[Quotes About Liberty]

Why should you give a fig about liberty quotes?

Have you ever spoken with someone who has just discovered a new television show, and they’re going absolutely bananas about how you need to watch it too? “Oh, I just know you’re going to love The Foolish Man and the German Shepherd Dog,” they’ll coo. “I know the title sounds a little weird, but it stars an actor I love, and there’s this one episode where the German Shepherd Dog gets jam on his necktie before a big job interview that will split you in half with laughter!” And you kind of have to smile and promise you’ll watch it, and ask them to please stop touching you.

Libertarians are the same way about liberty. “Don’t you love liberty?” they will ask you. “Well, how would you like more liberty? Imagine how much more liberty everyone could have if we only did X, Y and Z! I love liberty so much I’d squirt it on my waffles every morning if only it were viscous instead of an abstract concept!”

But in the libertarian’s defense, liberty really is that good.

To be sure, no libertarian who hasn’t had key parts of their brain deactivated with giant magnets will argue that liberty should extend to harming others. “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins” is one of the foundational rules of libertarianism. No, liberty is about living your life the way you would like to.

Liberty can be very productive. Write a book that challenges the status quo effectively enough and you can compel people to voluntarily change their lives for the better. Explore a taboo theme in a great movie, and you won’t have to worry about puritans manifesting themselves outside of your house in order to burn it down. Challenge an aspiring tyrant’s claims and woo away their supporters – you may just prevent an atrocity.

Liberty can also be thoroughly unproductive. You may only wish to wear khaki shorts on the beach, drink cinnamon schnapps, and play terrible ukulele songs. You will torture fellow beachgoers’ ears by doing this and possibly bother some seagulls, but you will be happy. And free. And hungover throughout half of your lifetime, in all fairness, but the other half should be pleasant enough.

Never accept limits to your liberty in consideration of greater protection. The people offering you that protection are by far the most dangerous thing you will ever encounter. And although liberty must be earned by the hardest of people making the greatest of sacrifices, it is as vulnerable as a Fabergé egg in a daycare for children with inner ear infections. Forfeit even the tiniest little piece of it, and the despots, the bureaucrats, and the sadists who infest government will inevitably clamor for the next. And the next. And the next.

Give a mouse a cookie and he will ask for a glass of milk. With that, here are some of our favorite quotes about liberty.

Quotes About Liberty

“Give me liberty or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry, Speech to the Second Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
– George Orwell, Animal Farm (unused preface)

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood, the Busy‑Body, and Early Writings

“This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”
– Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty Of Man, Woman And Child

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, September 11, 1777

“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.”
– Benjamin Franklin, The New-England Courant, July 9, 1722

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”
– Milton Friedman, An Open Letter To Bill Bennett

“The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.”
– H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”
– Edmund Burke, Letter to M. de Menonville, 1789

“The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means for providing for the national defence, is one of those refinements, which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
– John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
– Samuel Adams

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
– Woodrow Wilson, Address to the New York Press Club, September 9, 1912

“In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”
– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
– Louis D. Brandeis, Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)

“Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world – ‘No, YOU move.’”
– Captain America, The Amazing Spider-Man: Civil War

“Every law that curbs my basic human freedom; every lie about the things I care for; every crime committed against me by their politics; that what’s makes me get up and hound these *******, and I’ll do that until the day I die … or until my brain dries up or something.”
– Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
– Bob Marley

And I keep on fighting for the things I want
Though I know that when you’re dead you can’t
I’d rather be a free man in my grave
Than living as a puppet or a slave
– Jimmy Cliff, “The Harder They Come”

Famous Liberty Quotes

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
– The US Declaration of Independence

“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”
– John Philpot Curran

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

“I would die to preserve the law upon a solid foundation; but take away liberty, and the foundation is destroyed.”
– Alexander Hamilton, A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress, December 15, 1774

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin

“Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
– John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, July 17, 1775

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”
– Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works – Volume XII

“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.”
– Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Kalamazoo, Michigan, August 27th, 1856

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Archibald Stuart, December 23, 1971

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”
– Nelson Mandela

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
– Ronald Reagan, Encroaching Control, March 30, 1961

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. The checks he endeavors to give it, however warrantable by ancient usage, will, more than probably, kindle a flame which may not easily be extinguished”
– George Washington, Letter to James Madison, March 2, 1788

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787

Famous Liberty Quotes That You’ll Want to Free up Some Time For originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Quotes from Atlas Shrugged]

“Eventually, the question you ask stops being ‘Who is John Galt?’ and becomes ‘When will John Galt shut up?'”
– Anonymous, not so subtly critiquing Galt’s 56-page long speech in Atlas Shrugged

Who is John Galt? And why should you care about Atlas Shrugged quotes?

Atlas Shrugged tells the story of Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive living in a United States that is on the verge of economic collapse. The government is increasingly expanding its control over private enterprise, choking it out of existence; Dagny’s friend and childhood love Francisco d’Anconia may soon lose his family’s copper company as the Mexican government nationalizes it; and Hank Rearden, who refuses to sell his revolutionary Rearden Metal to the government, subsequently learns his invention has been condemned by the same for no real reason.

To summarize the magnum opus of Ayn Rand – or spoil its ending by revealing Galt’s identity – in so few words would be a sin. The lengthy book is worth a cover-to-cover read for its extensive exploration of Objectivism, Rand’s own philosophy which conceives of man as a heroic being whose greatest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness: to make one’s life one’s own life. If you have ever bristled when bureaucrats demanded greater control over the private sector for the good of society, Atlas Shrugged will explain exactly why you felt that way.

Oddly enough, many people bristle at the mere mention of Ayn Rand. They may describe her as a reactionary, an extremist who categorically rejects any government interference in private life as the result of her having been exposed to the worst excesses of communism while growing up in Russia. One might argue in turn that Rand already saw the ending of the story and didn’t wish to see it again.

Again, please read the book – or, barring that, please read our own collection of Atlas Shrugged quotes.

Quotes from Atlas Shrugged

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.”

“What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.”

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish.”

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

“If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

“There is no such thing as a lousy job – only lousy men who don’t care to do it.”

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.”

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”

“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.”

“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.”

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.”

“Whatever it was, he thought, whatever the strain and the agony, they were worth it, because they had made him reach this day – this day when the first heat of the first order of Rearden Metal had been poured, to become rails for Taggart Transcontinental.”

“Every man builds his world in his own image… He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”

“I thought that any human being who accepts the help of another, knows that good will is the giver’s only motive and that good will is the payment he owes in return. But I see that I was wrong. You were getting your food unearned and you concluded that affection did not have to be earned, either. You concluded that I was the safest person in the world for you to spit on, precisely because I held you by the throat. You concluded that I wouldn’t want to remind you of it and that I would be tied by the fear of hurting your feelings. All right, let’s get it straight: you’re an object of charity who’s exhausted his credit long ago.”

“I don’t like people who speak or think in terms of gaining anybody’s confidence. If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not.”

“We never make assertions, Miss Taggart,” said Hugh Akston. “That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell – we show.”

“We do not claim – we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw – we can help you to name it, but not to accept it – the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours.”

“Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It’s resentment of another man’s achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their own – they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal –  for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them – while you’d give a year of your life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them.”

John Galt Quotes

“For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and if you wish to know why you are perishing – you who dread knowledge – I am the man who will now tell you.”

“Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.”

“Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non contradictory joy – a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.”

“The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral symbol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values, not by loot, are traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the undeserved. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does he ask to be loved for his flaws, A trader does not squander his body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values of his spirit – his love, his friendship, his esteem – except in payment and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish pleasure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic parasites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the entity they dread – a man of justice.”

“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think – not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment – on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict ‘It is.'”

“Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking – that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action – that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise – that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality – that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind – that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.”

“Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice – and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man – by choice; he has to hold his life as a value – by choice; he has to learn to sustain it – by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues – by choice.”

“This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice: thinking or non-thinking, existence or non-existence, A or non-A, entity or zero.”

“When a mystic declares that he feels the existence of a power superior to reason, he feels it all right, but that power is not an omniscient superspirit of the universe, it is the consciousness of any passer-by to whom he has surrendered his own. A mystic is driven by the urge to impress, to cheat, to flatter, to deceive, to force that omnipotent consciousness of others. ‘They’ are his only key to reality, he feels that he cannot exist save by harnessing their mysterious power and extorting their unaccountable consent, ‘They’ are his only means of perception and, like a blind man who depends on the sight of a dog, he feels he must leash them in order to live. To control the consciousness of others becomes his only passion; power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists – and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason – Purpose – Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge – Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve – Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.”

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law. But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested  with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.”

“I swear – by my life and my love of it – that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

Dagny Taggart Quotes

“But you don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to see through the eyes of others, hold onto yours, stand on your own judgment, you know that what is, is – say it aloud, like the holiest of prayers, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds from the actions of their bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts, and reality to values – those who make steel, railroads and happiness. And to such among you who hate the thought of human joy, who wish to see men’s life as chronic suffering and failure, who wish men to apologize for happiness – or for success, or ability, or achievement, or wealth – to such among you, I am now saying: I wanted him, I had him, I was happy, I had known joy, a pure, full, guiltless joy, the joy you dread to hear confessed by any human being, the joy of which your only knowledge is in your hatred for those who are worthy of reaching it. Well, hate me, then – because I reached it!”

“Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unfeeling,’ he means that that person is just. He means that that person has no causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does not deserve. He means that ‘to feel’ is to go against reason, against moral values, against reality.”

“But this – she thought – was men’s moral code in the outer world, a code that told them to act on the premise of one another’s weakness, deceit and stupidity, and this was the pattern of their lives, this struggle through a fog of the pretended and unacknowledged, this belief that facts are not solid or final, this state where, denying any form to reality, men stumble through life, unreal and unformed, and die having never been born. Here – she thought, looking down through green branches at the glittering roofs of the valley – one dealt with men as clear and firm as sun and rocks, and the immense lightheartedness of her relief came from the knowledge that no battle was hard, no decision was dangerous where there was no soggy uncertainty, no shapeless evasion to encounter.”

“I’m not going to help you pretend – by arguing with you – that the reality you’re talking about is not what it is, that there’s still a way to make it work and to save your neck. There isn’t.”

Final Thoughts

There are two types of reactions to Atlas Shrugged quotes. The first is to take immense inspiration from the notion that man is the master of his own destiny, and ought to feel no pang of guilt for not curbing his loftiest ambitions. The second is to run crying to your drum circle because the writer lady said mean things about socialists. Which reaction did you have?

John Galt Quotes, Dagny Taggart Quotes, and More from Atlas Shrugged originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on LibertasBella.com.

[China Buying U.S. Land: How Much Land Does China Own in the U.S.?]

The People’s Republic of China isn’t exactly a favorite of the American public. Since the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak of early 2020, Americans are questioning whether or not all of that cheap plastic junk from Wal-Mart doesn’t come with a hidden cost.

It’s not just about the virus: There is also the spectre of deindustrialization, which has been a social disaster for the United States, particularly the rust belt. What’s more, Tucker Carlson and others reported during the early days of the Wuhan Coronavirus outbreak that the United States was dependent on China for basic medical supplies, such as penicillin.

Carlson’s comments are incredibly important, especially when we begin drilling down further into just how reliant the United States is on China: 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of all active ingredients in American pharmaceuticals come from China. In 2017 alone, the United States imported a whopping $4.6 billion in foodstuffs from the People’s Republic of China.

The corporate press has largely been silent on this matter, which isn’t surprising: They have a long history of sympathy for the People’s Republic of China and virtually all enemies of America and liberty. But there is also a deep presence by the People’s Republic of China in the United States, both in our media and in our economy, specifically in the real estate market.

If it sounds insane to you that United States laws allow a hostile foreign power to own both media and land in this country, well, you’re not alone. And while it might sound like we’re making a mountain out of a molehill, if you read the following article you will probably be amazed at just how deep the rabbithole of Chinese influence in the American media and economy goes.

This is nothing less than the defining national security issue of our age.

China Buying U.S. Land: How Much Land Does China Own in the U.S.?

American prosperity has largely been built on a dual foundation: cheap land, expensive labor. Until Ted Kennedy’s Immigration Act of 1965, Ronald Reagan’s Amnesty of 1986 and NAFTA opened up the floodgates of Third World immigration (both legal and illegal) this formula basically held firm.

When there was not enough labor, employers had to pay more rather than simply importing massive amounts of cheap labor from countries with little in the way of worker protections.

The same laws allowing for a massive influx of cheap labor have also destabilized the American real estate market: More buyers means more demand means higher prices for those looking to buy a home.

There are a myriad of social consequences from this, chief among them that family formation is more expensive and thus less attainable for the average young American worker in the 21st Century than it was in years past.

But beyond this, there is the problem of allowing foreign nationals to own real estate in the United States, a practice that is outlawed in a number of countries. Where foreign nationals are allowed to own real estate, there are often restrictions on where they can buy and how much they can own.

The reasons for this hardly need explaining, but we will do so anyway: First, the citizens of a nation have first claim on the land there. Second, it is potentially dangerous to allow too much of a nation’s land to fall into the hands of foreigners.

Currently 30 million acres of American farmland is owned by foreign investors or fully 2.2 percent of all American farmland. For context, that’s an area roughly the size of Mississippi or Pennsylvania These are effectively absentee landlords who own some of the best real estate in the United States.

For its part, China owned 191,000 acres worth $1.9 billion as of 2019. This might not sound like a lot, but Chinese ownership of American farmland has exploded dramatically over the last decade. Indeed, there has been a tenfold expansion of Chinese ownership of farmland in the United States in less than a decade.

Six states — Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota and Oklahoma — currently ban foreign ownership of farmland.

Massive Chinese investment in American farmland is troubling for one very obvious reason: It puts the food security of the nation in the hands of a hostile foreign power. But there is also the social cost of allowing foreign buyers who have effectively unlimited resources to compete on the real estate market with smaller domestic buyers.

It is understandable if no one reading this has any tears to shed for Big Aggie, but the real victims of this are smaller landholders. For those concerned about environmental issues, ask yourself who is more likely to practice good stewardship of the land — American farmers or Chinese bureaucrats thousands of miles away.

Chinese Real Estate Investors in the U.S.

In addition to their farmland holdings, China owns more residential real estate than any other foreign country, which has a significant impact on the real estate market on the West Coast. Sound far-fetched?

According to Market Watch, “Chinese buyers accounted for roughly 25 percent of total foreign investment in U.S. residential real estate.” Canada was far behind at a relatively scant 9 percent.

The article specifically mentions Chinese investment in California real estate as a driving force behind high housing prices in the Golden State. It’s worth noting that many of these properties are owned as rental properties by absentee landlords. Again, who is going to care more about the quality of tenant life?

An American down the street or a Chinese bureaucrat thousands of miles away?

To continue reading China “Pwns” Us: How the Chinese Are Buying Up America, please visit Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Defining a Libertarian]

The Libertarian vs. Liberal debate is confusing for some, but once you understand it, it’s clear as day. While both of these political thought processes have some areas that overlap, you’ll soon understand the fundamental differences between the history, modernization, and 20th century belief systems behind them.

Defining a Libertarian

The foundation of Libertarianism is that liberty is the most critical political value to uphold. Liberty means that you have the freedom to make your own choices in your life no matter what. Others are not able to control you or interfere in your life, and you should not interfere in theirs either.

Libertarians believe that this attitude will create a cosmopolitan society united by mutual respect rather than divided by nationalistic belief systems that create ripples in our society.

In a Libertarian world, you’re free to try whatever you want, implement new ideas, live life on your own terms, and live truly free as long as those freedoms do not interfere with the freedoms of anyone else.

Since we are all moral equals, no one person has the right to be more powerful than the other. This is where Libertarianism conflicts with the two-party system we have in our American society today.

Libertarians see the government as a threat to our liberty because they are. Regardless of which side you’re on, either party possesses some form of totalitarian control over certain aspects of our lives.

