The big difference between big government and big business is big government can take you to jail, or shoot you if you don’t comply. —Thomas Massie
Tag: Freedom
If capitalism had never existed, any honest humanitarian should have been struggling to invent it. But when you see men struggling to evade its existence, to misrepresent its nature, and to destroy its last remnants—you may be sure that whatever their motives, love for man is not one of them. —Ayn Rand
Liberty is the right of the individual to invoke sole dominion over their own life to act as they see fit, provided the act in and of itself does not directly infringe on the right of another individual to do the same. —Derek Wills, The Liberty Solution
End all of the wars.
End all of the remnants of the COVID regime.
End the COVID restrictions.
End all of the corporate bailouts.
End all federal militarization of the police.
End the war on drugs.
Repeal the Patriot Act.
Abolish the FBI and the ATF.
End all gun control.
End all of these awful organizations that are a disgrace to a professed free society. Let’s give being a free country a shot. That’s what we need right now. —Dave Smith
The thing about unintended consequences is it doesn’t matter whether your intent is good, it doesn’t matter whether the regulation that you’re imposing is well thought out, it doesn’t matter whether lots of people are in favor of the regulation. It is the fact that the coercion takes away from people their abilities to make decisions for themselves that causes the unintended consequence. —Antony Davies
People often fail to perceive the fundamental difference between the liberal and the anarchistic idea. Anarchism rejects all coercive social organizations, and repudiates coercion as a social technique. It wishes in fact to abolish the State and the legal order, because it believes that society could do better without them. It does not fear anarchical disorder because it believes that without compulsion men would unite for social co-operation and would behave in the manner that social life demands.
Anarchism as such is neither liberal nor socialistic: it moves on a different plane from either. Whoever denies the basic idea of Anarchism, whoever denies that it is or ever will be possible to unite men without coercion under a binding legal order for peaceful co-operation, will, whether liberal or socialist, repudiate anarchistic ideals.
— Ludwig von Mises (Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis)
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. —Edith Hamilton
I think all those laws against victimless crimes where people are only hurting themselves should be repealed and dealt with in a manner that would actually help people, as opposed to throwing them in jail and taking them away from their families. —Julie Borowski
We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble: “But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.” We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence.
When violence bursts onto the peaceful human condition, its face is flush with self-assurance, it displays on its banner and proclaims: “I am Violence! Make way, step aside, I will crush you!” But violence ages swiftly, a few years pass—and it is no longer sure of itself. To prop itself up, to appear decent, it will without fail call forth its ally—Lies. For violence has nothing to cover itself with but lies, and lies can only persist through violence. And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit—and this suffices as our fealty.
And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The truth will not be an easy path. Perhaps, but it is the easiest among those that lie before us. Not an easy choice for the body, but the only one for the soul. No, not an easy path, but then we already have among us people, who have for years lived by the truth. And so: We need not be the first to set out on this path, Ours is but to join! The more of us set out together, the thicker our ranks, the easier and shorter will this path be for us all! If we become thousands—they will not cope, they will be unable to touch us. If we will grow to tens of thousands—we will not recognize our country! —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn