End the War on Freedom

This page is a compendium of quotes that I liked when I copied them here. Enjoy!

From the 1/18/00 issue of the Federalist Digest:

"Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: -- 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." --The Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963. {} "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." --from a Birmingham jail. {} "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." --in Detroit. {} "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." --Strength to Love, Ch. 3. {} "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concern for the broader concern of all humanity." {} "When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!' "
--Martin Luther King

From an article by Tibor R. Machan in the December 20, 1999 issue of The Laissez Faire City Times

Helping the poor and the unfortunate must, in a free society, be the function of personal goodwill leading to generosity, charity, compassion and the like. Taking a gun, putting it to Peter's head and then dipping into his pockets to lift some loot to help out Paul is not the answer, however well entrenched folks are in the belief that it is.

The problem is that even in America most folks just haven't figured out how unusual are the Founding ideas, those in the US Declaration of Independence. To really appreciate that everyone has the basic, unalienable right to his or her life, liberty and pursuit of happiness requires casting aside some ancient notions. No, you do not belong to your society or tribe or race or class but your life is yours to govern. And that means that what belongs to you is also yours to govern. So when the government and its apologists say that you must pay them part of your income in order to be able to work and live, that amounts to extortion, nothing less.

Please listen to the political candidates and at least consider that when they bicker about how much of our income they will take from us, they are debating a detail about how to legally rob us of what belongs to us. It is about time that some serious, viable candidate raises the issue-hinted at here and there when we are told that a surplus should be returned to us because it belongs to us to start with-whether taxation is even consistent with the fundamental values of the American political system.

Now that would make for an issue-oriented campaign.

From J. Orlin Grabbe's In Praise of Chaos. All emphasis is his:

You don't fight chaos any more than you fight evil. "Give evil nothing to oppose, and it will disappear by itself" (Tao Teh King, Chapter 60). Or as Jack Kerouac said in Dr. Sax: "The universe disposes of its own evil." Again the reason is a principal of balance: You are controlled by what you love and what you hate. But hate is the stronger emotion. Those who fight evil necessarily take on the characteristics of the enemy and become evil themselves. Organized sin and organized sin-fighting are two sides of the same corporate coin.
...
More generally, the second school has generated whole industries of "problem solvers"-- politicians, bureaucrats, demagogues, counselors, and charity workers who have found the way to power, fame, and wealth lies in championing causes and mucking about in other people's lives. Whatever their motivations, they operate as parasites and vampires who are healthy only when others are sick, whose well-being increases in direct proportion to other people's misery, and whose method of operation is to give the appearance of working on the problems of others. Of course if the problems they champion were actually solved, they would be out of a job. Hence they are really interested in the process of "solving" problems--not in actual solutions. They create chaos and destruction under the pretense of chaos control and elimination.
...
It is an approach centered in the here and now. You cannot foresee the future, so you must look at the present. But because "nothing is certain, nothing is impossible" (Rules of Chaos). You are free and nobody belongs to you. In the opening paragraphs of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller says: "It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."

Your first responsibility is to take care of yourself, so you won't be a burden to other people. If you don't do at least that, how can you be so arrogant as to think you can help others? You make progress by adapting to your own nature. In Rabelais' Gargantua the Abbey of Theleme had the motto: Fay ce que vouldras, or "Do as you will." Rabelais (unlike the Book of Judges) treats this in a very positive light. The implication is: Don't go seeking after some ideal far removed from your own needs. Don't get involved in some crusade to save the human race--because you falsely think that is the noble thing to do--when what you may really want to do, if you are honest with yourself, is to stay home, grow vegetables, and sell them in a roadside market. (Growing vegetables is, after all, real growth--more so than some New Age conceptions.) You have no obligation under the sun other than to discover your real needs, to fulfill them, and to rejoice in doing so.

In this approach you give other people the right to make their own choices, but you also hold them responsible for the consequences. Most social "problems", after all, are a function of the choices people make, and are therefore insolvable in principle, except by coercion. One is not under any obligation to make up for the effects of other people's decisions. If, for example, people (poor or rich, educated or not) have children they can't care for or feed, one has no responsibility to make up for their negligence or to take on one's own shoulders responsibility for the consequent suffering. You can, if you wish, if you want to become a martyr. If you are looking to become a martyr, the world will gladly oblige, and then calmly carry on as before, the "problems" unaltered.

One may, of course, choose to help the rest of the world to the extent that one is able, assuming one knows how. But it is a choice, not an obligation. Modern political correctness and prostituted religion have tried to turn all of what used to be considered virtues into social obligations. Not that anyone is expected to really practice what they preach; rather it is intended they feel guilty for not doing so, and once the guilt trip is underway, their behavior can be manipulated for political purposes.
...
Today, in Aspen, Eris says: I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.

From the 12/14/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

The 1999 White House "December Holiday" greeting card inscription:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

..and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2000, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)

--a member

From p. 8 of the January 2000 issue of Liberty magazine:

Let's see. What's happenning in the presidential race?

GOP-nominee-to-be George W. Bush is in hot water for failing to be able to name the heads of state of three coutries and a region in Russia. Al Gore is under attack for hiring a highly-paid consultant to teach him how to be a "man". And Pat Buchanan is denounced as "pro-Hitler" because he doubted the wisdom of the United States' entering World War II.

Meanwhile, scant attention is paid to either of two subjects -- the two subjects -- that are genuinely relevant in choosing a president: character and beliefs.

No one cares that Pat Buchanan is a bully who still takes pleasure in recalling the unprovoked physical attacks he made on others as a young man. No one cares that George W. spent his college days partying, failing even to notice the Vietnam war. Or that he spent the first two decades of his adulthood strung out on drugs (aside from the question of whether the drug of choice was alcohol or cocaine). Or that his "career" as a businessman was largely a matter of exploiting his rich and politically powerful father's connections. Or that the one really profitable business deal that he was involved in derived virtually all its profit from a huge raid on the public treasury. And no one cares the Al Gore grew up in a luxury hotel without a clue about how ordinary Americans live, or that he made much of his fortune by cashing checks from international swindler Armand Hammer.

Nor does anyone care that Gore and Bill Bradley advocate the virtual destruction of the market system in the name of protecting the environment or ameliorating poverty. Or that Buchanan wants to end free trade, thereby harming virtually everyone in the world. Or that Bush has virtually no stands on any issue at all.

If politics were really a serious business, of course, the indifference of the press and the people to such serious issues would also be a serious matter. But politics is not drama. It is a comic sideshow. And we should no more expect politicians to be men of character or wisdom than we should expect a porn star to recite Shakespeare's sonnets or a sword-swallower to lecture in fluent Sumarian.

--Chester Alan Arthur

Quoted in the 12/10/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

Neither the agreements associated with the World Trade Organization nor those associated with the North America Free Trade Agreement is truly free trade. These agreements contain thousands of pages of specifications. You don't need thousands of pages to tell people they can trade freely. Here's a free trade agreement I like. It's from Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution: 'No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.' That's an agreement that helped make us a rich nation and, if applied to the world, we and everybody else would be richer.
--Walter Williams

Phil Gramm once said to a liberal adversary: "The problem is people in Washington don't love our children as much as we do." The adversary responded, "Senator, I think I love your children every bit as much as you do." Gramm shot back, "Oh yeah? What are their names?"
--Dick Armey

The goal for the remainder of Al Gore's campaign is to be less stiff. That should have been Clinton's goal.
--Jay Leno

From this page at Charles Curley's Political Page:

What's the difference between the IRS and the KGB? The KGB doesn't expect you to provide the evidence against you.

From the November 28 column by Vin Suprynowicz, likely eventually available here at The Libertarian:

If the federal government wanted to protect us from costly, counterproductive monopolies, they would surely allow me to open a gold-only bank advertising: "Proud to be uninsured and unregulated by the FDIC." They'd surely see to it that parents who manage to rescue their kids from the government monopoly schools received a full refund of all their state, local and federal tax payments which would otherwise have gone to fund those youth propaganda camps, thereby encouraging others to do the same.

(As a side benefit, this would stop as many as 30 percent of our young men from being doped up on Ritalin, Prozac, or Luvox by their school nurses, in institutions whose real motto should be "Just Say No to Drugs ... From Competing Providers.")

From the November 19 column by Vin Suprynowicz. To subscribe, send a message to vinsends-request@ezlink.com, including the word "subscribe" (with no quotation marks) in the "Subject" line.

It is an illusion that better laws will solve the problems of an agency that is long notorious for breaking any and all laws," concludes Mr. Bovard, author of the new book "Freedom in Chains." "The only truly effective reform is to shut down the IRS and get rid of the Byzantine tax code designed to allow politicians and bureaucrats to micro-manage the lives of American citizens."