If you’re a liberal, you believe that the government should have control over your money, how much you pay in taxes, how you get your healthcare, and where you go to school.

If you’re a conservative, you believe that the government should have control over who accesses the country, what happens to criminals, what drugs you can take, what religion you can practice, and who you should marry.

Of course, those are blanket statements that might be a little extreme, but that’s an overall look at it. Libertarians believe that we should have control over all these areas. The government shouldn’t have any involvement in these areas because that will infringe on our ability to maintain a free society.

Defining a Liberal

The modern Liberal believes in equality and much of that thinking is based off the overall foundation of the ideology and political stance. Liberalism stands for increased personal rights and the general foundation of their beliefs are:

Individual rights

Democracy

Gender equality

Racial equality

Internationalism

Freedom of speech

Freedom of religion

More responsibility on the government

Less responsibility on the individual

Liberalism grew in popularity during the Age of Enlightenment when Western philosophers and economists started to pull away from traditional Conservatism, promoting free markets and free trade.

In reality, traditional Liberalism is much different from modern Liberalism in the United States. The word “liber” means “free” in Latin, which stands for the free markets and free trade that these people believed in at the time.

This is quite contrasting from the modern-day liberals who believe that the government should have more control and more intervention in the operation of our economy and world markets.

Difference Between Liberal and Libertarian

Let’s apply modern Liberals vs. Libertarians to the issues we face today. We’ve seen many questions arise in recent years about what makes a utopian society and what we need to practice to get as close to that as possible.

Even when a Libertarian agrees with one party on an issue, they have very different reasons as to why they agree. For example, some might think that Libertarians lean towards Conservatives on immigration. While that is true, there are many different reasons for that.

Libertarian vs. Liberal on the Economy

Libertarian: Libertarians believe that the government shouldn’t stand in the way of any transaction between two parties, and here’s why. Both people generally have something to gain in every transaction.

They understand the importance of market participants and how it impacts the prices of goods and services. When there are strict regulations put in place, the system generally favors larger companies over smaller, newer ones.

Liberal: In terms of economic issues, Liberals tend to favor more government control in this area. They would prefer the government to determine what people get paid, when they get paid, and how they get paid.

By doing this, Liberals believe that it will create more equality, help lift more people out of poverty, and be better for the greater good. While this sounds great, it’s a nightmare for Libertarians and American Republicans.

The opposing forces believe that mandated wages will result in a crippling economy because the people at the top will not be able to support the higher wages. This break down will eventually result in layoffs and a falling stock market.

Liberal vs. Libertarian on Foreign Policy

Libertarian: Foreign policy is the area that unites most Libertarians, and it’s the clearest of all their belief systems. They believe that war is never the option because it creates widespread death, destruction, violates civil liberties, and encourages a nationalist way of thinking.

This policy directly contradicts the conservative way of thinking where the military is one of the most important factors in their party.

Libertarians believe in individual freedom and individual liberty, which cannot coincide with the process of recruiting, drafting, training, and treating people like soldiers fighting for the social and economic freedom of the county as a whole.

They believe that war is a last resort and that it’s never our purpose to interfere in foreign relations because it’s up to the individual to resolve their own problems.

Liberal: Here is another area where Liberals believe that it’s the responsibility of the American government to interfere in foreign relations. Liberalism believes that we need to send foreign aid because it’s our moral responsibility, and it’s not up to us to judge the opposing democracy; we simply need to help.

Liberals vs. Libertarians on Crime

Libertarian: They have a unique take on criminal justice. If we look at the immense overpopulation of American prisons, we need to understand why we have so many more people incarcerated compared to every other country in the world.

They believe that we need to stop sending people to jail for using drugs because the limited government shouldn’t have control over what substances people use in the first place. We should also look at the penalties for severe crimes like assault and murder.

We need to address the process of “rehabilitating” criminals and whether or not we’re actually making a difference in the lives of those incarcerated and the lives of those on the outside affected by the criminal.

Overcriminalization is a clear-cut issue, and we’ve created too many laws and regulations that strip our liberty and create unequal separations between those in power and the average layman.

Liberal: Here is an interesting area where things flip in modern politics. While we generally believe that Conservatives feel that less government control is better, here’s where they prefer the government to step in and take the wheel.

Liberalism takes a soft approach and tries to see the good in all people, where Conservatism sees criminals as threats to society who must be eradicated because they’re threatening the freedom of everyone else.

Liberalism vs. Libertarianism on Immigration

Libertarian: This party believes that free movement and trade should have no border, and anyone should be allowed to morally move products and services across country lines. If you’re trying to do so ethically, there shouldn’t be any bureaucratic interference, such as tariffs, regulations, or duties.

Economists studying this philosophy believe that the world GDP would double, resulting in more international trade, a larger pool of qualified candidates for trade, and a wealthier world as a result.

The less interference the government has in trade, the better opportunities there are for the individual to create wealth.

That said, Libertarians understand the potential economic impact of immigration and how it can “suck the well dry,” so to speak, but the Conservative mentality of immigrants coming to the country to live off the welfare state and take our jobs doesn’t hold any weight in a Libertarian society.

Liberal: This is another situation where Liberals prefer to step back and let nature work itself out. Liberals believe in open-borders and that we have no right to control who comes or goes from our country. As you can likely tell, this is considered highly reckless to both Conservatives and Libertarians. Conservatives believe that it’s our responsibility to think of our own citizens first, and we need to protect our borders to keep ourselves safe.

Libertarians vs. Liberals on Civil Rights

Libertarian: Our government allows citizens a certain number of rights provided they can conduct themselves responsibly. For example, the second amendment is the “right to bear arms.” As a citizen, each person has the right to own a gun provided they do not use it to recklessly harm others.

Libertarians feel that these amendments only make sense in a democratic society where the government needs to provide you with them in the first place.

In a Libertarian society, the philosophy believes that all people should be protected by these rights regardless of their social status or group membership. Some of these rights include:

Right to privacy from surveillance

Right to protest

Right to access government documents

Right to marry who you please

Freedom to do with your body as you choose

Here is a key difference between Libertarian and Liberal. The bolded point at the end also applies to the doctors and facilities who would conduct the procedure. That’s the foundation of the Libertarian belief system. It’s that no one person’s rights can infringe on the rights of another, no matter what.

If an individual desires an abortion, they can do so, but they cannot take legal action against a doctor or business that refuses to do so because it’s their right to deny you.

The same applies to same-sex marriage. You have the right to marry who you want, but you cannot attempt to take legal action or smear the reputation of a church leader or business that doesn’t want to participate in the union.

Liberal: This is the area where freedoms tend to compound, and the original foundation of Liberalism comes into play. Liberals believe that the individual should have the right to do with their lives as they please. This means they can marry who they like, do with their bodies as they choose, and right for their rights if they feel they’ve been mistreated.

The belief system might sound the same as the Libertarianism version, but there’s a fundamental difference here.

Liberals believe that everyone should share these beliefs and that it’s up to the government to enforce this. For example, while Liberals believe that same-sex marriage is a right, they think that the government needs to force these beliefs on everyone.

Libertarians believe that everyone has the right to see it through their own lens, and no one person should force their beliefs on someone because it strips away their own personal liberty and rights to freedom.

Liberals vs. Libertarians on Health Care

Libertarian: Libertarians believe that it’s your right to choose your medical providers and treatments. They see that the government interferes in the progression of medicine by imposing harsh regulations on pharmaceutical companies and laboratories to limit the use of experimental health care.

In a nutshell, if the government can’t understand the use of a treatment and there isn’t enough science to back it up, they won’t support it. If they don’t support it, the researchers will not receive the funding they need to continue their research, which will stop the growth right in its tracks.

This belief system feels that voluntary institutions would do a much better job of caring for people by reducing costs and allowing for individuals to benefit from the economic rewards of health care. Private charity can certainly have its place, but as a whole, health care and medicine shouldn’t be a commercial enterprise.

Liberal: The Liberal vs. Libertarian belief is that health care is better left in the hand of the government because individual medicine will lead to corruption, inflated prices, and monopolization. This contrasts the Capitalist way of thinking where many Conservatives believe that it’s up to the individual to decide what type of health care they’d like, how they’d like to pay for it, and where they’d want to go for it.

Many people compare the Liberal philosophy on health care to socialized medicine, and there’s some truth to this. Socialized medicine is complete government control over what you pay for health care, what doctors you see, what procedures you get, and where you go to get those procedures done.

Libertarians see this as a complete violation of our liberties because we should have the freedom to choose our doctors, procedures, and facilities. It should be between the individual and the practicing physician without any government intervention other than to protect the patient from fraud and malpractice.

Classical Liberal vs. Libertarian

Liberalism, as a tradition and political science, essentially stands for equality. The policy believes that all people deserve equal opportunities for building wealth, voicing their opinions, and protecting themselves.

In fact, the first recorded use of the word “liberal” dates back to 1375, describing the liberal arts education as the education of the “free man.” This early connection between education and Liberalism gave way to the more modern take of the phrase.

During the Period of Enlightenment, the word started to take on a positive note, being described as a belief system that was free from prejudice and free from bigotry. The word “liberalism” first appeared in English in 1815, and it wasn’t until the 19th century that people started using it as a political term to describe parties and world movements.

In European Liberalism, you have an equal divide between the moderates and progressives. The moderates lean towards elitism, and progressives more frequently support the universalization of institutions, including education and property. As time passed, moderates passed progressives as the defenders of European Liberalism.

The way this differs from modern-day Libertarianism is the belief that the government still needs to maintain control over certain areas of our economy, gun control, and health care. Libertarians believe that there are two parties in every situation and they both can benefit from transactions, thus, there’s no need for government intervention.

They also believe that gun control is left in the hands of the people who need to defend themselves. The government should have no role in this and it’s up to the people whether or not they want to own a firearm. The same ideology applies to health care. One thing about Libertarianism is that it hasn’t changed much since it’s introduction and much of the political philosophy is the same.

Liberal vs. Libertarian Chart (Nolan Chart)



The Nolan Chart pictured above is a diagram originally developed by American Libertarian David Nolan in 1969. There are two axes representing the contrast between economic freedom and personal freedom. This philosophy differs from that of famous Libertarians such as Ayn Rand and Friedrich A. Hayek.

Ultimately, the further you rise up the vertical y-axis, the more personal freedom you gain, but the less economic freedom you have.

The further you move right across the horizontal x-axis, the more economic freedom you have but, the less personal freedom.

In the middle, you have Centrists who favor a mixture of both economic and personal freedom.

The chart shows that Liberals favor personal freedom over economic freedom, while Conservatives favor economic freedom over personal freedom.

The “extremists” in the equation would be Libertarians and Authoritarians. Libertarians favor both personal and economic freedom while Authoritarians, Statists, or “Communists,” as some might like to call them, prefer limited freedom and total government control.

Final Thoughts

We believe that this article should clear up any concerns you have in the Libertarian vs. Liberal comparison. They are extremely different, and even in areas where their beliefs start to overlap, there are fundamental differences supporting those beliefs. It’s crucial that you understand these factors when developing your own political opinions and stances.

Now, when someone asks you, “are Libertarians liberal”? You’ll have a clear answer and a thorough understanding of the differences.

Libertarian vs. Liberal: Economics, Freedom, and the Fight for Liberty originally appeared in Thought Grenades, the blog on LibertasBella.com.

[The American Letter Mail Company]

Lysander Spooner is an important – and not exactly obscure – figure in the history of the liberty movement. He’s an idiosyncratic figure from the 19th century with no small cheerleading section in the 21st century. A bit of a throwback to a very different time, Spooner was a champion of the labor movement and was even a member of the First International at a time when socialists and anarchists coexisted peacefully within that movement.

Perhaps one of the most interesting things about Spooner is that he ran a private company in direct competition with the United States Post Office. This endeavor predictably failed not because the American Letter Mail Company couldn’t compete, but because Spooner was hamstrung by lawfare.

Spooner was born in Athol, MA, in 1808, a descendant of Mayflower pilgrims and the second of nine children. His career as a lawyer set the template for the rest of his life’s work: Spooner had studied under a number of prominent lawyers (a practice known as “reading law,” which was much more common at the time). However, he did not have a degree and state law required that he study further under a lawyer. He considered this legal discimination and went ahead and started practicing law anyway.

In 1836, the state legislature got rid of the requirement. Indeed, Spooner was against any legal requirement for licensure of any profession, something that would come up again later on in his battle against the United States Post Office. This was part of Spooner’s belief in a natural law, whereby any act of coercion was ipso facto illegal.

Spooner’s law practice was not a success, nor were his attempts to dabble in the real estate market. He moved back onto his father’s farm in 1840. It was here that he hatched the plan for the American Letter Mail Company.

The American Letter Mail Company

Throughout the 1840s, the rates of the Post Office were a source of national controversy, with many Americans considering them exorbitantly high. For context, in those days it cost 25 cents to send a letter from Boston to Washington, D.C. That’s about $7.50 in 2020 dollars. Freight, however, was significantly cheaper: a barrel of flour cost about 2/3 what it cost to send that very same letter.

Spooner astutely noticed that while the Constitution provides for a state-run Post Office, it does not prohibit private citizens from running their own independent post office. With Spooner’s independent solution on the market, prices began to drop significantly. Court cases were generally found in Spooner’s favor, with the U.S. Circuit Court agreeing with his argument that the United States government had no right to monopolize the mail system. Congress took action, passing a law in 1851, that made the United States Post Office a legal monopoly.

This spelled the end of Spooner’s company, but he was known thereafter as “the father of the 3-cent stamp.”

Spooner’s Abolitionism and the Civil War

Where Spooner primarily came to public attention was as an abolitionist. In 1845, he published a book called The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, in which he argued that the United States Constitution prohibited slavery. Part of his argument was predicated upon his belief that all unjust laws were unconstitutional and could be struck down by judges. His arguments were cited in the party platform of the Liberty Party and were cited by Fredrick Douglass as changing his mind on the subject.

From the publication of this book up to 1861, Spooner was a tireless campaigner against slavery. He drafted works on jury nullification and other ways for private citizens to fight it. He frequently provided legal counsel for runaway slaves gratis. Pro-slavery Mississippi Senator Albert G. Brown believed that Spooner provided the strongest legal challenge to slavery, of which he was aware.

Spooner also advocated for guerilla warfare and other forms of violence to stop slavery in the United States. However, he also opposed the United States using force to keep the Confederate States in the Union. His view was that the same natural law making it right and just for slaves to revolt against their owners, made it wrong and unjust for the United States to use military force against the South. This made him somewhat unpopular on both sides of the war, as his arguments were at variance with each side’s official narrative.

Spooner’s Idiosyncratic Anarchism

After the war, he continued to write on the subject of jury nullification. Most of his later work appeared in individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker’s journal Liberty.

Spooner was an anarchist of a tradition that has largely disappeared from the scene: The individualist anarchist who prizes pre-industrial society and small stakeholders as a counterweight to industrial capitalism, of which Spooner was a sharp critic. He was also opposed to laws against usury, as well as laws preventing the minting of private currency. He championed self-employment and opposed wage labor.

As the libertarian movement began to emerge in the early 20th century, Spooner’s work enjoyed something of a renaissance, being reprinted in the popular journals of the day such as Rampart Journal and Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. Murray Rothbard has cited him as an influence, as has Randy Barnett. However, his critique of wage labor and capitalism makes it difficult to place Spooner as an “anarcho-capitalist” in the way that it would be thought of today. Spooner was a champion of the small businessman, the small farmer, and the workers’ cooperative.

Perhaps the mark that Spooner leaves most on the libertarian movement as we know it today is his critique of the Constitution, which he believed does not carry any inherent authority. As such, individuals are not legally or morally obligated to comply with federal authority. Such sentiments are often echoed by sovereign citizens, tax resistors, and other members of the liberty movement.

Spooner is worth a read, not just because his ideas are still relevant today (which they are) but also because he exists in such an unusual and untread space in the history of American liberty. You might not agree with everything that he has to say, but you’ll certainly have a hard time arguing against it.

Lysander Spooner: The Forgotten History of the Man Who Started the First Private Post Office originally appeared in The Resistance Library at Ammo.com.

[Hoppe Quotes]

Hans-Herman Hoppe is a German-born Austrian school economist and paleolibertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher. He did his undergraduate studies at Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, received his MA and PhD at Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt, and was a postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor before earning his habilitation back at Goethe-Universität. Hoppe immigrated to America in 1986 to study under Murray Rothbard in New York City, with whom he remained close until Rothbard’s death in 1995.

A culturally conservative libertarian, Hoppe founded the The Property and Freedom Society in 2006. His goal was twofold: to explain the requirements and features of a free, stateless natural order, and to expose the state itself as “an institution run by gangs of murderers, plunderers and thieves, surrounded by willing executioners, propagandists, sycophants, crooks, liars, clowns, charlatans, dupes and useful idiots.” Hoppe leaves little to interpretation regarding his feelings on government.

Hoppe introduced his argumentation ethics theory in 1988. It is a meaty theory to say the least, but at its heart it holds that any argument against individual sovereignty is inherently unsound; that any transgression against self-ownership is unjustifiable. In short, one who takes your property without your consent can never purport to serve a higher purpose – they are only a thief, and a thug.

In his 2011 book Democracy: The God That Failed, Hoppe details the problems which inevitably arise in a democratic government as the result of groups which pressure it for greater regulation. He advises unequivocal freedom of contract, decentralization of government, and succession in order to combat these ills.

In Democracy Hoppe also details a libertarian society in which people would voluntarily form covenant communities based on shared self-interests. This hypothetical society would place the utmost value on freedom of association and private property rather than get bogged down appeasing the left with endless concessions to social justice.

Interestingly for so steadfast a libertarian, Hoppe does believe that the state, so long as it exists, should impose some restrictions on immigration so as to avert forced integration. This view has provoked ire from the usual circles, which are quick to point out that Hoppe himself is an immigrant. Hoppe kicked yet another hornet’s nest in 2004 when he made an offhand, negative comment during a lecture about the money saving habits of homosexuals, but attempts to force that incident to color his entire academic career have proven rather toothless.

Hoppe’s other notable English language works include A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (1989), Economic Science and the Austrian Method (1995), and The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (2006). He also wrote the 1998 introduction to Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty.

Hoppe was a professor of economics at University of Nevada, Las Vegas from 1986 until his retirement in 2008, and is currently a distinguished fellow with the Mises Institute which published much of his work. He now resides in Turkey.

Hoppe Quotes

“Liberty instead of Democracy!”
 
“Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.”
 
“As soon as a crisis breaks out, within the given institutional framework, the same mistake will be made over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Every future crisis will be bigger than the crisis that we had before.”
 
“If the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds … its policies would most definitely reflect the ‘legitimate concerns’ of children to have ‘adequate’ and ‘equal’ access to ‘free’ french fries, lemonade and videos.”
 
“Our existence is due to the fact that we do not, indeed cannot accept a norm outlawing property in other scarce resources next to and in addition to that of one’s physical body. Hence, the right to acquire such goods must be assumed to exist.”
 
“The property right in one’s own body must be said to be justified a priori, for anyone who would try to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right to control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say “I propose such in such.”
 
“if the power of government rests on the widespread acceptance of false indeed absurd and foolish ideas, then the only genuine protection is the systematic attack of these ideas and the propagation and proliferation of true ones.”
 
“A state is a territorial monopolist of compulsion – an agency which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and the expropriation, taxation and regulation – of private property owners.”
 
“In accordance with his high time preference, he may want to be a vagabond, a drifter, a drunkard, a junkie, a daydreamer, or simply a happy go-lucky kind of guy who likes to work as little as possible in order to enjoy each and every day to the fullest.”
 
“Egalitarian and relativistic sentiments find steady support among ever new generations of adolescents. Owing to their still incomplete mental development, juveniles, especially of the male variety, are always susceptible to both ideas.”
 
“Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent.”
 
“Without the continued existence of the democratic system and of publicly funded education and research, however, most current teachers and intellectuals would be unemployed or their income would fall to a small fraction of its present level. Instead of researching the syntax of Ebonics, the love life of mosquitoes, or the relationship between poverty and crime for $100 grand a year, they would research the science of potato growing or the technology of gas pump operation for $20 grand.”
 
“There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state.”
 
“Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference. And cultural relativism is incompatible with the fundamental – indeed foundational – fact of families and intergenerational kinship relations. Families and kinship relations imply cultural absolutism.”
 
“As for the moral status of majority rule, it must be pointed out that it allows for A and B to band together to rip off C, C and A in turn joining to rip off B, and then B and C conspiring against A, and so on.”
 
“…bums and inferior people will likely support his egalitarian policies, whereas geniuses and superior people will not. For [this] reason … a democratic ruler undertakes little to actively expel those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash which drives individual property values down).”
 
“A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person … but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but … who knowingly act wrongly … Besides having to be tamed or even physically defeated they must also be punished … to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future.”
 
“In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced ‘public good.”
 
“According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.”
 
“If no one can appeal to justice except to government, justice will be perverted in favor of the government, constitutions and supreme courts notwithstanding. Constitutions and supreme courts are state constitutions and agencies, and whatever limitations to state action they might contain or find is invariably decided by agents of the very institution under consideration. Predictably, the definition of property and protection will continually be altered and the range of jurisdiction expanded to the government’s advantage until, ultimately, the notion of universal and immutable human rights – and in particular property rights – will disappear and be replaced by that of law as government-made legislation and rights as government-given grants.”
 
“We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small classically liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold.”
 
“The monopolization of money and banking is the ultimate pillar on which the modern state rests. In fact, it is probably become the most cherished instrument for increasing state income. For nowhere else can the state make the connection between redistribution-expenditure and exploitation-return more directly, quickly, and securely than by monopolizing money and banking. And nowhere else are the state’s schemes less clearly understood than here.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe Quotes on Liberty, Freedom, Government, and More originally appeared in Thought Grenades, the blog on LibertasBella.com.

[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Quotes]

“I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that’s OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that’s even better. If you wonder if he’s gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there.”
– Ralph Steadman

Very few writers achieve an image that overshadows their actual body of work, but boy, is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson ever one of them. Hunter S. Thompson quotes are some of the most bizarre (yet insightful) quotes out there. His persona of an acid-soaked degenerate frantically pecking away at the keys of an electric typewriter while surrounded by mounds of rotting, half-eaten grapefruits isn’t entirely spot-on, however. That has been largely played up, especially for the sake of movies like Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1937, Thompson loved sports from an early age and co-founded an athletic club at his elementary school. In 1952 he was accepted into the Athenaeum Literary Association and contributed articles to its yearbook, although he was kicked out three years later when he was charged as an accessory to robbery. He did not graduate high school following his month-long stint in the slammer.

Thompson joined the Air Force. While stationed at Eglin Air Force Base he lied about his experience to land a job as sports editor for The Command Courier. Following his honorable discharge he worked for Time until he was fired for insubordination. He was subsequently fired from another newspaper for damaging an office candy machine and arguing with one of the rag’s advertisers.

Thompson ultimately took a job with The Nation to write a story about the Hells Angels. Preferring to live his subject material rather than merely report on it, Thompson spent the next year riding with the club until its members beat the shit out of him. Fortunately for the young author his book Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs put him on the national radar.

Thompson first employed his signature Gonzo style of journalism, which did away with any pretense of objectivity to present himself as the hero of the story, in his 1970 article “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved” for Scanlan’s Monthly. This style was birthed out of necessity, as Thompson often had to resort to frantic cadence in order to meet deadlines.

Thompson wrote on a range of topics. “The ‘Hashbury’ is the Capital of the Hippies” critiqued aimless dropouts who sought drugs over political or artistic ideals. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas covers everything from the death of the American Dream to the effects of ether on Thompson’s own body. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 treats readers to its writer’s inimitable political musings, and marks the beginning of Thompson’s outspoken hatred for Richard Nixon.

Thompson began to slow down in 1974, mostly publishing anthologies of his earlier work from there on out. He committed suicide in 2005.

Thompson was a gun nut, political activist (who was very nearly elected sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado in 1970), ardent supporter of the legalization of all drugs (which he did, in fact, consume prodigiously), communist sympathizer, and 9/11 skeptic, and he managed to summon an even greater hatred for George W. Bush than he ever had for Nixon. He was one of a kind, and this is good, because we probably couldn’t handle another.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Quotes

“In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.”

“There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride … and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well … maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.”

“Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

“Hallucinations are bad enough. But after awhile you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth. Most acid fanciers can handle this sort of thing. But nobody can handle that other trip-the possibility that any freak with $1.98 can walk into the Circus-Circus and suddenly appear in the sky over downtown Las Vegas twelve times the size of God, howling anything that comes into his head. No, this is not a good town for psychedelic drugs.”

“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”

“History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time – and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.”

“But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.”

“Take it from me, there’s nothing like a job well done. Except the quiet enveloping darkness at the bottom of a bottle of Jim Beam after a job done any way at all.”

“The possibility of physical and mental collapse is now very real. No sympathy for the Devil, keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

“My blood is too thick for California: I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.”

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes on Life

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”

“Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”

“Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.”

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

“Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

“Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.”

“You better take care of me Lord, if you don’t you’re gonna have me on your hands.”

“That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.”

The Best Hunter S. Thompson Quotes

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

“I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.”

“Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.”

“If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.”

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”

“The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.”

“I can’t think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there’s been a reaction, there’s been no journalism. It’s cause and effect.”

“Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn’t anticipate.”

“The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.”

“I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

“America … just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.”

“I wasn’t trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn’t have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people.”

“Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.”

“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”

“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.”

“The edge … there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is the ones who have gone over.”

“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”

Hunter S. Thompson Music Quotes

“Turn the goddam music up! My heart feels like an alligator!”

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

“I resent your assumption that Music is Not My Bag, because I’ve been arguing for the past few years that music is the New Literature, that Dylan is the 1960s’ answer to Hemingway, and that the main voice of the ’70s will be on records & videotape instead of books.”

Hunter S. Thompson Motorcycle Quotes

“Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I’m here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba.”

“On my tombstone they will carve, ‘IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.’”

“The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.”

Hunter S. Thompson Love Quotes

“The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion.”

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and – in spite of True Romance magazines – we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely – at least, not all the time – but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

“There are times, however, and this is one of them when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”

We hoped you liked our collection of the best Hunter S Thompson quotes! Message us if you feel that we missed any.

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes on Life, Music, Motorcycles, and More originally appeared in Thought Grenades, the blog on LibertasBella.com.

[Robert Nozick Quotes]

Robert Nozick was one of Harvard’s most distinguished professors, a president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and the author of several influential books. Robert Nozick quotes, while not as numerous as those of better-known libertarian thought leaders (Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek come to mind) are nevertheless illuminating.
 
Nozick was born to Jewish parents in Brooklyn. (New York City has produced an inordinate number of libertarian thinkers. Esko, Minnesota had better step it up.) He studied at Columbia, Princeton, and Oxford, proceeded to teach at several prestigious universities, and settled permanently in Harvard in 1969.
 
Nozick published Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974. It is of particular interest to libertarians in part because it argues in favor of extremely limited state interference in private life. Nozick’s ideal, minimal state would be “limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on.” Once a state’s influence extended beyond these spheres, it would necessarily begin to violate individual rights.
 
Anarchy, State, and Utopia doesn’t take so extreme an approach as advocating for anarcho-capitalism, in which social services would fall under the exclusive domain of the private sector. (There is indeed a good argument against putting JPMorgan Chase & Co. in charge of fraud prevention.) Nozick argued that any such society would develop into a minarchist state as dominant defense and judicial agencies inevitably rose to power. To Nozick, preventing those agencies from growing to the point where they might imprison an individual for collecting rainwater would be paramount for the preservation of liberty.
 
It is outside of our powers of summarization to present every other idea contained within Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick did extensively explore the Lockean state of nature, in which all men are free “to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature.” (Second Treatise on Government, 1689) In a departure from Locke, Nozick rejected the concept of inalienable rights to some degree. For example, in his worldview slave contracts are not by definition immoral – provided as they are also not coercive. In this utopia people could essentially do as they please so long as the non-aggression principle remains unmolested.
 
Nozick’s other notable works include Philosophical Explanations, in which he explores topics ranging from free will to the meaning of life itself, The Examined Life which includes a corking argument in favor of letting tax payers opt out of funding programs to which they are philosophically opposed, and Socratic Puzzles, a collection of essays on topics including the Austrian School of economics and Ayn Rand (the chief old bird of libertarianism herself). His last book Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World tackles the theory of truth itself. That’s really heavy, man.
 
We wouldn’t like to suggest that Novack’s works are impenetrable. They just aren’t exactly the kinds of books you’re likely to choose for your kid’s bedtime stories – unless you’re looking for a healthier, child-friendlier alternative to chloroform.
 
Robert Nozick Quotes
 
“When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato’s Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.”
– Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations pg. 303
 
“And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.”
– Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations pg. 102
 
“Our principles fix what our life stands for, our aims create the light our life is bathed in, and our rationality, both individual and coordinate, defines and symbolizes the distance we have come from mere animality. It is by these means that our lives come to more than what they instrumentally yield. And by meaning more, our lives yield more.”
– The Nature of Rationality pg. 181
 
“Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia
 
“Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people’s lack of understanding of economics.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia
 
“Why are philosophers intent on forcing others to believe things? Is that a nice way to behave towards someone?”
– Philosophical Explanations pg. 5
 
Robert Nozick Libertarianism Quotes
 
“From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. ?
 
“No state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 297
 
“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.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 169
 
“It goes without saying that any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 325
 
“What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 6
 
“Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. Ix
 
“Each community must win and hold the voluntary adherence of its members. No pattern is imposed on everyone, and the result will be one pattern if and only if everyone voluntarily chooses to live in accordance with that pattern of community.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 316
 
“No one has ever announced that because determinism is true thermostats do not control temperature.”
– Philosophical Explanations pg. 315
 
“Unsuccessful businessmen and workers do not have the same animus against the capitalist system as do the wordsmith intellectuals. Only the sense of unrecognized superiority, of entitlement betrayed, produces that animus.”
– Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
 
Anarchy, State, and Utopia Quotes
 
“Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 311
 
“Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 312
 
“Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 14
 
“Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. ix
 
“In a free system any large, popular, revolutionary movement should be able to bring about its ends by such a voluntary process. As more and more people see how it works more and more will wish to participate in or support it. And so it will grow, without being necessary to force everyone or a majority or anyone into the pattern.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 327
 
“There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 32
 
“Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them, seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes of transition from one situation to another.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 152
 
“You can’t satisfy everybody; especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 320
 
“The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes… How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia pg. 333
 
“Once a person exists, not everything compatible with his overall existence being a net plus can be done, even by those who created him. An existing person has claims, even against those whose purpose in creating him was to violate those claims.”
– Anarchy, State, and Utopia
 
Robert Nozick Quotes for Deep Libertarian Thinkers originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Milton Friedman Quotes on Greed]

Hailed as the godfather of conservative libertarianism, Milton Friedman quotes openly attacked Keynesianism in an era when most economists widely accepted its fundamental premises. Friedman won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences “for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.” As a leader of the Chicago school of economics he taught several of the country’s future preeminent economists including Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, and Thomas Sowell.

Friedman was born to working class Jewish parents in Brooklyn in 1912. He studied economics at Rutgers University and then the University of Chicago, and upon graduating moved to Washington, D.C. to work as an economist for the Roosevelt administration. Although Friedman approved of some aspects of the New Deal which he deemed suitable responses to the Great Depression, he opposed its regulation of both prices and wages. This opposition would color much of Friedman’s later stance on government intervention.

