Government from anyone who wants to shrink it. Because if it wasn’t for big Government there would be no need for the IRS. Lois Lerner should be in jail, not enjoying her 6 figure “retirement” on the tax payers dime.
Wake Up America, by Andrew Napolitano, lewrockwell.com. Excerpt from the article. “Now the FBI wants access to everyone’s internet browser history, as long as its agents are looking for spies or terrorists; and again, it proposes that rather than present probable cause to a judge and seek a warrant as the Fourth Amendment requires, one FBI agent can be authorized to issue a search warrant to another.” Our congress is about to give the FBI this power! I’m reminded of a quote by Joseph Sobran; “The Constitution is no threat to our current form of government.”
Ugly Bloody Scenes In San Jose As Protesters Attack Trump Supporters Outside Rally, at washington.com. These are not protests against Trump (which are protected by the 1st amendment). These are rioters who are physically assaulting individuals and damaging private property, which is against the law. The cops stood and watched. Americans normally don’t act like this. This is how third world countries settle disputes.
Is the rule of law breaking down? You be the judge.
The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
How Michelle Obama’s Daughters Eat vs. The Rules She Has Set Down For Public School Kids, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The fact that the ruling elite don’t have to abide by the rules they impose on the benighted masses is one thing. The more important point is, a Government that has the power to make this mandate has too much power, and is therefore tyrannical.
Mayo Clinic To Bring A Medical Kiosk To An Employer Near You, by Jeff Hansel, at m.postbulliten.com. Health care “affordability” would have taken care of itself if politicians in the Democrat party would have passed legislation that moved healthcare toward a free market system instead of passing “The Affordable Care Act”. This article is an example of markets reducing costs and providing a better product for the consumer.
Obamacare Causes Wal-Mart To Cut Benefits For Some Part Time Workers, by John Lott, by johnrlott.blogspot.com. This is the opposite of what you read about in the above post regarding the Mayo Clinic. Government intervention in the free market produces outcomes that have higher costs and inferior products.
3D Printing Entire Homes And Neighborhoods May Be Just Around The Corner, by Michael Krieger, at libertyblitzkrieg.com. Technology is in the process of changing how we do things in ways we can’t even imagine. Technology is advancing faster than Government can regulate it (the fracking revolution is another example). This gives me hope that at some point, our current experiment with big government will someday be a chapter in history that people will read about and say, “what made them think that would work”.
Hong Kong Ranks First In Economic Freedom, The US Is Twelfth, at freetheworld.com. We were ranked second in ‘2000’ , but a decade of regulation, Fed counterfeiting, loss of property rights, and growth of Government has us cheering, “we’re number 12, we’re number 12”! We are not moving toward more individual, economic, and political freedom.
A Decade After Welcoming Wind, States Reconsider, by Sean Murphy, at eaglefordtexas.com. Here is a quote form the article, “Today, many of the same political leaders who initially welcomed the wind industry want to regulate it more tightly, even in red states like Oklahoma, where candidates regularly rail against government interference.” Politicians used Government subsidies and tax breaks to allow an industry to exist that would have probably had problems competing in a free market. Government picked the winner. Now they want to regulate an industry that wouldn’t have existed without the previous regulation. Here is my advice; repeal all regulations pertaining to wind, and allow the market to pick the winners and losers.
Reasons For Political Hope, by Bruce Thornton, at victorhanson.com. I know it’s hard to believe, but I am optimistic that freedom will win out over tyranny. It may not seem like it right now but there are signs that we are starting to wake up.
The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
What You Were Never Told About Obamacare, by Joseph Salerno, at economicpolicyjournal.com. We, the tax payer, are going to subsidize Health Insurance Companies, who would go bankrupt because of the rules under Obamacare. This is going to be a defacto single payer system.
Seven Nobel Laureats Indorse Increase In Minimum Wage, at economicpolicyjournal.com. When someone says, “economists say……” , ask what economist? Just because they are an “economist” doesn’t mean they are smarter than you about economics.
Who Has The Time And Motivation To Comprehend The Mess We’re In: Almost Nobody. by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com. This is some heavy lifting but it makes you think. Here is an excerpt from the article, “Very few people are willing to work hard enough to figure things out on their own. It’s so much easier to join Paul Krugman dancing around the fire of the Keynesian Cargo Cult, chanting “aggregate demand! Humba-Humba!” while waving dead chicken….”
"THE COORDINATION OF MENS ACTIVITIES THROUGH CENTRAL PLANNING OR THROUGH VOLUNTARY COOPERATION ARE ROADS GOING IN VERY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, THE FIRST TO SERFDOM AND POVERTY THE SECOND TO FREEDOM AND PLENTY."
"THERE IS NO SUBTLER, NO SURER MEANS OF OVERTURNING THE EXISTING BASIS OF SOCIETY THAN TO DEBAUCH THE CURRENCY. THE PROCESS ENGAGES ALL THE HIDDEN FORCES OF ECONOMIC LAW ON THE SIDE OF DESTRUCTION, AND DOES IT IN A MANNER WHICH NOT ONE MAN IN A MILLION IS ABLE TO DIAGNOSE."
