The whole principle is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.
— Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon (1949), on censorship
Category Archives: Politics
Censorship for Babes <- Heinlein
The End of Law
The end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom.
— John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689)
Government Terrorism
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded.
Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
– General Douglas MacArthur, A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (1965)
Govern Yourself
I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe–‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. —Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)
Tyrannosaurus Debt
Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, “If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Attributes” (1856)
Destructive Unions
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
– Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
But Now You Know
Robbing Peter to Pay for Paul’s Vote
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.
– George Bernard Shaw, Everybody’s Political What’s What (1944)
But Now You Know
Fewer Laws
The US Code, only a subset of all laws and regulations on the books today. The US imprisons a higher percentage of its populace than Communist China does, more than Iran, more than did the Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or the Taliban's Afghanistan.
America needs fewer laws, not more prisons.
By trying to seize far more power than is necessary over American citizens, the federal government is destroying its own legitimacy.
We face a choice not of anarchy or authoritarianism, but a choice of limited government or unlimited government.
– James Bovard, Lost Rights; The Destruction of American Liberty
But Now You Know
Majority Delusions
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
— Alan Barth, The Loyalty of Free Men (1951)
Taxing the Fruit of Your Labor
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone’s labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities.
– Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia
But Now You Know
Natural Rights, Virginia-Style
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
— George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, (1776)
All War is Folly
All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones. When will Mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their Differences by Arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the Cast of a Dye, it would be better than by Fighting and destroying each other.
— Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Mary Hewson, Jan. 27. 1783
The People, Each and Every One
In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the “collective” right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms…The phrase “the people” meant the same thing in the Second Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments — that is, each and every free person.
A select militia defined as only the privileged class entitled to keep and bear arms was considered an anathema to a free society, in the same way that Americans denounced select spokesmen approved by the government as the only class entitled to the freedom of the press.
If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the 18th century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.
– Stephen P. Holbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right
Because the first two amendments of the Bill of Rights were not ratified, the right to keep and bear arms was actually number four in the original document
The Philosophy of Liberty
You Own Your Own Life…
To lose your Life is to lose your Future, to lose your Liberty is to lose your Present
…and to lose the product of your Life and Liberty is to lose that portion of your Past that produced it
A product of you Life and Liberty is your Property
— Ken Schoolland, The Philosophy of Liberty
Brainwashing the Children
When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already…What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.”
— Adolf Hitler, on Public Education, speech in November 1933
Majority Rule <- P.J. O'Rourke
Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule.
- Every meal would be a pizza.
- Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim.
- Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library.
- And – since women are a majority of the population- we’d all be married to Mel Gibson.
– P.J.O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores (1991)
But Now You Know
The Tyranny of the Majority, vs the Unanimity of Liberty
Capitalism is Unanimity
The political principle that underlies the market mechanism is unanimity. In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate.
— Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits, The New York Times Magazine
But Now You Know
The Tyranny of the Majority, vs the Unanimity of Liberty
Congress vs. the Bill of Rights
Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today?It wouldn’t even get out of committee.
– F. Lee Bailey, Newsweek, 17 April 1967
Proactive Government <- I Ching
The government that seems the most unwise,
Oft goodness to the people best supplies;
That which is meddling, touching everything,
Will work but ill, and disappointment bring.
– Tao Te Ching
Climate Bogeyman
Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than tribal wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. “Oh no, the Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me some silver and I’ll make him spit her out.”
– P.J.O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World
…Then How Can You Trust Them to Govern Others?
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him?
– Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Designs against Liberties <- John Locke
Till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir.
The examples of particular injustice, or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But if they universally have a persuation, grounded upon manifest evidence,that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general course and tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it?
–John Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government
Patriotism Be Not Blind
“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober”.
– G. K. Chesterton, A Defence of Patriotism
But Now You Know
How, Exactly, Are They Defending Our Freedom?
Minority Rights <- Ayn Rand
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
– Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
But Now You Know
Government as a Joke <- Will Rogers
I don’t make jokes, I just watch the government and report the facts.
– Will Rogers, Saturday Review (25 August 1962)
Wagging the Dog <- Plato
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
— Plato (Aristocles, son of Ariston) , “The Republic“
But Now You Know:
The Global War on Terror is a Lie
The Cost of Free Health Care
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
– P. J. O’Roarke, The Liberty Manifesto
But Now You Know:
Who Are the 47 Million Uninsured?
They’re Worse than Nothing
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
– H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, the Second Series1924
Freedom is Responsibility
Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man’s lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one’s self.
— Max Stirner
source unknown, please tell us if you know
The Rush to Pass Bad Laws
The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society’s advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.
— Albert Jay Nock “Our Enemy, the State“
Conscription is Slavery
Conscription is slavery, and I don’t think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can’t save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say: Let the damned thing go down the drain!
— Robert A. Heinlein, Guest of Honor Speech at the 29th World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, Washington (1961)
Coddling Stupidity
Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.
— William Godwin, An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, 1783
Words of the Sentient 