Friedman continued working for the government as a mathematical weapons statistician throughout the Second World War. When peace resumed he earned his doctorate from Columbia University and accepted a position at the University of Chicago where he would remain for 30 years. During his tenure Friedman wrote several influential books including A Theory of the Consumption Function and Capitalism and Freedom in which he laid out his groundbreaking theories.

Friedman developed the permanent income hypothesis, which holds that changes in a person’s permanent income – their expected long-term average income – predicts their consumption habits far more reliably then their current income could alone. This hypotheses was formative in helping economists predict how consumers would stabilize their spending, and furthermore a blatant contradiction to Keynesian theory.

Friedman coined the term “helicopter money” while illustrating the effects of monetary expansion, as well as introduced the concept of “natural rate of unemployment.” This theory, which won Friedman and Edmund Phelps their Nobel Prize, explains that inflation results from too low an unemployment rate. In effect Friedman predicted the concept of “stagflation,” or persistent high inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand in a country’s economy, years before it was properly named. Friedman also popularized the theory of monetarism, which advocates for small, controlled expansions in the supply of money as part of responsible monetary policy. The Federal Reserve put this theory to work during the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

While he acknowledged the role of government in the monetary system, Friedman believed the Federal Reserve’s historically poor performance begged its replacement by a computer algorithm. He also advocated for floating exchange rates, the implementation of school choice and school vouchers, abolishing a system of conscription which he deemed inequitable and arbitrary, and the adoption of an anti-interventionist foreign policy.

Although a member of the Republican party who advised both Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, Friedman always espoused libertarian philosophical principles. He was soundly in favor of legalizing drugs, prostitution, and homosexuality, and while he was also in favor of immigration for its economic benefits he opposed immigrants’ access to the welfare system.

Friedman worked right up until the age of 94. Like Charles Schultz, his final work appeared in newspapers the day following his death.

Milton Friedman Quotes on Greed

“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.”

Milton Friedman Capitalism and Freedom Quotes

“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

“I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of.”

“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”

“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”

“When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody’s expense.”

“I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of.”

“For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number–for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs–jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.”

Milton Friedman Famous Quotes

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

“Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government– in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.”

“He moves fastest who moves alone.”

“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.”

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”

“See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.”

“Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.”

“Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn’t really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and doesn’t just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can’t really afford to eliminate it – not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend.”

“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.”

“The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books.”

“On the difference between public vs. private education: ‘Try talking French with someone who studied it in public school. Then with a Berlitz graduate.’”

Milton Friedman Quotes Inflation

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. … A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society.”

“Inflation is caused by too much money chasing after too few goods.”

“Here the businessman – self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly by stockholders – is to be simultaneously legislator, executive and, jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose, and he is to spend the proceeds – all this guided only by general exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the environment, fight poverty and so on and on.”

“Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.”

Milton Friedman Quotes Social Responsibility

“There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Milton Friedman Quotes on Socialism

“Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.”

“Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation.”

“After the fall of communism, everybody in the world agreed that socialism was a failure. Everybody in the world, more or less, agreed that capitalism was a success. And every capitalist country in the world apparently deduced from that what the West needed was more socialism.”

“It is widely believed that politics and economics are separate and largely unconnected; that individual freedom is a political problem and material welfare an economic problem; and that any kind of political arrangements can be combined with any kind of economic arrangements. The chief contemporary manifestation of this idea is the advocacy of ‘democratic socialism’ by many who condemn out of hand the restrictions on individual freedom imposed by ‘totalitarian socialism’ in Russia, and who are persuaded that it is possible for a country to adopt the essential features of Russian economic arrangements and yet to insure individual freedom through political arrangements. [My] thesis … is that such a view is a delusion, that there is an intimate connection between economics and politics, that only certain combinations of political and economic arrangements are possible, and that in particular, a society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.”

“It is very hard to achieve good objectives through bad means. … [T]he [welfare] programs have a[n] insidious effect on the moral fiber of both the people who administer the programs and the people who are supposedly benefiting from it. For the people who administer it, it instills in them a feeling of almost Godlike power. For the people who are supposedly benefiting, it instills a feeling of childlike dependence. Their capacity for personal decision-making atrophies. The result is that the programs involved are a misuse of money. They do not achieve the objectives which it was their intention to achieve. But far more important than this, they tend to rot away the very fabric that holds a decent society together.”

“The essential notion of a capitalist society is voluntary cooperation and voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is fundamentally force. If the government is the master, you ultimately have to order people what to do. Whenever you try to do good with somebody else’s money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else’s money unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is by threat of force. You have a policeman, a tax collector who comes to take it away from them. Whenever you use force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.”

We hope you enjoyed this compilation of Milton Friedman quotes! Shoot us a message if you know of any we should add.

Milton Friedman Quotes on Greed, Freedom, Socialism, and More originally appeared in Thought Grenades, the blog on at LibertasBella.com.

“A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. VI pg. 24

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”
–An Essay on the Trial by Jury pg. 14

“Certainly no man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire.”
– Natural Law; or The Science of Justice C.1 §III pg. 7

“If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.”
–A Letter to Grover Cleveland

“Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search aft er his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.”
– Vices Are Not Crimes pg. 9

“Still another and all-sufficient answer to the argument that the use of spirituous liquors tends to poverty, is that, as a general rule, it puts the effect before the cause. It assumes that it is the use of the liquors that causes the poverty, instead of its being the poverty that causes the use of the liquors.”
– Vices Are Not Crimes pg. 33

“No middle ground is possible on this subject. Either ‘taxation without consent is robbery,’ or it is not. If it is not, then any number of men, who choose, may at any time associate; call themselves a government; assume absolute authority over all weaker than themselves; plunder them at will; and kill them if they resist.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. II pg. 13

“So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. VI pg. 16

If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. I pg. 59

“All human legislation is simply and always an assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion exists. It is, therefore, simply and always an intrusion, an absurdity, an usurpation, and a crime.”
– Natural Law; or The Science of Justice C.2 §V pg. 113

“Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally — perhaps more than equally, because more boldly — rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power. There is no more reason, then, why a man should either sustain, or submit to, the rule of the majority, than of a minority.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. I pg. 8

“A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. I pg. 7

“A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offense of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. II

“These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.
“The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.
“So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other.”
– Natural Law; or The Science of Justice C.1 §I pg. 5-6

“If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.”
– Natural Law; or The Science of Justice C.2 §IV pg. 12-13

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
– No Treason: The Constitution Of No Authority No. VI pg. 59

--

Why care about Lysander Spooner quotes? Because Spooner challenged the most powerful force in the United States – and won.

In the 1840s the United States Post Office charged nearly 19 cents to ship a letter from Boston to Albany. The Western Railroad charged about 28 cents to ship a barrel of flour over the same distance. Had the Western Railroad’s rate been the same as that of the USPS, they would have charged nearer to $220 to ship that same barrel.

Lysander Spooner reasoned the federal government could only get away with this stupendous gouge because of the de facto monopoly it held over postage. He thus founded the American Letter Mail Company in 1844, which drastically undercut the USPS’s rates.

Spooner did not merely intend for his business venture to turn a profit. With the American Letter Mail Company he also meant to illustrate how dearly the government was overcharging – solely because it could.

In response, the federal government resorted to its most effective tactic: bullying. It first threatened to withdraw its business from railroads that participated in Spooner’s scheme. Next, it resorted to pointed legal action. The government codified its monopoly over the mail and put Spooner out of business in 1851.

But by then the damage had been done. The American people had taken Spooner’s lesson in affordable postage to heart and demanded reasonable rates from the USPS. The government’s bureaucrats acquiesced, no doubt cursing under their breaths what a single, determined entrepreneur could do to their pocketbooks.

Spooner is best known for this historic coup over the government, yet he had a long career of sticking it to the man. He broke state law by setting up a legal practice in Massachusetts despite having neither graduated from college nor studied under another attorney for five years.

In 1845 Spooner published The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, in which he wove a complex system of legal and moral arguments against the legality of bondage.

Though he spent the next 20 years campaigning for the abolishment of slavery, Spooner also recognized the right of the Confederate States of America to secede from the union. Spooner’s nuanced morality would fit with neither side’s position during the Civil War.

Spooner was an individualist anarchist. He believed big government hampers mankind’s pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, and indeed makes said pursuit nigh impossible. He was adamant that the Constitution, for all good it represents, is not a contract into which Americans could be rightfully entered on birth. To Spooner no less than the dissolution of Congress was required to restore man’s God-given autonomy.

Spooner’s legacy doesn’t only endure through affordable postage. He greatly influenced early libertarian theory and the Austrian School of economics. Lysander Spooner quotes taken from The Unconstitutionality of Slavery were cited in District of Columbia v. Heller, a landmark case in which the Supreme Court ruled to preserve Second Amendment rights.

Freedom, Individualism, and Anarchy: Great Lysander Spooner Quotes originally appeared in Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Who Is Hurt By Lockdowns… And Who Isn’t?]

The Chinese Coronavirus (COVID-19) hit American shores — officially, anyway, there is significant evidence that it arrived earlier — in late January 2020. The American public was then told that a two-week shutdown of the economy would “flatten the curve,” relieving the pressure on hospital intensive care units and saving lives in the long run.

The average American, including conservatives, being people of good faith, complied, thinking that this was a common-sense measure that would save lives in the wake of a new and mysterious pandemic.

But two things quickly happened: First, the goalposts moved. No longer was it enough to “flatten the curve.” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure.

No longer was it enough to “flatten the curve.” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure.

Even the cure was not enough for some figures like the lionized-by-liberals Dr. Anthony Fauci — we would continue to be locked down even after a vaccine had been rammed through the approvals process with limited testing. When would we be allowed out by our masters? No one could answer this.

Second, there was an intensification of the authoritarian measures. Some states, aided by Big Tech, introduced “contact tracing” where people had to sign in with extensive personal information if they wanted to, for example, eat out at a restaurant. This was so that, in the event of infection with COVID-19, the state health department would be able to track and trace everyone you had contact with.

We should add that a third thing didn’t so much “happen” but was discovered: As it turns out unless you are old (over the age of 65), morbidly obese or suffer from a complicating disorder (such as diabetes or asthma), COVID-19 was little more than a bad cold or the flu.

What’s more, there was a financial incentive from the government to mark deaths as COVID-19 deaths when they were not. George Floyd, the man who died while being arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department, sparking riots over the summer of 2020, is officially a COVID-19 death because he died with COVID-19, despite not dying of COVID-19.

By the fall of 2020, the facts became clear: While COVID-19 was dangerous for select populations, it had an extremely low death rate among the young and healthy.

The generous or naive might say that the COVID-19 health measures are misguided attempts to protect the population. A more hard-nosed or cynical person likely thinks that these measures are a deliberate attempt to enact totalitarian measures leveraging public panic.

This, of course, would not be the first time the government and its toadies took advantage of such a panic, with the 9/11 attacks presenting a recent example of such.

We believe that COVID-19 measures are little more than a cynical power grab. We also believe that they have no basis in “the science” often breathlessly invoked by the toadies of this power grab.

In this article, we will make a compelling case that there is nothing scientific about this attack on the individual civil liberties of Americans. As Canadian Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a top pathologist, virologist, and CEO of a biotech company manufacturing COVID tests said, “this (COVID-19) is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”

Who Is Hurt By Lockdowns… And Who Isn’t?

Before launching into specifics about “the science” of lockdowns, it is worth discussing who was impacted by lockdowns and who wasn’t. Despite the rhetoric from the political and media class about how “we are all in this together,” there is clearly no “we” and there are different impacts on different people.

First, let’s discuss the American and international media elites. These jobs are largely done remotely and, where they are not customarily performed so, can easily be transitioned to be done remotely. Then there is the small matter of the political class of bureaucrats who receive their paychecks whether they perform any ostensible “work” — to say nothing of obtaining results — or not.

Unsurprisingly, these are two groups heavily invested in both lockdowns and in policing the behavior of ordinary citizens. Compare with the working- and middle-class Americans who do not see a dime unless they actually show up to work, work which often cannot be done under the restrictive and arbitrary rules of the lockdowns.

While one can write clickbait articles about how anti-mask and anti-lockdown protesters are agents of white supremacy from the comfort of one’s own home, the same cannot be said for tasks like construction, manufacturing, many forms of retail sales or hospitality.

This isn’t just a matter of a few people missing out on a few weeks of work. CNBC host Jim Cramer has noted that the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic led to one of the biggest wealth transfers in all of American history. Wall Street cleaned up at the expense of Main Street.

Small businesses shuttered at an astonishing rate with restaurants and retailers hardest hit. All told, 60 percent of business closures were expected to be permanent, for a total of over 100,000 businesses.

While Main Street businesses were locked down, Amazon was making a killing — all while Jeff Bezos’ vanity blog, the Washington Post was pushing lockdown policies. Walmart, Lowe’s, and Target were likewise seeing booming profits.

This is emblematic of the massive transfer of wealth from small Main Street businesses to Big Tech and the financial sector. Indeed, the tale of the Chinese coronavirus in total might well be described as a massive upward consolidation of power.

The point of all this is to point out that there is a massive social and economic cost to the lockdowns that is borne entirely by the plebeians and not at all by the political and media elites who push the lockdowns hard.

People’s lives have been ruined by the lockdown. And while the projected increase in suicide rates has thus far failed to materialize, why does someone have to kill themselves for us to be concerned about how COVID-19 has impacted their lives?

Further, we have evidence that people die of “despair” — effectively giving up on life and failing to perform adequate self-care, overdosing on drugs or other similar types of deaths — at an alarming rate during the pandemic lockdowns.

Indeed, there is even a mathematical formula for this, whereby there is an expected 5,300 to 10,000 deaths for every 1 percent of unemployment.  Unemployment during COVID lockdowns peaked at 14.7 percent, which would be an expected excess death total of between 77,910 and 147,000.

The COVID lockdowns of Spring 2020 saw an uptick in a number of other serious conditions. Increased suicide was one, but also drug overdoses, alcohol-related illness, tuberculosis infections and on the non-lethal side of things, increased alcohol abuse generally as well as increased spousal and child abuse.

Delayed cancer screenings were another problem during the lockdowns. The United Kingdom, which has socialized medicine, believes that there are tens of thousands of deaths related to delayed treatment because of COVID alone.

Conservative news and opinion website Revolver has conducted an extensive study of just how impacted American quality of life has been by COVID lockdowns, in terms of actual months of life lost. They concluded that over 10 times as much life has been lost due to COVID lockdowns than due to the disease itself.

The Revolver study is largely based on “back of the envelope” type calculations, but is still worth reading to get a sense of the scope of how COVID-19 lockdowns have negatively impacted the lives of Americans significantly more than the disease itself.

The Great Barrington Declaration, signed by over 7,000 scientists, virologists, and infectious disease experts believes that lockdowns are destroying “at least seven times as much life” as the disease itself and that in the United States and the United Kingdom, there is “irreparable damage” being done.

The declaration notes clearly that “seven times as much damage” is the absolute minimum, putting a more realistic figure at 90 times.

There is another metric worth mentioning in our quest to quantify how bad the lockdown has been for non-sick people. Global debt has ballooned, growing by $20 trillion since the lockdowns began, according to the Institute of International Finance. This is thought to be the biggest increase in debt in the world’s history

Perhaps worst of all, none of this is ever explained to the public as being necessary. It is simply not acknowledged at all. It is an article of faith in the COVID cult that any measure that will prevent even a single death is worth it no matter what the social or economic consequences.

How Dangerous Is COVID? Not Very.

On the flip side of this are the large number of “COVID deaths” which are actually attributable to some other cause. We’re not talking about an elderly person with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder pushed over the edge by the Chinese Coronavirus. We’re talking about people who died of gunshot wounds, got into motorcycle accidents, fell off a ladder or had a drug-related heart attack while a police officer kneeled on their neck who were counted as COVID deaths.

We’re talking about people who died of gunshot wounds, got into motorcycle accidents, fell off a ladder or had a drug-related heart attack while a police officer kneeled on their neck who were counted as COVID deaths.

