No punishment, in my opinion, is too great for a man who can build his greatness upon his country’s ruin.
Our only threat comes from within
Some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.
‘Equality’ lowers everyone
The problem with trying to equalize is that you can usually only equalize downward. Most activities do not exist for the sake of equality. They exist to serve their own purposes — and those purposes are undermined, sometimes fatally, when equality becomes the goal.
Civil rights and equality
Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.
Envy cannot be our master
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy — I don’t disparage envy, but I don’t accept it as legitimately my master.
Get informed
A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.
On assault weapons and hate speech
Assault weapons laws resemble hate speech laws. Hate speech laws usually begin by targeting a few words that almost no one approves. Once the system for controlling and punishing “hate speech” is put into place, there is little or nothing to stop it from expanding to punish more and more types of everyday speech. Similarly, once an assault weapons law is on the books, there is little to prevent politicians from vastly increasing the number of weapons banned under the law. The main effect of banning assault weapons is to give government an excuse to arrest and imprison millions of Americans while doing little or nothing to reduce crime. America has a limited number of police, and politicians must decide who the real public enemies are. If Mr. Clinton signs an assault weapons ban, it could signal the start of an attack on gun owners’ constitutional rights that could far surpass all previous gun bans.
Freedom is precarious
What happens after a people are disarmed? They become compliant and obedient. Just ask people who lived in Chile under Pinochet, or those who are currently living in Egypt, or the people who have lived under any other regime that the U.S. national-security establishment has installed or supported. They will tell you why a disarmed citizenry meekly and passively complies with any and all orders issued by a regime’s national-security establishment, including orders to submit to arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, torture, rape, or execution.
Continue reading “Freedom is precarious”Don’t hand over your powers
Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die.
When politicians pass laws
Free enterprise capitalism exists only when people in the private sector are free to pursue their own interests without direction from government. When politicians start passing laws to tell them what to do, or bureaucrats start issuing edicts to tell them what to do, it is no longer capitalism; it’s fascism.