Indeed, the time has come to get rid of the IRS and the complex, corrupt, punitive tax code it enforces. And no, I do not mean hanging some new name on the front of the buildings.

Lay them off. Send them all home. And replace the income tax with ... nothing.

Excise taxes and other federal revenues would still support a federal government of at least one third the size we have today -- which would still be more than three time as large as any envisioned or authorized by the framers of the United States Constitution, a blueprint for a sharply limited central government which each and every current member of Congress has already sworn a sacred oath to protect and defend.

Shut down the IRS. Do it now.

--Vin Supryowicz

Quoted in the 11/12/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

Washington's crusade against Microsoft has fulfilled its purpose, serving as a great lever to pry open the wallets of Silicon Valley. Where three years ago the technology plutocrats spent their surplus income on racing yachts and Ferraris and charity, now they patriotically send donations to Washington to support the fixer class and its retinue in the style to which it would like to become accustomed. Steve Case of AOL likes to say the future of technology will be decided in the political arena rather than the marketplace. Be careful what you wish for.
--Wall Street Journal

Quoted in the 11/12/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

Americans who value freedom had better be more concerned about the gun control crowd than the criminals. The criminals want your money. The Neo-Totalitarians want your Freedom.
--Charlie Reese

From the November 12, 1999 issue of Drug Sense Weekly:

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in organizations like governments, hospitals, large companies, school districts, etc. (i.e. bureaucracies), we often try other strategies. These can include the following:

• Buying a stronger whip.
• Changing riders. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
• Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
• Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
• Appointing a team to revive the dead horse.
• Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
• Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.
• Pass a resolution declaring that "this horse is not dead".
• Blaming the horse's parents.
• Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
• Declaring that, "No horse is too dead to beat."
• Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
• Do a study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
• Declare the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" dead.
• Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
• Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
• Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
• Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

--Craig Schneiderwent

From The Orange County Register's Liberty Online editorial page. The OCRegister doesn't make it easy to point to old stories, so I saved a copy of the whole article here.

There's a story about a famous economist visiting China, who came across some workers with shovels.

"What are you doing?" he asked the foreman.

"They're making a dam," the foreman replied.

"Why don't you get a steam shovel?" asked the economist.

"Well that would put these men out of job," came the answer.

"Oh," replied the economist. "I thought you wanted a dam. If it's a job you want, why not get them spoons?"

...

The fact is that Microsoft is not a monopoly. A real monopoly is a government protected entity, like the Postal Service or cable companies.

The Founding Fathers hated monopolies because they were unfair; they didn't give a chance to people who really could compete. But persecuting Microsoft doesn't help those people: it just makes the marketplace easier for those who can't compete.

Good companies, like Aol.com or stores like Wal-Mart, should be very afraid. The government is coming for them next.

--Timothy Sandefur

From the 11/9/99 issue of Lindsay Perigo's Politically Incorrect Show:

In Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, Howard Roark begins his courtroom defence by observing, "Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."

Nothing's changed, has it?

Mr Gates' proper response to this outrage would be to withdraw his products, close shop & tell this rotten, ungrateful world to get stuffed.

Quoted in the 11/9/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

These things I believe: That government should butt out. That freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant government will take it all away. That individual freedom demands individual responsibility. That government is (contrary to George W. Bush) not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil. That the executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid. That political parties have become close to meaningless. That government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away. That government should provide for the national defense and work to insure domestic tranquillity. That foreign trade should be fair rather than free. That America should be wary of foreign entanglements. That the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That guns do more than protect us from criminals; more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government. That states are the bulwark of our freedom. That states should have the right to secede from the Union. That once a year we should hang someone in government as an example to his fellows.
--Lyn Nofziger

From Jerry's Take on the Microsoft Decision: Wrong!

Indeed, most of these findings appear to have been written by Microsoft competitors, who, having shot themselves in the feet and legs, now want government Medicare to help them recover. If they can't get that, then they want the government to shoot their competitor "to level the playing field."
--Jerry Pournelle

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
--Napoleon Bonaparte.

Quoted in the 10/29/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

Let's suppose that Congress does vote to ban private ownership of handguns. From henceforth, the manufacture, sale and importation of handguns are forbidden by federal law. Why, that's a strategy that has worked wonders for illegal narcotics.
--Jill Labbe

From Letters to the editor in issue 58 of The Libertarian Enterprise:

It's been bothering me for quite some time that we can't call the "One party system" by something simple and yet truly descriptive. After many hours of frustration I finally found it.

COMUNAZI!