With fat government subsidies for COVID cases, it’s unsurprising that hospitals and other healthcare facilities would diagnose people as having COVID who actually did not.

We know very little about COVID and how it is spread, but here are a few things we do know: First, we know that there are a number of comorbidities that make it far more dangerous, one of which is obesity, which increases the risk of COVID death by a whopping 48 percent. But even that might not be as dangerous as it first sounds: In California where they have had 18,000 deaths, a scant two of these were people under the age of 18, one with underlying health conditions.

A much more important factor is age. A large study conducted on data from cases in South Korea, Italy, China, and Spain, three of the early breeding grounds for the virus, found a 0 percent death rate for those under the age of 9, The death rate didn’t climb above 1 percent until the age of 50-59 — and then only in China and Italy and then only just barely, at 1.3 and 1 percent respectively.

It climbed slightly above 1 percent for all four countries in the 60-69 age bracket, staying below 2 percent in South Korea and Spain, but below 4 percent for Italy and China. Death rates then spike dramatically over the age of 70.

This tracks with flu deaths over the 2017-18 “flu season” in the United States: Very few deaths under the age of 18 (a little over 600), slightly more for 18-49 (2803), another modest jump between 50 and 64 (6,751) and then a huge spike over the age of 65 (over 50,000). Of course, there are more cases of the flu, which has a lower death rate overall: The overall death rate for COVID-19 is 1.5 percent, regardless of age, with an average season’s flu killing about .1 percent of everyone who gets it.

Closer to home, we’re finding that there’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about for most healthy people. The COVID survival rates according to the CDC are 99.997 percent for those under the age of 20, 99.98 percent for those between the ages of 20 and 49, 99.5 percent for those between the age of 50 and 69 and even 94.6 percent for those over the age of 70.

These numbers include people with comorbidities such as respiratory diseases. And even these numbers are likely off, as only 6 percent of all COVID deaths are attributed to COVID alone. The rest had, on average, at least two comorbidities.

The average death rate annually for the flu is about .1 percent.

It’s worth noting that this data all comes from the early stages of the pandemic when medical professionals had little way of treating the disease other than ventilating — and thus, probably killing — severe cases.

Now we know quite a bit more about therapeutics that aid in recovery. President Donald Trump, a clinically obese 74-year-old man, recovered from the disease in less than a week. There is ample evidence that the disease is becoming less deadly, not more. Death rates fall because of increased testing, but the median age of infection has likewise gone down.

Do Lockdowns And Masks Even Work?


All of this raises an important central question: Why do the elderly, those with underlying health conditions and the obese simply sequester themselves or take reasonable precautions rather than shutting down the world economy?

Indeed, there is mounting evidence that government intervention has, surprise of surprises, actually made things worse. As of November 18, 2020, there have been 34,058 COVID deaths in the state of New York. Of these, over 6,500 (or approximately one in seven total deaths) were nursing home deaths that were a direct result of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s policy of forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients and lock them down with the vulnerable and uninfected.

This is a concrete example of government lockdown measures killing people. But you won’t hear about it in the controlled media.

What about the omnipresent masks that we are now seeing everywhere to the point where someone without a mask is seen as the strange one. They must work, of course!

But there is scant evidence that masks prevent the transmission of COVID or any other respiratory infection. In every randomized clinical trial ever conducted, there have been inconclusive findings that mask wearing aided in suppressing transmission of respiratory diseases. Studies generally rely upon fitted N95 respirators that must be sterilized after every use or surgical masks that should be thrown away. We have more evidence that typical masks cause headaches than that they prevent against COVID.

Compare this to what you see on your average trip to the grocery store: People wearing unfitted cloth masks that get occasionally cleaned — maybe. Many people don’t even bother to pull them up over their noses. Thus, most mask wearing is useless and little more than a form of social control or forced act of “solidarity.”

There’s magical thinking involved in the current mask mandates: If cases go up, it’s because people weren’t good little boys and girls and didn’t wear their masks. If they go down, everyone has been well behaved and gets to pat themselves on the back for wearing their face diaper.

Some evidence suggests that masks make people feel magically protected from the virus and thus they do not take common-sense precautions against all disease, such as handwashing, keeping fingers off the face, covering their nose when they sneeze and the like.

What this means at its root is that people are trading effective measures for ineffective theater. Mask reuse likewise increases infection rates and who among us isn’t guilty of that?

What’s more, studies suggest that people who wear the cloth masks, that are now virtually required to do anything outside one’s home, lead to an increase of flu-like symptoms — and thus create lots of COVID paranoia where there ought not to be any.

It was only in March that many experts were urging people not to wear masks at all, with this article from April likewise urging people to not wear masks.

There are also the “soft” effects of mask wearing. There is significant evidence to suggest that children living under COVID will have their emotional and psychological development severely stunted and warped thanks to mask orders. As if you needed another reason to pull your kids out of public school.

Indeed, we have a mountain of troubling data about the social effects of mass mask wearing that go back decades. Put simply, masks make people stupid, pliant and anti-social. Examples of findings from mask studies include:

• A 1976 study where people were more likely and required less pay to carry a sign reading “masturbation is fun” if they were masked.
• A 1979 study found children were more likely to take more than their allotted amount of Halloween candy if they were masked.
• A 1989 study found that masking led people to abandon defense mechanism and revert to more primitive psychological states.
• Studies conducted in 2005 and 2017 found neurological evidence inhibit both impulse control and identity formation, decreasing prefrontal cortex activity.
• Repeated studies have found that masking reduces blood flow to the brain.

A number of public figures have backed off of masking as a panacea, instead pushing it as an act of “social solidarity.” Sure, masks might not actually do anything — but what about feelings? British politicians Michael Gove and Nicole Sturgeon are indicative of this trend.

Your Social Betters Are Not Actually Afraid of COVID

But perhaps the best evidence that this is all just a bit of political theater is seeing how our media and political class actually behave when they think no one is watching.

Chris Cuomo, brother of Governor Andrew Cuomo, often referred to as “Fredo” due to paling in comparison with his brother, was quarantined for two weeks, not for abstract reasons, but because he was actually exposed to COVID. This didn’t stop him from leaving his house unmasked after he got tired of lifting fake weights on camera.

Bill De Blasio, the Mayor of New York with questionable connections to Communist organizations and a daughter in Antifa, was caught at the gym and didn’t feel even a twinge of shame about it, explaining that he needs to go to the gym, but you do not.

Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, told Chicagoans to stay home for Thanksgiving. This didn’t stop her from taking to the streets following Joe Biden’s ersatz “victory” in the 2020 Presidential election to celebrate.

Gavin Newsome, Governor of California has presided over some of the harshest lockdowns in the nation, going so far as to shut off power and water to people who defy his lockdown diktats. He somehow finds time to dine out at the three Michelin star restaurant French Laundry with some of the top medical bureaucrats in the state.

He’s not the only governor who believes in “lockdowns for thee, but not for me.” Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan went as far as to threaten lockdown protesters with further lockdowns because of their protests. She is a bit of a poster child for the mediocre people who have appointed themselves COVID cops.

Whitmer put in some of the most restrictive lockdowns in the country, then attempted to use them to blackmail Michiganders into voting for Joe Biden. In November, she began threatening jail time for businesses who did not record personal details of their customers for her personal perusal. Her husband attempted to throw his weight around to get his boat moved into place for vacation early in violation of state orders.

Nancy Pelosi’s lockdown-violating haircut is well known. Less known is that she planned to carry on with the reception dinner for new members of Congress until her plan was exposed and widely mocked at a time when she and other political elites were telling average Americans to skip Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The elephant in the room, of course, were the BLM riots of the summer of 2020. In cities such as New York, Portland (where riots literally went on every night for months), and Seattle (where insurrectionists took over several blocks of the capitol district and demanded ethnic cleansing of whites from the area), there were leftist riots growing out of a media manufactured panic centered around the death of George Floyd, a criminal who died of a drug overdose while resisting arrest and whose death is officially listed as COVID.

These riots were fine, indeed necessary and it wasn’t just politicians who were saying so. The medical profession also chimed in, predictably declaring that “racism” was the “real pandemic.”

Compare with the reaction to anti-lockdown protests. Those seeking a consolidation of power upward in the form of breaking police unions and disbanding local police departments, who terrorized small businesses and local communities, not just in big blue cities, but also in places like Kenosha, Wisconsin and Lancaster, Pennsylvania — the latter of these sensibly held rioters on $1 million bail.

The message is simple and clear: Freedom fighters are superspreaders. The freelance goons of government repression and Big Tech labor discipline enforcement are free to do as they will. Their “protests” aren’t just safe, but vitally important.

The Coming COVID Police State

There is no other term for the COVID regime than a nascent police state. Governors and bureaucrats, without any legislative authority have demanded that people remain in the homes at their personal whim for a disease with a 99.9% survival rate.

Australia is an example of a country that has moved very firmly and decisively into police state territory. Zoe Buhler, a 28-year-old pregnant mother was arrested, handcuffed and had her electronic devices confiscated for the crime of posting about an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook in a town with four active cases. The name of the crime? “The planning and encouragement of protest activity.” The punishment? Mrs. Buhler is looking at 15 years in prison.

You can watch the video of Mrs. Buhler’s arrest here. It should make your stomach turn. The Premier of Victoria (equivalent to the governor of this Australian state) allowed and encouraged BLM protests of up to 10,000 that summer.

In Victoria, as elsewhere in Australia, as well as in many American states, people are not allowed to leave their houses except for reasons deemed “essential” by their government, then only for so long and between certain hours and you might need a hall pass explaining to officers where you are going and why you are going there.

Among people harassed for the crime of sitting down on park benches include a law professor with cerebral palsy and her 70-year-old mother and a heavily pregnant woman while a young tradesman was harassed and fined for not having his papers filled out properly.

With new lockdowns rolling out that involve requirements to wear masks in your own home and a prohibition on all visitors, it is clear that some are attempting to bring back the bad old days of Spring 2020, but with even more restriction and enforcement.

Thinking about protesting? Forget about being arrested and manhandled by police. If your protests get too large, as they have done in Germany, the police will turn fire hoses on you like you’re in Alabama in 1956.

And then there’s the prospect of the vaccine, two versions of which will soon be available, if not mandatory.

Could the coronavirus vaccine be “the Mark of the Beast?” One doesn’t have to be religious to see it as such. Public health officials are already boasting that no one will be able to work, travel or go to school without this vaccine that was rushed through approvals for political theater.

Former Vice President Joe Biden hasn’t ruled out making the vaccine mandatory, though the federal government will likely just punt enforcement to large corporations, similar to how they use Big Tech to manage information on the Internet and Big Finance to take banking services away from dissidents.

Bill Gates has called not only for mandatory vaccines, but also mandatory tracking of people who have received them.

It’s worth noting that “asymptomatic transmission,” the notion that people who don’t know they’re sick are passing the disease around and thus, the entire basis of mask mandates and lockdowns, is patently false.

Are our elites deliberately conspiring to instill fear or are they just idiotic dupes? Probably a little from Column A and a little from Column B. But one thing is clear — the economic, political, academic, and media elites in this country are using a disease with a 99.9% survival rate to transform the country into a police state. Patriots and freedom lovers must resist this by any means necessary.

One way to do this is by patronizing local businesses who are openly defying mask mandates. But in many cases you can circumvent these laws — particularly at big box stores — by saying :”I have a health concern.” The law prevents them from asking anything further and risk averse large companies generally won’t for fear of a lawsuit or an Americans with Disabilities Act or HIPAA complaint.

COVID-19 Lockdowns: Liberty and Science originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[John Stuart Mill On Liberty Quotes]

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

Even Amy Chua, the Yale professor who introduced “tiger mother” to the American vernacular, would consider John Stuart Mill’s upbringing unusually rigorous. Mill’s father, a Scottish philosopher and economist, wished to instill in Mill a genius so sharp that the future of utilitarianism would be all but guaranteed. Mill obliged. He began learning Greek at age three, Latin at eight, and had become an intellect worthy of tenure at any modern university by the age at which most American students are still struggling through the novel Holes.

Unfortunately Oxford and Cambridge were out of Mill’s reach. His refusal to adhere to the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles of Religion made him ineligible for enrollment, so he studied at University College in London instead. Mill spent most of his life working for the British East India Company, during which time he championed British imperialism, and became Lord Rector of the University of St Andrews in 1865. St. Anthony’s Fire took him shortly thereafter.

Classical liberalism’s foremost thinkers often include quotes by John Stuart Mill in their writing to this day. His concept of liberty as a justification for individual freedom in opposition to state or social control endures as an underpinning of modern libertarianism. His prodigious body of work advanced social and political theory, and true to his father’s intentions he advanced the principles of utilitarianism throughout his accomplished literary career.

In his essay On Liberty, Mill discussed the nature and limits of the influence society should hold over an individual. It was in this essay that Mill expounded on the harm principle, which holds that power is only rightly exercised when the authority’s goal “is to prevent harm to others.” Those “incapable of self-government” (including children and barbarous peoples) were excluded from the protections prescribed by this principle.

Mill argued that social liberty must exist to shield individuals from tyranny, and expanded the concept of tyranny to include sources other than political elites. Mill categorically rejected the will of the majority as sufficient justification for the negation of individual rights. In Mill’s worldview each and every individual is a sovereign, free to do as they please provided they not harm others in effect. Mill was also an absolutist on the subject of freedom of speech, contending that even the falsest opinions deserve to be broadcast in an open exchange of ideas. Where else could they be better disproven?

Although Mill’s views on colonialism would have gotten him tarred and feathered by modern academics, he drew considerable ire in his own time for advocating abolition and gender equality. As a member of parliament Mill even advocated amending the Reform Bill to replace the word “man” with “person.”

A summary of Mill’s contributions to the philosophy of utilitarianism should take up a book, not this paragraph. In essence, John Stuart Mill quotes Jeremy Bentham’s Greatest Happiness Principle: “actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” Provided that an act produces a justifiable outcome – i.e. achieves the greatest good for the greatest number of people –  then the act, itself, is justified.

John Stuart Mill On Liberty Quotes

“If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employés of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.”

“We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of any one, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.”

“Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.”

“Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”

“The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.”

“[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”

“No government by a democracy or a numerous aristocracy, either in its political acts or in the opinions, qualities, and tone of mind which it fosters, ever did or could rise above mediocrity, except in so far as the sovereign Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they always have done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and instructed One or Few.”

“In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. […] That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”

“It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself.”

“A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body.”

“The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.”

John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism Quotes

“In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.”

“Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.”

“Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.”

“Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.”

“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”

John Stuart Mill Free Speech Quotes

“There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.”

“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”

“Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme’; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.”

“But, indeed, the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries.”

“Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.”

“In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away.”

“[T]here ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.”

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

John Stuart Mill Quotes on Happiness

“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

“Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification.”

“The only happy people (I thought) are those whose minds are fixed on some objective other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit followed not as a means but as itself an ideal goal. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way.”

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

John Stuart Mill Famous Quotes

“Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.”

“All good things which exist are the fruits of originality”

“Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.”

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”

“Pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends”

“Every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit”

John Stuart Mill Hate Speech Quotes

“Penalties for opinion, or at least for its expression, still exist by law; and their enforcement is not, even in these times, so unexampled as to make it at all incredible that they may some day be revived in full force.”

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”

John Stuart Mill Quotes on Liberty, Utilitarianism, and More originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Walter E. Williams Quotes]

“The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn’t do, and that is to destroy the black family.”

Walter E. Williams was born in West Philadelphia, but any parallel to a certain ‘90s sitcom ends there. He was raised by his mother in North Philadelphia. That’s where the future academic and preeminent economist shared a neighborhood with Bill Cosby. He even knew the real “Fat Albert” in person. (It is highly unlikely that Walter E. Williams quotes Fat Albert very often. Not one of the Cosby Kids had very much to say about economics.)

Williams was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1959. There he was court-martialed for daring to challenge racial order and the conventions of Jim Crow. In spite of Mark Twain’s best advice Williams argued his own case at his hearing – and won.