Most Recent Quote
F.A. Hayek - "Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunity it provides for unforseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom."
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Matthew McCaffrey - "Building a freer society means winning the battle of ideas, not the empty contests put on by the central Government every four years. Freedom is never obtained by endorsing the least offensive applicant for the position of chief villain."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle system of property that is hampered, guided, and regulated by government is in itself contradictory and illogical. Any attempt to introduce it in earnest must lead to a crisis from which either Socialism or Capitalism alone can emerge."
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F. A. Hayek - "While it may not be difficult to destroy the spontaneous formations which are the indispensable bases of a free civilization. It may be beyond our power deliberately to reconstruct such a civilization once these foundations are destroyed."
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Murray Rothbard - "The market promotes and rewards the skills of production and voluntary cooperation. The Government enterprise promotes the skills of mass coercion and bureaucratic submission...and those who get to the top will be those with the most skill in that particular task."
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John Adams - "Government is instituted for the common good: for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people. And not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men..."
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Milton Friedman - "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
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Chris Rossini - "The state is a monster that destroys. Those who gain control of the levers, choose the targets."
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Murray Rothbard -"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics...but it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
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Murray Rothbard -"Democracy can be only a possible route toward a free society rather than an attribute of it. In a purely free society there would be nothing for democratic electors to vote about."
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Robert Bradley Jr. - "When Government tries to pick winners and losers, it typically picks losers. Why? Because the Free market consumers pick winners to leave the losers for Government."
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Benito Mussolini - "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Men must choose between the market economy and socialism....some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumer by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the Government by compulsion."
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F. A. Hayek - "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know, about what they imagine they can design."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Any intervention in the market (by the state) must direct resources away from how private owners would have employed them and toward how state officials and their economic advisers would like to see them employed."
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Henry Hazlitt - "The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible....the real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces."
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Murray Rothbard - "Whether or not man lives at the level of poverty or abundance depends upon the success that he and his ancestors have had in grappling with nature and in transforming naturally given resources into capital goods and consumers goods.... Free markets tend to lead to abundance for all of its participants.... violent intervention in the market and a hegemonic society tend to lead to general poverty."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Inflation and credit expansion are the means to obfuscate the fact that there prevails a nature-given scarcity of the material things on which the satisfaction of human wants depends. The main concern of capitalists private enterprise it to remove this scarcity as much as possible and to provide a continuously improving standard of living for an increasing population.....but however remarkable these improvements may be, there will always be a strict limit to the amount that can be consumed without reducing the capital available for the continuation and, even more, the expansion of production."
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Ludwig von Mises - " It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of Governments. Ideologically, it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."
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Murray Rothbard - "To reduce the working population while the consuming population remains undiminished is to lower the standard of living."
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Murray Rothbard - "Increasing the money supply confers no social benefit. It relieves no economic scarcity. It simply benefits some at the expense of others."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments, they must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe."
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Milton Friedman - "A society that puts equality- in the sense of equality of outcome- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests."
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F. A. Hayek - "It has already been suggested that it is not necessary, for the working of this free market capitalist system, that anybody should understand it. But people are not likely to let it work if they do not understand it."
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C. S. Lewis - "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
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Ludwig von Mises - "For the naive mind there is something miraculous in the issuance of fiat money. A magic word spoken by the Government creates out of nothing a thing which can be exchanged against any merchandize a man would like to get."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Many think that governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena....they maintain that the state is God."
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George Gilder - "Under capitalism, economic power flows not to the intellectual, who manipulates ideas and basks in their light, but to men who gives himself to his ideas and tests them with his own wealth and work."
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Thomas Sowell - "Perhaps the greatest achievement of market economies is in economizing on the amount of knowledge needed to produce a given economic result. That is also their greatest political vulnerability."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Anti capitalistic policies sabotage the operation of the capitalist system of the market economy. The failure of interventionism does not demonstrate the necessity of adopting socialism. It merely exposes the futility of interventionism. All those evils which the self-styled "progressives" interpret as evidence of the failure off capitalism are the outcome of their allegedly beneficial interference with the market."
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F.A. Hayek - "The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men."
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F. A. Hayek - "Planning, or central direction of economic activity, presupposes the existence of common ideals and common values; and the degree to which planning can be carried is limited to the extent to which agreement on such a common scale of values can be obtained or enforced."
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Thomas Sowell - "In political competition accurate knowledge has no decisive competitive advantage, because what is being sold is not an end result but a plausible belief about a complex process"
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Thomas Sowell - " Taxing away what other people have earned, in order to finance one's own moral adventures via social programs, is often depicted as a humanitarian endeavor, while allowing others the same freedom and dignity as oneself, so that they can make their own choices with their own earnings is considered pandering to greed. Greed for power is no less dangerous than greed for money, and has historically shed far more blood in the process."
