LarkenRose | Someone told me about a recent Facebook poll, asking something like, "What would you do if you were President?" I find the question itself depressing, for several reasons. First of all, that anyone would want to be President is depressing. To want to be President means you think that, if given the power to control 300,000,000 people, you could make their lives better than if you just left them alone. What a fine combination of arrogance and insanity. Second, it's a safe bet that almost everyone who answers the question will feel noble and compassionate as they do so, describing all the ways in which they would use such power to help mankind. They don't understand that it is utterly impossible for "government" to help mankind, because all it ever does is initiate violence. You can't help mankind by adding more immoral violence into society.
FFF.org | The United States once had the finest health-care system in the world, one based on the principles of economic liberty and the free market. That changed in a big way in 1965, when liberal statist Lyndon Baines Johnson secured passage of Medicare and Medicaid, socialistic programs that provided “free” medical care for the poor and elderly.
CAFR1.com | I copied a communication sent to Arizona Legislative head - Judy Burges's office on 2/15/10 in reply to an email challenge she sent me on 02/13/10. No reply so far by email or return call. She threw out bait for me to walk in the door without the current factual data so I would be without ammunition and in my reply I brought out the tanks up front to have in hand for if and when I walked in the door. Oooops, I reversed the intended sting..
LarkenRose.com | There have been lots and lots of message flying around in the "patriot movement," screaming bloody murder about Obama's Commie-Care plan. Call your congressman! Write a nasty letter! Stand around holding a sign! Wildly jump up and down! Pull your hair out! But between all the "political action" alerts out there, I did see a few examples of what is a far better idea: "Let the stupid thing pass, and then ignore it."
It amazes us to hear accounts of the valor that liberty arouses in the hearts of those who defend it; but who could believe reports of what goes on every day among the inhabitants of some countries, who could really believe that one man alone may mistreat a hundred thousand and deprive them of their liberty? Who would credit such a report if he merely heard it, without being present to witness the event? And if this condition occurred only in distant lands and were reported to us, which one among us would not assume the tale to be imagined or invented, and not really true? Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome this single tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if the country refuses consent to its own enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing; there is no need that the country make an effort to do anything for itself provided it does nothing against itself. It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it. If it cost the people anything to recover its freedom, I should not urge action to this end, although there is nothing a human should hold more dear than the restoration of his own natural right, to change himself from a beast of burden back to a man, so to speak.