Williams resumed his college education at UCLA after flying 51 combat missions in the Korean War. He became fast friends with Thomas Sowell despite having never attended one of his lectures. Williams earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in economics before going on to teach at Temple University, Stanford University, and finally George Mason University.

Williams is a libertarian, antisocialist, and passionate advocate for laissez-faire capitalism. In his view a free market unfettered by government intervention is the most productive economic system ever devised. The professor has named Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek as crucial influences on his philosophical development. He has also expressed a great fondness for Ayn Rand’s writing and her tireless defense of capitalism.

Yet Williams has certainly contributed a great deal to modern libertarian discourse on his own. After analyzing the Davis-Bacon Act and its impact on the economy, he concluded that minimum wage laws actually harm minorities. In his book The State Against Blacks Williams makes an iron clad case that the government’s involvement in America’s economy has done more to hamper the development of African American communities than actual racism – the impact of which he would also argue has been vastly overstated.

Williams has addressed several other libertarian issues in his essays and frequent appearances on radio and television. He denounces anti-discrimination laws for their gross violation of freedom of association. He is just as supportive of gun control, a government measure which serves only to jeopardize the innocent while failing to reduce crime. He believes states ought to have every right to secede if they wish to. And in true libertarian fashion Williams believes in the right to sell one’s own organs. (If your kidney is not your own to sell, then whose else could it be?)

In 2009 the Ludwig von Mises Institute ranked Williams the third most influential Hayekian intellectual in America. The subject of this brief biography was no doubt pleased to see his old friend Thomas Sowell ranked first.

Walter E. Williams has never let the mainstream narrative dictate his deeply cherished political and economic beliefs. His many academic distinctions aside, that alone makes him a paragon for other libertarians to look up to.

Walter E. Williams Quotes

“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you – and why?”

“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”

“Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.”

“The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests.”

“No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong”

“Discrimination is simply the act of choice. Scarcity requires us to choose; scarcity is the cause of discrimination!”

“There are many farm handouts; but let’s call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, “Vote for me. I’ll use my office to take another American’s money and give it to you.”

“Employer substitution of higher-skilled for lower-skilled workers is not the only effect of the minimum wage law. It also gives employers an economic incentive to make other changes: substitute machines for labor; change production techniques; relocate overseas; and eliminate certain jobs altogether. The substitution of automatic dishwashers for hand washing, and automatic tomato-picking machines for manual pickers, are examples of the substitution of machines for labor in response to higher wages.”

“If we’re ignorant, we won’t even know when government infringes on our liberties. Moreover, we’ll happily cast our votes for those who’d destroy our liberties.”

“Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explained that “no one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he’s free.” That’s becoming an apt description for Americans who are oblivious to—or ignorant of—the liberties we’ve lost.”

“Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire. Of course, if you’re a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want.”

The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable.”

“Some say it’s wrong to profit from the misfortune of others. I ask my students whether they’d support a law against doing so. But I caution them with some examples. An orthopedist profits from your misfortune of having broken your leg skiing. When there’s news of a pending ice storm, I doubt whether it saddens the hearts of those in the collision repair business. I also tell my students that I profit from their misfortune—their ignorance of economic theory.”

“Government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another to whom it does not belong.”

“Do-gooders fail to realize that most good is not done in the name of good but done in the name of self-interest.”

“It’s government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable. Coercive power goes a long way toward explaining political corruption.”

“The law-abiding black citizen who is passed up by a taxi, refused pizza delivery, or stopped by the police can rightfully feel a sense of injustice and resentment. But the bulk of those feelings should be directed at those who have made race synonymous with higher rates of criminal activity rather than the taxi driver or pizza deliverer who is trying to earn a living and avoid being a crime victim.”

“Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.”

“If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.”

“The moral tragedy that has befallen Americans is our belief that it is okay for government to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another–that in my book is a working definition of slavery.”

“Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good.”

“The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation, and staying out of our lives.”

Walter E. Williams Quotes on Capitalism, Liberty, Government, and More originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Classical Liberalism vs. Modern Liberalism]

Has the definition of “liberal” changed over time?

One of the more compelling debates in American intellectual circles concerns classical liberalism vs modern liberalism.

In American parlance, the word liberal is used reflexively, often without much deep thought about its origin. It usually refers to individuals associated with the contemporary left and loosely connected to the Democratic Party. However, liberal did not always have that connotation in American politics.

To understand these changes, let’s take a stroll down memory lane to learn how its meaning has evolved over time.

Classical Liberalism vs. Modern Liberalism

Originally, liberalism was associated with a political philosophy of governance that protected individual rights, called for checks on government, encouraged economic freedom, and was centered around individualism.

In the present, we see liberalism generally associated with the modern-day political Left which is more focused on using the state to proactively promote egalitarianism and purge society of perceived blights such as racism, oppression, and patriarchal institutions.

The proactive role for the state to modify behavior would seem foreign to the liberals of yore, who generally believed in a restrained state. Crucial historical developments such as the Progressive Era, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II forever changed American politics, and by extension, politics in the West.

One of the more profound changes was the way the word “liberal” would be used in political speech.

What Changed

Some historians such as the paleoconservative scholar Paul Gottfried make the case that old school liberalism transitioned into a more progressive statism centered on social engineering and behavioral control starting in the 1900s. In his book, After Liberalism, Gottfried documents how the restrained liberalism of the 19th century gradually vanished, to be later replaced by its modern-day successor.

Gottfried argued that “Liberalism is increasingly adrift. Having gone over to social planning earlier in the century, it had to jettison its nineteenth-century heritage in return for humanitarian and ‘scientific’ goals.” The rise of the Progressive Movement at the end of the 19th century, which came about in response to the perceived injustices of the Gilded Age, started to plant the seeds of 19th century liberalism’s destruction.

From Laissez-Faire Capitalism to Welfare Capitalism

Welfare capitalism was a reasonable compromise for those skeptical of both the market and totalitarian economic systems such as Communism. This contemporary political economy generally features a system of progressive taxation, national wage standards, state-run pension systems, and welfare programs for the poor.

On the behavioral front, liberal states in the past century frequently turned to anti-discrimination laws and administrative edicts to purge society of undesirable behavior such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. Top-down state activism was justified under the banner of promoting social justice.

How Progressivism Grew

Many progressive reformers started out locally, but this was only one step in their quest for power. Their vision was to make their way to the top and use the levers of state power to mold American society along scientific lines. Although Progressives had an elitist outlook, they saw mass democracy as one tool to overthrow the previous political order.

The Impact of War on Liberalism

World War I was a major catalyst for governments across the West to assume greater powers than previously imagined. It is often forgotten that a battery of commissions set up during this period inspired a number of New Deal era agencies. Progressives did not see war-time measures as temporary, but rather stepping stones for even larger interventions that would become permanent in times of peace.

Education as a Tool to Socialize the Masses

Progressives were busy on the education front as well. They recognized the power of public education as a tool to socialize the masses. So they did not waste any time to impose their beliefs on the malleable minds of America’s youth.

Educators such as Thomas Dewey were energetic about using public education to spread progressive liberal ideas and socialize the American public. Dewey originally championed progressivism, but grew tired of the term over time.

Gottfried observed that other ideological currents taking root in the early 1900s, compelled reformers like Dewey to describe their approach as “liberal” by default:

“When Dewey decided to characterize his proposed social reforms as ‘liberal,’ he had already tried out ‘progressive,’ ‘corporate,’ and ‘organic.’ The rise of fascism may have rendered rhetorically problematic the last two alternatives to “liberal.” And since there were competitors for ‘progressive’ associated with the reform wings of the two major national parties, Dewey and his confreres may have become ‘liberals’ faute de mieux.”
– Paul Gottfried

The Transformational Era of the New Deal

Once the New Deal rolled around, the word “liberal” took on a whole different meaning in American parlance. In Gottfried’s view, the rise of the managerial state — a technocratic state that occupies itself with modifying people’s behavior — during the Progressive Era and its subsequent consolidation during the interventionist period of the New Deal is what put an end to the liberal current of the 19th century.

The economist John Maynard Keynes played an integral role throughout the New Deal in normalizing government intervention in the economy. His public policy prescriptions of massive government spending and bureaucratic administration were a radical departure from the previous laissez-faire paradigm of divided powers, bourgeois morality, and a robust civil society to keep the state in check.

The Civil Rights Revolution’s Knockout Punch

The Great Society reforms of the 1960s further accelerated the ascent of modern-day liberalism after anti-discrimination laws and welfare became the norm. Once the 1960s ended, American liberalism became a force for social reconstruction that made the liberalism of the previous century look even quainter.

Gottfried contended that “Liberalism now survives as a series of social programs informed by a vague egalitarian spirit, and it maintains its power by pointing its finger accusingly at antiliberals.” The constant desire to reshape society is part and parcel of the modern-day liberal experiment.

What is Modern Liberalism

Modern-day liberalism mostly refers to the mass democratic philosophy that center-Left political parties across the West — from liberal internationalists to social democrats — have thoroughly embraced. The way one can define modern liberalism is by characterizing it as a system which features a mixed economy with an activist state that is involved in molding people’s behaviors.

Classical liberals believed in the protection of private property, free speech, and a robust civil society. Modern liberals were more in favor of using the state as a vehicle of promoting social change. They are by no means communists. Modern liberals still believe in private property and civil society outside of the state.

But for the modern-day liberal, these institutions could be exploited and co-opted to serve managerial elites’ ends. Modern liberals ultimately conceded that a functioning market was necessary for funding a welfare state.

What is Classical Liberalism

Figuring out the difference between classical liberalism and modern liberalism requires us to go back to the origins of liberalism itself. English philosopher John Locke is largely credited as the founder of classical liberalism and his example serves as a good starting point for any classical liberal vs modern liberal analysis.

His famous Two Treatises of Civil Government functioned as the definitive text for liberal governance in a time when Europe was largely marked by absolutist monarchies. Locke did not believe in the divine right of kings but was rather of the view that governments needed the consent of the governed in order to have legitimacy.

Locke’s emphasis on “pre-political” rights was revolutionary in that it placed the individual at the forefront of any political order. In addition, individuals could set up their own governments and disband them if they felt that they no longer protected their rights.

For Locke, the government’s only legitimate function was to protect life and property. His ideas would play integral roles during the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution.

The American Revolution’s Liberal Origins

In the case of the American Revolution, a number of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence drew heavily from Locke. They used his ideology as a basis of rebelling against the British government, which they perceived as a government that usurped its legitimate functions and violated traditional English liberties.

America’s Liberal Experiment in Action

Subsequently, the founding generation drew from Lockean principles to codify a number of civil liberties and limited government functions in the U.S. constitution.  These included a separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches and the protection of liberties such as the freedom of religion, free speech, freedom to peacefully assemble, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, and due process.

The French’s Role in Influencing American Governance

The separation of powers was largely inspired by liberal thinkers such as the French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu and his Enlightenment counterparts who championed a social contract of sorts between individuals and the state. Under this political order, the rule of law, equal rights among rulers and the ruled, and the ability for citizens to petition their government would be safeguarded.

How Classical Liberalism Provided the Intellectual Backbone for Capitalism

Classical liberalism wasn’t just confined to the political sphere. Economists such as Adam Smith took the logic of liberalism and applied it to economic policy. Smith became a firm believer in a capitalist economy that promoted free commerce between nations, as opposed to the prevailing mercantilist model that European preferred at the time.

Similar to Locke’s political works, Smith’s Wealth of Nations became one of the most influential pieces of economic literature in human history and put the field of economics on the map.

Classical Liberalism’s Peak in the 19th Century

By the mid-19th century, liberalism reached a turning point after the British Empire embraced global free trade through its repeal of the Corn Laws. From that point until World War I, Britain and most of the West enjoyed unprecedented economic prosperity, relative peace, and a gradual transition to constitutional democratic rule.

For many historians of liberalism, the Gilded Age or Belle Epoque (Beautiful Era) was the height of personal freedom in the West combined with a level of economic growth that was never seen before thanks to the Industrial Revolution.

Given these historical contrasts, it’s no surprise why many historians like to participate in the classical liberal vs modern liberal discussion. Upon deep inspection, there are clear differences in these ideological strands, which merit considerable analysis.

Classical Liberalism vs Modern Liberalism on the Nolan chart

The Nolan chart was named after David Nolan, a respected activist who was heavily involved in the liberty movement. This chart has helped determine how Americans identify themselves on the political spectrum. It went beyond the typical liberalism vs. conservatism debates of the 1900s and added a twist by including criteria that was generally associated with libertarianism.

The chart is divided into four quadrants that list political viewpoints along two axes, which highlight economic and personal freedom.

The classical liberal respect for individual liberties and a restrained state has lived on in modern-day libertarianism. Most classical liberals would likely score in the lower part of the libertarian quadrant closer towards the centrist bloc.

Liberals in the present, on the other hand, would probably land more on the left hand progressive quadrant, with some sliding downwards towards statism. Their economic views put them well to the left of all free-market liberals.

That said, there are some progressives and contemporary liberals who share similar views with free-market liberals regarding civil liberties.

Liberalism’s Comeback

19th century liberal ideas have witnessed somewhat of a comeback but with a slightly more radical twist after World War II. Economists such as Friedrich A. Hayek and Milton Friedman helped supply the intellectual ammo that sparked a resurgence in liberal thought and the subsequent entrance of libertarianism in American politics.

The Differences Between Classical Liberals and Libertarians

Although there are considerable degrees of overlap between classical liberals and libertarians, the latter tend to be more radical in their views of the role the state plays in society and how much government intervention should be tolerated.

For many sects of libertarianism, the state should only be limited to the provision of defense, the court system, and law enforcement. The more anarchist wings of this movement tend to believe that the private sector and civil society can assume all competencies of the state.

Where Liberalism Stands Now

As much as some would like to deny it, the definition of words matter. They can have different meanings depending on the country, time, or place. In the rest of the Anglosphere, liberal is generally associated with the free-market Right.

The same is the case in Spanish-speaking countries. However, this has not been the case in the American context. Political movements tend to come and go throughout history.

The Perceived Triumph of Liberalism Against Communism

The 20th century largely saw the demise of 19th century liberalism and ushered in a completely different paradigm. The waning years of the Cold War witnessed the demise of Soviet-style totalitarianism and the perceived triumph of liberal democracy.

Political leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan provided the public policies and political leadership that allowed for market-based liberalism to thrive and set itself apart from central planning.

The New Liberal Consensus

By the 1990s, market-based economies were generally accepted by elites and became the order of the day. This became embodied in “neoliberalism”, a resurgence of economic liberalism in the form of lower tariffs, multilateral trade, less stringent migration, moves towards privatization of state enterprises, and slightly sleeker welfare states.

Neoliberal Dominance

In contrast to its distant 19th century ancestor, neoliberalism was not as pro-liberty and still maintained the managerial state and the concomitant social engineering measures that were established in the 1960s. Regardless, the ideological dominance of neoliberalism cannot be denied as most of the globe has embraced some form of market economy and has largely rejected Soviet-style central planning.

Although the New Deal saw a leftist shift on economics issues, “neoliberals” of the post-Cold War era started taking more market-based positions on multilateral free trade and immigration.

The Fragile Nature of the Post-Cold War Order

At a glance, post-Cold War liberals have appeared to engage in a form of “fusionism”, wherein they blend free-market positions on immigration and trade, with more left collectivist positions on education, healthcare, free speech, gender relations, and freedom of association.

The emergence of “wokism” has further perverted liberalism, as its collectivism has now become more racialized and has taken on an iconoclastic form now that basic gender relations, appreciation for a nation’s history, and free speech are all being called into question.

Many liberals have grudgingly moved along with this new trend of leftism. Indeed, a 90s neoliberal would likely shudder at the prospect of any member of the woke generation coming into power.

The Challenge of Resurrecting Liberal Ideas

Several public intellectuals such as American political commentator Dave Rubin and psychology professor Jordan Peterson have made attempts to resurrect old liberalism in a time when political discourse is threatened by cancel culture and anti-free speech forces on the Left.