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Peter Earle - "In a world of infinate desires and limited means, choices must be made; a study of history and economics reveals that, while markets make no promises, they never lie. The only choice is whether distribution, or redistribution as the case may be, is to be accomplished by the organic, apportioning hand of the price system, or by the corrupt, spoilative claw of states."
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Thomas Jefferson - "....To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with public debt....we must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude....if we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements.... if we can prevent the Government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
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F. A. Hayek - "The democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans."
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Jean Baptiste Say - "...The encouragement of mere consumption is no benefit to commerce, for the difficulty lies in supplying the means, not in stimulating the desire of consumption; and we have seen that production alone, furnishes those means. Thus, it is the aim of Good Government to stimulate production, of bad Government to encourage consumption."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments."
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Thomas Sowell - "What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials."
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Thomas Sowell - "The market is simply the freedom to choose among many existing or still to be created possibilities. The Government establishes an army or a post office as the answer to a given problem.... The diversity of personal tastes insures that no given institution will become the answer to a human problem in the market."
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Thomas Sowell - "Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics."
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Paul Craig Roberts - "We should all be thankful to the Soviets, because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."
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Alexis de Tocqueville - "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man, socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality, but notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
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George Gilder - "The Real Issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous "fairness", between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it'.
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Thomas Jefferson - "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
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Judge Leonard Hand - "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire, it cannot be preserved under the ideology of Government omnipotence."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
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H.L. Menken - "Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is an advance auction on the sale of stolen goods"
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F.A. Hayek - "Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's Government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Economics is the science of how we use social institutions such as private property and voluntary exchange on free markets to make the best use of scarce resources. The printing press tries to do away with scarcity."
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Thomas Sowell - "The God like approach to social policy ignores the diversity of values and the cost of agreement among human beings."
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Henry Hazlitt - "Whenever men are allowed liberty, and freedom of choice, they will make mistakes. Liberty is not a guarantee of omniscience. But neither are the mistakes of free men a valid excuse to take away their liberty, and impose Government controls in its stead, on the ground that all wisdom and disinterestedness resides in the people who are going to do the controlling."
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Thomas Sowell - "Nothing is easier than to confuse broader powers with deeper insight. But almost by definition, those with the broadest powers are the most remote from the specific knowledge needed for either deciding, or for knowing, the actual consequences of their decisions."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Credit expansion is the Government's foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether to finance lavish Government spending."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics."
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Chaderov - "Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by it's avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus in pulling society down it pulls itself down."
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Thomas Sowell - "If an informed citizenry is the foundation of democratic Government, than an uninformed citizenry is a danger."
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Thomas Sowell - "The free market works best when there is a level playing field but politicians win more votes by tilting the playing field to favor particular groups."
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Thomas Sowell - "However dramatic or attractive a particular vision may be, ultimately everyone must live in the world of reality. To the extent that reality has been filtered to fit a vision, this filtered information is a misleading guide to making decisions in an unforgiving reality, to which we must all adjust because it is not going to adjust to us."
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Thomas Sowell - "Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name "Social Justice"."
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Murray Rothbard - "Bureaucracy incompetent enough to plan a stationary system, is vastly more incompetent at planning a progressing one."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Freedom is incompatible with equality of wealth and income. Men are born unequal and it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization."
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Murray Rothbard - "Government subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation (plundering)."
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Francisco Capella - "The right of property is a negative right of noninterference. Humans do not have natural positive rights that imply that others must do something for them, and there is no natural duties towards others (present and future). Positive rights and duties arise by means of contracts."
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Victor Davis Hanson - "Social justice sees the Government's proper moral obligation not as ensuring equality out of the starting gate, but as guaranteeing that we will all reach the finish line at the same exact moment."
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F.A. Hayek - "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a Government with totalitarian powers."
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Thomas Sowell - "People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge."
"Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance."
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Thomas Sowell - "People have to be aware of the dangers in letting economic decisions be made through political processes."
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Winston Churchill - "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
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George Gilder - "Socialist and totalitarian Governments are doomed to support the past, because creativity is unpredictable, it is also uncontrollable. If the politicians want to have central planning and command, they can not have dynamism and life. A managed economy is almost by definition a barren one.
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George Gilder - "The ambitious agenda of contemporary liberalism simply ensures that Government will do nothing well, except to expand itself as an obstacle of growth and innovation. Government best supports the future by refraining as much as possible from trying unduly to shape it."
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Francisco Capella - "Markets are never perfect because human beings are limited in their abilities; proposing state fixes to alleged problems that individuals cannot solve freely seems to forget that the state is also made up of humans; and perhaps not the best ones. ( Bureaucrats are not disinterested angels, and the worst might get to the top.)"
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George Washington - "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force, like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I think we have more machinery of Government than is necessary, to many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I sincerely believe with you that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, it's but swindling futurity on a large scale."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