It says it all in one simple word. If anyone has a better one I'd sure like to hear it. Until then I shall refer to any member of that system as what I think is the most self descriptive new word in our language!

--Bill Hart

From an article written by William F. Buckley, Jr. and quoted here at Richard Cowan's Marijuana News:

The concluding lines of Cowan's statement belong in the golden stanzas of the library of freedom:

"One of the problems that the marijuana reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

From the October 7, 1999 episode of Lindsay Perigo's Politically Incorrect Show:

Government, it is acknowledged, has abused its citizens shockingly through the tax system & the vile IRD. Government, it is acknowledged, has left us defenceless against hoons & burglars while enriching itself & its bureaucracy at our expense. Government, it is acknowledged, has sponsored an apartheid gravy-train at our expense, creating a new parasitical elite of pseudo-mordi shysters. Yet this self-same government is then touted as the only possible vehicle for taking care of those who can't look after themselves. Are you nuts? As if government gives a damn! Government policies of bribing the votes of the reproductive with the money stolen from the productive have created the bulk of the problem in the first place: no-hopers breeding more no-hopers with your money & then your continuously being made to feel guilty because you haven't given enough. As if 40% taken at gunpoint is not enough already!

The introduction to every episode of Lindsay Perigo's Politically Incorrect Show:

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Tuesday October 12, proudly sponsored by Tuariki Tobacco Ltd, the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

In the October 12, 1999 issue of the Orange County Register:

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teen-age boys.
--P.J. O'Rourke

Quoted in the 10/5/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

The problem with the income tax is that it's there.
--Alan Keyes

Government is not the solution, but rather the cause of our problems.
--Ronald Reagan

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
--Reverend Henry Ward Beecher

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.
--Thomas Paine

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. --Noah Webster

From The Programmers' Stone, Day 7:

Now the cracks are really starting to show. We have achieved the dream of ages, and have abandoned the need to work for millions, freeing up their time to do want they would wish. Yet we see this as unemployment, and furthermore we keep millions working away in what used to be low-overhead jobs, just manipulating the tokens of an agrarian economic system. There are so many of these non-productive jobs that it is actually hard to see it, but every supermarket checkout operator, bank cashier, ticket inspector, financial advisor, tax collector, accountant and on and on is in fact engaged in non-productive labour. Only a tiny fraction of the population are doing any work necessary for the maintenance of our material lifestyles, yet still we believe ourselves to be in scarcity!

Quoted in the 10/5/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people' (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.
-- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to George Washington,15 February, 1791

From The Programmers' Stone, end of "Day 5":

So don't lock up your development environment to the point where changing anything at all requires every team member present to type in their passwords. Don't create or adopt a configuration management system that stops a developer dead at eight o'clock at night when he or she is on a roll but can't even book out a hackable file for read to try something out. Not only does this directly impede your project: it is also an emotionally painful experience that you dump on the most highly motivated animal in the commercial world - a programmer in Deep Hack Mode. What has this person done to hurt you?

From The Sun, October 1999, Sunbeams, p. 48:

A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are for.
--Grace Murray Hopper

From The Libertarian Enterprise number 56, article 8 by Victor Milan vicmilan@ix.netcom.com:

The great distinction:
A conservative is a socialist who worships order.
A liberal is a socialist who worships safety.

On a Schodack Septic Service truck:

We're number one in the number two business.

Jay Leno:

VP Al Gore was on Larry King Live last week. Here's my question: If Al Gore is on your show, can you still call it live?

Found at Café au Lait:

Have fun... and remember it's "research", not "playing around".
--Greg Guerin on the mrj-dev mailing list

Seen on a bumper sticker:

BEER. Helping ugly people have sex since 1862.

This one came in a Federalist Digest that I can't find on-line:

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty, and in that cause I am doing the very best I can.
--Barry Goldwater

This one came from the 9/3/99 issue of the Federalist Digest:

Paramilitary assaults against American citizens on April 19th, the anniversary of the opening shots of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord, are never a good idea.

From the September 19, 1999 issue of National Review, p. 16. This was the only thing I enjoyed in the whole issue, which is why I wrote "cancel" on the bill.

Subject: Texas A&M chemistry midterm exam. The following is an actual question given:

--Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof.

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

"First we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving.

I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions. Some state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in the volume in Hell, because Boyle's law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

(1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

(2) Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls, then the temperature and presure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Sheryl Atkinson during my freshman year, that "it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then (2) cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic."

The student got the only A.

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