Based on the new political challenges of the 21st century, classically liberal ideas have a tall task in front of them in trying to become relevant again in political movements on the Right. Nationalism and conservatism are the most influential movements on the Right at the moment and they have generally become less liberal over time.

Regardless of the changing political ecosystem, it would still benefit people to understand the classical liberalism vs. modern liberalism debate in order to make sense of our ever-changing political environment.

Classical Liberalism vs Modern Liberalism: What’s the Difference? originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Henry Hazlitt Quotes]

“The art of economics consists of looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

Henry Hazlitt was an American journalist whose columns appeared regularly in Newsweek, The Nation, The Sun, and The New York Times. Although he wrote prodigiously – enough to fill 150 volumes, by his own estimation – Hazlitt will forever remain best known for his book Economics in One Lesson. The vast majority of Henry Hazlitt quotes invariably come from it.

Hazlitt grew up poor in Brooklyn. He briefly attended City College before dropping out to help support his mother. In spite of this setback the precocious teenager became a managing editor for The Wall Street Journal – until the Great War demanded his full involvement.

Hazlitt resumed his journalism career shortly after the ink had dried on the Treaty of Versailles. Over the course of his very long career he grew increasingly opposed to government intervention in the American economy, especially as embodied by Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hazlitt’s views frequently met staunch opposition from his publishers, which on more than one occasion led to his resignation.

Hazlitt published Economics in One Lesson in 1946. It was an indictment of snowballing statism, an outline of the negative toll which greater government control would take on the economy, and, perhaps most importantly, extremely accessible to the average American reader. The “One Lesson” itself is summarized in the quote that prefaces this short biography. The chapters which follow demonstrate the inherent fallacies behind the various economic beliefs which conflicted with those of the author.

Economics in One Lesson still resonates through modern libertarian arguments in favor of free trade, as well as those against price control, rent control, monetary inflation, and government stimuli. The book has received much praise from other prominent libertarians including Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Ron Paul. In 1981 Ronald Reagan named Hazlitt one of the country’s intellectual leaders.

Economics in One Lesson should not overshadow Hazlitt’s other works. The Failure of the “New Economics” is a masterfully written rejection of Keynesian economics. In a similar vein, The Way to Will-Power refutes the Freudian philosophy of determinism. What You Should Know About Inflation details the horrendous impact which central banking has on the economy. And The Great Idea, a novel, depicts a dystopia that could only be remedied through the resurgence of private ownership and the competitive market.

Hazlitt also advanced libertarian thought in the United States in his capacity as a critic alone. His review of Ludwig von Mises’ Socialism compelled millions to pick up the book. Likewise, demand for F.A. Hayek skyrocketed once Hazlitt covered Road to Serfdom. Reader’s Digest even published a condensed version of Serfdom in their April 1945 issue. It is impossible to imagine a popular magazine doing anything like that today.

Hazlitt passed away in 1993 at the age of 98. His legacy doesn’t solely live on in his writing. As one of the founding members of the Mises Institute, he has ensured that what the Southern Poverty Law Center once dubbed “a radical libertarian view of government and economics” will carry on into the future.

Henry Hazlitt Quotes

“The future of human liberty…means the future of civilization.”

“Only if the modern state can be held within a strictly limited agenda…can it be prevented from regimenting, conquering, and ultimately devouring the society which gave it birth.”

“The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have. The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge.”

“The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from someone else.”

“In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty; and the libertarians must combat them. But few of us individually have the time, energy, and special knowledge in more than a handful of subjects to be able to do this.”

“The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression, violence, theft, and fraud.”

“No matter whether it is their intention or not, almost anything that the rich can legally do tends to help the poor. The spending of the rich gives employment to the poor. But the saving of the rich, and their investment of these savings in the means of production, gives just as much employment, and in addition makes that employment constantly more productive and more highly paid, while it also constantly increases and cheapens the production of necessities and amenities for the masses.”

“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.”

“A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.”

“Forming a new habit is like forging for yourself a new path in the woods, through stubborn underbrush and prickly thorns, while all the while it is possible for you to take the well-worn, hard-trodden, pleasant path that already exists. But you can reflect that every time you travel through the new path you are going to tramp down more shrubbery and clear more entanglements from the way. Every time you take the path it is going to become easier.”

“When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.”

“Contrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty.”

Economics in One Lesson Quotes

“Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay.”

“The thing so great that “private capital could not have built it” has in fact been built by private capital – the capital that was expropriated in taxes (or, if the money was borrowed, that eventually must be expropriated in taxes).”

“Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine – the special pleading of selfish interests.”

“When your money is taken by a thief you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists. We are lucky, indeed, if the needless bureaucrats are mere easy-going loafers. They are more likely today to be energetic reformers busily discouraging and disrupting production.”

“We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.”

“The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups.”

“The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment.”

“The belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed.”

“Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of so-called economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all; that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because ‘we owe it to ourselves.’”

“Now all loans, in the eyes of honest borrowers, must eventually be repaid. All credit is debt. Proposals for an increased volume of credit, therefore, are merely another name for proposals for an increased burden of debt. They would seem considerably less inviting if they were habitually referred to by the second name instead of by the first.”

“There is a strange idea abroad, held by all monetary cranks, that credit is something a banker gives to a man. Credit, on the contrary, is something a man already has. He has it, perhaps, because he already has marketable assets of a greater cash value than the loan for which he is asking. Or he has it because his character and past record have earned it. He brings it into the bank with him. That is why the banker makes him the loan. The banker is not giving something for nothing.”

“It is significant that while there is a word ‘profiteer’ to stigmatize those who make allegedly excessive profits, there is no such word as ‘wageer’ – or ‘losseer.’”

“You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.”

“Necessary policemen, firemen, street cleaners, health officers, judges, legislators and executives perform productive services as important as those of anyone in private industry. They make it possible for private industry to function in an atmosphere of law, order, freedom and peace. But their justification consists in the utility of their services. It does not consist in the ‘purchasing power’ they possess by virtue of being on the public payroll.”

“Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.”

“There is a similar effect when personal incomes are taxed 50, 60 or 70 percent. People begin to ask themselves why they should work six, eight or nine months of the entire year for the government, and only six, four or three months for themselves and their families. If they lose the whole dollar when they lose, but can keep only a fraction of it when they win, they decide that it is foolish to take risks with their capital.”

“[…] heavy unemployment means that fewer goods are produced, that the nation is poorer, and that there is less for everybody.”

“Everywhere the means is erected into the end, and the end itself is forgotten.”

Henry Hazlitt Quotes on History

“The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.”

“The first (lesson) which we meet again and again in history, is that once the dole or similar relief programs are introduced, they seem almost inevitably – unless surrounded by the most rigid restrictions – to get out of hand. The second lesson is that once this happens the poor become more numerous and worse off than they were before, not only because they have lost self-reliance, but because the sources of wealth and production on which they depend for either doles or jobs are diminished or destroyed.”

“The long-run historical tendency of capitalism has not only been to increase real incomes more or less proportionately nearly all along the line, but to benefit the masses even more than the rich.”

“There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest – of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being.”

Henry Hazlitt Quotes Subsidies

“The only real cure for poverty is production.”

“When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.”

“Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.”

“The surest way for a poor nation to stay poor is to harass, hobble, and straitjacket private enterprise or to discourage or destroy it by subsidized government competition, oppressive taxation, or outright expropriation.”

“The army of relief and other subsidy recipients will continue to grow, and the solvency of the government will become increasingly untenable, as long as part of the population can vote to force the other part to support it.”

“All subsidy measures, all schemes to redistribute income or to force Peter to support Paul, are one-eyed as well as shortsighted. They get their immediate appeal by focusing attention on the alleged needs of some particular group of intended beneficiaries. But the inevitable victims – those who are going to be asked to pay for the new handout in increased taxes (which directly or indirectly means almost everybody else) – are left out of account. Only one-half of the problem has been seen. The cost of the proposed solution has been overlooked.”

Henry Hazlitt Quotes on Economics, History, and More originally appeared in Thought Grenades, the blog on LibertasBella.com.

[The Road to Serfdom Quotes]

“In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority.”

An Austrian-British economist and philosopher, Friedrich August von Hayek remains a pivotal figure in the defense of classical liberalism – the assertion that civil liberties and economic freedom are paramount to civilization. Hayek quotes are worth reading and considering given the influence he’s had on freedom and liberty movements.

An academic from the beginning, Hayek studied biology and philosophy at a young age. He turned 18 just in time for the outbreak of the Great War, which he spent a large part of serving on an airplane. This experience drove Hayek to study law and political science, as he wished to help the world never again repeat the mistakes which led to such horror.

Following the war Hayek studied at the University of Vienna, was hired by Ludwig von Mises, and moved to New York to compile data on the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve. During this time Hayek gravitated away from socialism in favor of Mises’ ideals, attending his private seminars and soaking up the Austrian School economist’s lessons. With his mentor’s help Hayek cofounded and directed the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research in London. It remains Austria’s largest economic research institute to this day.

Hayek famously clashed with John Maynard Keynes in 1932, asserting that private investment in Britain’s public markets would serve them better than direct government spending. Keynes raked several of Hayek’s ideas over the coals in turn, although his rebukes weren’t enough to keep Hayek from earning a large following as he taught at the London School of Economics.

Hayek published his best known work The Road to Serfdom in 1944. In it he argued that Western democracies have “progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past,” and that society’s well-meaning attempts at continuing prosperity would erect the framework that ultimately can lead to totalitarianism. To Hayek, centralized planning imposed the will of a small minority upon the greater population, corroding the rule of law as well as individual freedoms. In essence, Hayek claimed that once a government concerns itself with the greater good – a nebulous, moving goal post – it can dispense of personal freedom however it deems necessary. The ideal government would only concern itself in matters which the free market could not help, such as the prevention of fraud and the creation of a safety net.

Hayek’s treatise on individualism had far-reaching influence. Nearly half a million copies have been sold to date, including one to Milton Friedman. Even Keynes found himself in near total agreement with The Road to Serfdom (although he would never deign to admit that Hayek’s vision for a vastly limited government could work in practice).

Hayek pioneered the Austrian theory of the business cycle with which he argued that artificially low interest rates lead to capital misallocation, the economic calculation problem which makes the case that government bureaucrats are never qualified to set accurate prices, and the critique of collectivism – a social system which could not exist without maintenance by fierce and unfair government intervention.

Hayek continued to teach throughout his life and had a profound impact on world leaders including Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Much to his surprise, Hayek won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974. He passed away in Germany in 1992.

The Road to Serfdom Quotes

“To act on behalf of a group seems to free people of many of the moral restraints which control their behaviour as individuals within the group.”

“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”

“Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions – all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.”

“We are ready to accept almost any explanation of the present crisis of our civilization except one: that the present state of the world may be the result of genuine error on our own part and that the pursuit of some of our most cherished ideals has apparently produced results utterly different from those which we expected.”

“Few people ever have an abundance of choice of occupation. But what matters is that we have some choice, that we are not absolutely tied to a job which has been chosen for us, and that if one position becomes intolerable, or if we set our heart on another, there is always a way for the able, at some sacrifice, to achieve his goal. Nothing makes conditions more unbearable than the knowledge that no effort of ours can change them; and even if we should never have the strength of mind to make the necessary sacrifice, the knowledge that we could escape if we only strove hard enough makes many otherwise intolerable positions bearable.”

“The word ‘truth’ itself ceases to have its old meaning. It describes no longer something to be found, with the individual conscience as the sole arbiter of whether in any particular instance the evidence (or the standing of those proclaiming it) warrants a belief; it becomes something to be laid down by authority, something which has to believed in the interest of unity of the organized effort and which may have to be altered as the exigencies of this organized effort require it.”

“One need not be a prophet to be aware of impending dangers. An accidental combination of experience and interest will often reveal events to one man under aspects which few yet see.”

“The main cause of the ineffectiveness of British propaganda is that those directing it seem to have lost their own belief in the peculiar values of English civilization or to be completely ignorant of the main points on which it differs from that of other people. The Left intelligentsia indeed, have so long worshiped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. That the moral values on which most of them pride themselves are largely the product of the institutions they are out to destroy, these socialists cannot, of course, admit.”

“When security is understood in too absolute a sense, the general striving for it, far from increasing the chances of freedom, becomes the gravest threat to it.”

“It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative programme, on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off, than on any positive task. The contrast between the “we” and the “they”, the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses. From their point of view it has the great advantage of leaving them greater freedom of action than almost any positive programme.”

“The young are right if they have little confidence in the ideas which rule most of their elders. But they are mistaken or misled when they believe that these are still the liberal ideas of the nineteenth century, which, in fact, the younger generation hardly knows. We have little right to feel in this respect superior to our grandfathers; and we should never forget that it is we, the twentieth century, and not they, who have made a mess of things.”

“What Tocqueville did not consider was how long such a government would remain in the hands of benevolent despots when it would be so much more easy for any group of ruffians to keep itself indefinitely in power by disregarding all the traditional decencies of political life.”

“Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.”

“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily recreated in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s own conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.”

Hayek Socialism Quotes

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists.”

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.”

“But what socialists seriously contemplate the equal division of existing capital resources among the people of the world?”

“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded.”

“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”

“Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.”

“While an equality of rights under a limited government is possible and an essential condition of individual freedom, a claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.”

“It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”

“There can be no doubt that the promise of greater freedom has become one of the most effective weapons of socialist propaganda and that the belief that socialism would bring freedom is genuine and sincere. But this would only heighten the tragedy if it should prove that what was promised to us as the Road to Freedom was in fact the High Road to Servitude. Unquestionably, the promise of more freedom was responsible for luring more and more liberals along the socialist road, for blinding them to the conflict which exists between the basic principles of socialism and liberalism, and for often enabling socialists to usurp the very name of the old party of freedom. Socialism was embraced by the greater part of the intelligentsia as the apparent heir of the liberal tradition: therefore it is not surprising that to them the idea of socialism’s leading to the opposite of liberty should appear inconceivable.”

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now – independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors – are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”

“From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.”

“The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.”

Hayek Quotes on Economics

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

“The more the state ‘plans’ the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”

“To produce the same result for different people, it is necessary to treat them differently. To give different people the same objective opportunities is not to give them the same subjective chance. It cannot be denied that the Rule of Law produces economic inequality—all that can be claimed for it is that this inequality is not designed to affect particular people in a particular way.”

“Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower, in short, what men should believe and strive for.”

“Within the known rules of the game the individual is free to pursue his personal ends and desires, certain that the powers of government will not be used deliberately to frustrate his efforts.”

“What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.”

“Only if we understand why and how certain kinds of economic controls tend to paralyze the driving forces of a free society, and which kinds of measures are particularly dangerous in this respect, can we hope that social experimentation will not lead us into situations none of us want.”

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable … it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”

Friedrich A. Hayek Quotes on Socialism, Economics, and More originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Ayn Rand Quotes on Love]

Who is Ayn Rand? Born to a middle class Russian-Jewish family in 1905, Rand was treated to a front row seat to the wonders of communism in action. Rand fled with her family to the Crimea following the “liberation” of her father’s pharmacy but ultimately returned to Saint Petersburg where she could attend university when she wasn’t busy starving. Due to her life experiences, Ayn Rand quotes are some of the most thought-provoking in the world.

Rand was granted a visa to visit her relatives in Chicago in 1925. Upon her arrival the next year she was driven to “tears of splendor” by the sight of Manhattan’s skyline. Needless to say there was no going back for the young woman, who upon witnessing American cinema set out to become a Hollywood screenwriter.

As luck would have it Rand soon met the great director Cecil B. DeMille, thus securing work as an extra in one of his movies and a subsequent job as a junior screenwriter. By 1931 Rand had married and become an American citizen.

Rand began sharing her political leanings as she published her first works of fiction including We the Living, a semi-autobiographical novel set in Soviet Russia, and Anthem, a grim vision of a totalitarian collectivist future in which all innovation had been stifled and even the word “I” ceased to exist.

Rand’s breakout success arrived in 1943 when she published The Fountainhead, the story of a young architect who refused to conform to his industry’s hostility toward innovation. She would continue working in Hollywood until 1957 when she published her magnum opus The Fountainhead, again set in a dystopian future where bureaucratic legislation had made free enterprise all but impossible.

The Fountainhead served as Rand’s most extensive statement on Objectivism, a philosophy of her own design which she had formerly defined in her appendix to Atlas Shrugged:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Rand’s philosophy holds that knowledge and values are determined by reality, not the product of human thought. To attain the highest objectivist ideal – the achievement of one’s own happiness – man must place the greatest value on reason, self-interest, and liberty. For Rand, no social system other than “full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism” could fully recognize individual rights.

In addition to her contributions to literature and philosophy, Rand actively supported anti-communist groups including the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and the American Writers Association throughout her Hollywood career. Throughout her later years Rand traveled the country to deliver lectures on her Objectivist philosophy. In her final public lecture the year preceding her death in 1982, Rand said the following:

There is hope so long as there is one man left living on earth. There is hope, but it will not be saved automatically. It depends on the free will and choice of every man who is able to think. Those who don’t want to think don’t matter in this issue. They’re merely social ballast.

Ayn Rand Quotes on Love

“Love is our response to our highest values – and can be nothing else.”

“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a mans’s sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life.”

“To say ‘I love you’ one must know first how to say the ‘I’.”

“Love is the expression of one’s values.”

“Love should be treated like a business deal, but every business deal has its own terms and its own currency. And in love, the currency is virtue. You love people not for what you do for them or what they do for you. You love them for the values, the virtues, which they have achieved in their own character.”

“If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.”

“Man is an end in himself. Romantic love – the profound, exalted, lifelong passion that unites his mind and body in the sexual act – is the living testimony to that principle.”

“There are two aspects of man’s existence which are the special province and expression of his sense of life: love and art.”

“To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self-esteem, is capable of love—because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed values. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”

“One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy from the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love.”

Ayn Rand Quotes on Capitalism

“The businessman’s tool is value.”

“Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.”

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants.”

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”

“Capitalism was the only system in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only system that stood for man’s right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself.”

“Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.”

“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.”

“What it does guarantee is that a monopolist whose high profits are caused by high prices, rather than low costs, will soon meet competition originated by the capital market.”

“Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history—a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world—from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.”

“A free market never loses sight of the question: Of value to whom? And, within the broad field of objectivity, the market value of a product does not reflect its philosophically objective value, but only its socially objective value.”

“Child labor was not ended by legislative fiat; child labor ended when it became economically unnecessary for children to earn wages in order to survive—when the income of their parents became sufficient to support them. The emancipators and benefactors of those children were not legislators or factory inspectors, but manufacturers and financiers.”

“Prior to the American Revolution, through centuries of feudalism and monarchy, the interests of the rich lay in the expropriation, enslavement, and misery of the rest of the people. A society, therefore, where the interests of the rich require general freedom, unrestricted productiveness, and the protection of individual rights, should have been hailed as an ideal system by anyone whose goal is man’s well-being.”

Ayn Rand Quotes on Government and Politics

“The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.”

“Lobbying” is the activity of attempting to influence legislation by privately influencing the legislators.”

“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

“Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution … the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.”

“Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you and pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion?”

“The great creators – the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors – stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”

“A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.”

“I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.”

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

“Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.”

“The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial.”

Ayn Rand Quotes on Life

“An individualist is a man who says: I will not run anyone’s life – nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone – nor sacrifice anyone to myself.”

“Man’s unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.”

“When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.”

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”

Ayn Rand Philosophy Quotes

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”

“Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”

“Any alleged right of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another isn’t and can’t be a right.”

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

“I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.”

“The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.”

“My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.”

“Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

“Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.”

“There are no evil thoughts except one; the refusal to think.”

“We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

“I am, therefore I’ll think.”

“The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.”

“God … a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive.”

“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.”

“From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man – the function of his reasoning mind.”

Ayn Rand Quotes on Capitalism, Government, Philosophy, and More originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Murray Rothbard Quotes]

“War is mass murder. Conscription is slavery. Taxation is robbery.”

Renowned Austrian school economist. Founder and former leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism. Passionate historical revisionist. Arguably the preeminent libertarian thinker of the 20th century. Whenever you see the colors black and yellow laid side by side, the first man who comes to your mind should be Murray Newton Rothbard. And needless to say, when you read Murray Rothbard quotes you should pay attention.
 
Rothbard was born in 1926 to Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia. He received his PhD in economics at Columbia University, noting that he was nearly the only student at the school who didn’t espouse extreme leftist ideologies. Rothbard went on to teach at the New York University Stern School of Business where he was also paid to write Man, Economy, and State, a textbook based on Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action which the author himself soundly approved of.
 
Following the collapse of the Volker Fund which had permitted him to work from home, Rothbard taught at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from 1966 until 1986. He derided the school as Marxist and ultimately found better circumstances at University of Nevada, Las Vegas where he worked until his death in 1995.
 
Rothbard founded the Center for Libertarian Studies, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He also co-founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Let us briefly summarize the theories of a man who wrote over one dozen books and spent a lifetime teaching.
 
Rothbard believed in studying economics through the lens of praxeology rather than econometrics, treating it like a set of fixed principles rather than a phenomenon only to be studied after the fact. Rothbard was a font of criticism for modern, mainstream economics, dismissing Adam Smith’s work as the root of Marxism and Milton Friedman as a pernicious establishmentarian. He was also a fierce opponent of egalitarianism, insisting that implementation of so unnatural a doctrine would inevitably lead to disastrous consequences.
 
Rothbard coined the term “anarcho-capitalism” to describe his philosophy which favored self-ownership, private property, and the free market, as well as the abolishment of the state’s monopoly of force. Rothbard’s views on women’s suffrage won’t get his face put on a postage stamp anytime soon, and his support for a powerful police force that would administer instant punishment for crimes including vagrancy wouldn’t merit charitable treatment by CNN if he proclaimed it today.
 
Rothbard was a staunch opponent of aggressive foreign policy, arguing that WWII in particular created an untenable military-industrial complex and state monopoly on capitalism. To Rothbard, the only justifiable American wars were the Revolution and the Civil War – but the latter only on the Confederate side.
 
Rothbard asserted that historical revisionism was necessary to unroot narratives which gave undue favor to the state, that judiciary authority violated natural rights, that the “eye for an eye” system of retribution was only a half measure, and that the action of every man must only be attributed to his free will.
 
Not content to sit in an ivory tower, Rothbard vocally supported politicians including Strom Thurmond, Ron Paul, George H. W. Bush, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan throughout his lifetime.
 
Murray Rothbard Quotes
 
“Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal.”
 
“The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives … libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy.”
 
“I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.”
 
“No action can be virtuous unless it is freely chosen.”
 
“To be moral, an act must be free.”
 
“Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.”
 
“There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian.”
 
“While liberals are in favor of any sexual activity engaged in by two consenting adults, when these consenting adults engage in trade or exchange, the liberals step in to harass, cripple, restrict, or prohibit that trade. And yet both the consenting sexual activity and the trade are similar expressions of liberty in action.”
 
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
 
“It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.”
 
“I frankly don’t see anything wrong with greed. I think that the people who are always attacking greed would be more consistent with their position if they refused their next salary increase. I don’t see even the most Left-Wing scholar in this country scornfully burning his salary check.”
 
“It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.”
 
“It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.”
 
“The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.”
 
“Whenever someone starts talking about ‘fair competition’ or indeed, about ‘fairness’ in general, it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.”
 
“And, indeed, what is the State anyway but organized banditry? What is taxation but theft on a gigantic, unchecked, scale? What is war but mass murder on a scale impossible by private police forces? What is conscription but mass enslavement? Can anyone envision a private police force getting away with a tiny fraction of what States get away with, and do habitually, year after year, century after century?”
 
“Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can’t really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism”
 
“Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government.”
 
“We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely – those against private citizens or those against itself?”
 
“Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states?”
 
“Since production must always precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has never been created by a ‘social contract’; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation.”
 
“Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.”
 
Murray Rothbard Quotes on Libertarianism, Economics, and Freedom originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.

[Ludwig Von Mises Quotes on Socialism]

An Austrian School economist, Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises devoted much of his life to writing and educating on the subject of classical liberalism. While several classical libertarians including John Locke and Jean-Baptiste Say preceded him, Mises’ revival of the ideology following the Second World War has cemented his place as one of libertarianism’s most revered figures.

Mises was born in Austria-Hungary in 1881. While studying at the University of Vienna he began to strongly favor the works of Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School of economics himself. Mises went on to work in law, lecture on economics, and serve as a front officer in the Austro-Hungarian artillery and as an advisor to the War Department. It was during Mises’ government work that he hired Friedrich Hayek, who would continue on to become yet another foundational classical libertarian thinker.

During the late 1930s Mises very correctly supposed that Europe was a poor place for a Jew to live in, and so fled with his wife to New York City in 1940. Our universities were happy to receive him. Mises held the position of visiting professor at New York University from 1945 until four years before his death in 1973.

Mises published Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, his best known work, in 1949. In it he made a compelling case for laissez-faire capitalism based on praxeology – the theory that human behavior is purposeful and rationalized rather than merely reflexive. To briefly summarize so important a book would be to grossly mistreat it, but at its core Human Action doesn’t simply argue that the free market trounces any government system. Mises claims the free market is the very basis of civilization itself!

Mises proposed the economic calculation problem in 1920. With it he laid out his theory that the price system under capitalism inherently assigns the correct value to goods, whereas a socialist approach necessarily requires guesswork. In his 1922 book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis Mises further underscored his point that bureaucrats are never properly equipped to assign value to capital goods.

Mises had great influence as a teacher as well. His former employee Hayek joined Mises as a scholar in America, and those who attended his seminars in New York included Murray Rothbard, Israel Kirzner, and Hans Sennholz. Ayn Rand also expressed Mises’ influence on her own philosophy.

Mises’ critics have declared his understanding of human nature flawed, his attribution of anti-capitalist sentiments to envy ignorant, and his viewpoints inflexible to the extent of being harsh. But none deny the importance of Mises’ work, and today his inflexibility is often considered a sign of his absolute and unwavering sincerity in his economic theories.

Ludwig Von Mises Quotes on Socialism

“Socialism and democracy are irreconcilable.”

“Every socialist is a disguised dictator.”

“People frequently call socialism a religion. It is indeed the religion of self-deification.”

“In the bureaucratic machine of socialism the way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors.”

“Socialism promises not only welfare – wealth for all – but universal happiness in love as well. This part of its program has been the source of much of its popularity.”

‘“Socialism is the expression of the principle of violence crying from the workers’ soul, just as Imperialism is the principle of violence speaking from the soul of the official and the soldier.”

“Socialist society is a society of officials. The way of living prevailing in it, and the mode of thinking of its members, are determined by this fact.”

“True, a socialistic society could see that 1000 litres of wine were better than 800 litres. It could decide whether or not 1000 litres of wine were to be preferred to 500 litres of oil. Such a decision would involve no calculation. The will of some man would decide. But the real business of economic administration, the adaptation of means to ends only begins when such a decision is taken. And only economic calculation makes this adaptation possible. Without such assistance, in the bewildering chaos of alternative materials and processes the human mind would be at a complete loss. Whenever we had to decide between different processes or different centres of production, we would be entirely at sea.”

“Wherever Europeans or the descendants of European emigrants live, we see Socialism at work to-day; and in Asia it is the banner round which the antagonists of European civilization gather. If the intellectual dominance of Socialism remains unshaken, then in a short time the whole co-operative system of culture which Europe has built up during thousands of years will be shattered. For a socialist order of society is unrealizable. All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one’s own needs.”

“All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one’s own needs.”

“It suffices here to say that the planned economy which the advocates of dictatorship wish to set up is precisely as socialistic as the Socialism propagated by the self-styled Social Democrats.”

“A socialist administration needs ‘guarantees’ that its work of transformation would not be ‘disrupted’ by repeal in event of its defeat at the polls. Therefore the suspension of the Constitution is ‘inevitable’.”

“The Kingdom of Christ is not of this world; socialism, on the contrary, wants to establish the kingdom of salvation on earth. Therein lies its strength, therein, however, its weakness too, from which it will collapse some day just as quickly as it has triumphed.”

“Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.”

“Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly serves his own people and all humanity, and above all as a zealous and courageous seeker after truth. But let anyone measure Socialism by the standards of scientific reasoning, and he at once becomes a champion of the evil principle, a mercenary serving the egotistical interests of a class, a menace to the welfare of the community, an ignoramus outside the pale.”

“There are many socialists who have never come to grips in any way with the problems of economics, and who have made no attempt at all to form for themselves any clear conception of the conditions which determine the character of human society.”

“Those who do not please the holders of power are not allowed to paint or to sculpt or to conduct an orchestra. Their works are not printed or performed.”

“That Socialism would be immediately practicable if an omnipotent and omniscient Deity were personally to descend to take in hand the government of human affairs is incontestable.”

“The ideas of modern Socialism have not sprung from proletarian brains. They were originated by intellectuals, sons of the bourgeoisie, not of wage-earners.”

“No one shall be idle if I have to work; no one shall be rich if I am poor. Thus we see, again and again, that resentment lies behind all socialist ideas.”

“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.”

Ludwig Von Mises Best Quotes

“A nation that believes in itself and its future, a nation that means to stress the sure feeling that its members are bound to one another not merely by accident of birth but also by the common possession of a culture that is valuable above all to each of them, would necessarily be able to remain unperturbed when it saw individual persons shift to other nations. A people conscious of its own worth would refrain from forcibly detaining those who wanted to move away and from forcibly incorporating into the national community those who were not joining it of their own free will. To let the attractive force of its own culture prove itself in free competition with other peoples — that alone is worthy of a proud nation, that alone would be true national and cultural policy. The means of power and of political rule were in no way necessary for that.”

“What makes Bolshevism strong is not the Soviets’ artillery and machine-guns but the fact that the whole world receives its ideas sympathetically.”

“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”

“He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.”

“A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.”

“If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization”

“The lord of production is the consumer”

“To seek to organize society is just as crazy as it would be to tear a living plant to bits in order to make a new one out of the dead parts.”

“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”

“The average man is both better informed and less corruptible in the decisions he makes as a consumer than as a voter at political elections.”

“Social peace is attained only when one allows all members of society to participate in democratic institutions. And this means equality of All before the Law.”

“It is more fun to listen to the radio speeches of a dictator than to study economic treatises. The entrepreneurs and technologists who pave the way for economic improvement work in seclusion; their work is not suitable to be visualized on the screen. But the dictators, intent upon spreading death and destruction, are spectacularly in sight of the public. Dressed in military garb they eclipse in the eyes of the movie-goers the colourless bourgeois in plain clothes. The problems of society’s economic organization are not suitable for light talk at fashionable cocktail parties. Neither can they be dealt with adequately by demagogues haranguing mass assemblies. They are serious things. They require painstaking study. They must not be taken lightly.”

“If Capitalism improves the economic position all round, it is of secondary importance that it does not raise all to the same level. A social order is not bad simply because it helps one more than the other.”

“When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the market-place.”

“Under capitalism the common man enjoys amenities which in ages gone by were unknown and therefore inaccessible even to the richest people. But, of course, these motorcars, television sets and refrigerators do not make a man happy. In the instant in which he acquires them, he may feel happier than he did before. But as soon as some of his wishes are satisfied, new wishes spring up. Such is human nature.”

“Freedom is indivisible. As soon as one starts to restrict it, one enters upon a decline on which it is difficult to stop.”

“Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will”

“All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out”

“Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect – better because they alone give promise of final success.”

Ludwig Von Mises Quotes on Socialism, Free Markets, and More originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.