I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.more Ronald Reagan quotes | No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!more Ronald Reagan quotes | The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?more Ronald Reagan quotes | Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? ... Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Congress is extraordinarily reluctant to inject itself into foreign policy. It has dumped entirely its constitutional duty for money onto
a central bank, and for trade, onto the executive branch. It seems to never know what the CIA and other intelligence agencies are doing. Like the
Romans, they no longer talk of the republic or liberty. And like the Romans, the American people, or most of them anyway, don’t seem to care. ...
Like the Romans, we no longer have a citizen army but professional legions, and whether they wear jackboots or not, some federal officers seem to
regard Americans with about the same compassion as the Praetorian Guard had for the plebes. As in Rome, the air is full of suspicion, intrigues and
conspiracies, real or imagined, and the air reeks of greed and opportunism. As those on the Tiber, the rulers on the Potomac have grown
suspicious of the people, don’t trust them and, in some cases fear them. And, as in Rome, they grovel in luxury while taking 40 cents on the dollar
out of the sweat of working people to pay for corn and circuses to keep the mob satisfied. more Charley Reese quotes | | When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated.more H. L. Richardson quotes | Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.more Michael Rivero quotes | I am convinced that we can do to guns what we've done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.more George L. Roman quotes | The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.more Franklin D. Roosevelt quotes | | The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.more Murray N. Rothbard quotes | | | | It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law. It is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach.more Rick Scott quotes | Since March 9, 1933, the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency....Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens. ...
A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency....from, at least, the Civil War in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency.more Senate Report, 93rd Congress quotes | Today’s political leaders demonstrate their low opinion of the public with every social law they pass. They believe that, if given the right to chose, the citizenry will probably make the wrong choice. Legislators do not think any more in terms of persuading people; they feel the need to force their agenda on the public at the point of a bayonet and the barrel of a gun, in the name of the IRS, the SEC, the FDA, the DEA, the EPA, or a multitude of other ABCs of government authority.more Mark Skousen quotes | People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.more L. Neil Smith quotes | People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We’ll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.more Joseph Sobran quotes | Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them.more Joseph Sobran quotes | It doesn't matter what rights you have under the Constitution of the United States, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn't matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials' power, if they can exceed those limits without any adverse consequences. In other words, the Constitution cannot protect you, if you don't protect the Constitution with your votes against anyone who violates it. Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped. As long as millions of Americans vote on the basis of who gives them free stuff, look for their freedom -- and all our freedom -- to be eroded away, bit by bit. Our children and grandchildren may yet come to see the Constitution as just some quaint words from the past that people once took seriously.more Thomas Sowell quotes | The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.more Thomas Sowell quotes | No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?more Thomas Sowell quotes | The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices -- paid by others.more Thomas Sowell quotes | | Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know that government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last, has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed -- first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.more Gerry Spence quotes | These are dangerous times. When we are afraid, we want to
be protected, and since we cannot protect ourselves against such
horrors as mass murder by bombers, we are tempted to run to
the government, a government that is always willing to trade the
promise of protection for our freedom, which left, as always,
the question: How much freedom are we willing to relinquish for
such a bald promise?
Already the President was calling for more power, more power
for the FBI. He wanted a thousand more men. And he wanted to
use the army, no less, in situations like Oklahoma City. And he
wanted more power to tap our phones and to invade our privacy.
He wanted express authority from Congress to infiltrate the fringe
groups and, in short, to snoop and to peer and to spy on the
citizenry, especially those who hold different beliefs from those
that flow in the phlegmatic and murky mainstream of America.
But the question remains, will we really be safer with a thousand
more, or even a hundred thousand more FBI agents armed with
even greater power to more easily tap our phone that are already
so easily tapped and to break into our homes that are no longer
safe under the much-mangled exclusionary rule?more Gerry Spence quotes | If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?more Herbert Spencer quotes | In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot -- which is a mere substitute for a bullet -- because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.more Lysander Spooner quotes | In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot -- which is a mere substitute for a bullet -- because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency, into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.more Lysander Spooner quotes | A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases. The result -- and a natural one -- has been that we have had governments, State and national, devoted to nearly every grade and species of crime that governments have ever practised upon their victims; and these crimes have culminated in a war that has cost a million of lives; a war carried on, upon one side, for chattel slavery, and on the other for political slavery; upon neither for liberty, justice, or truth. And these crimes have been committed, and this war waged, by men, and the descendants of men, who, less than a hundred years ago, said that all men were equal, and could owe neither service to individuals, nor allegiance to governments, except with their own consent.more Lysander Spooner quotes | No attempt or pretence, that was ever carried into practical operation amongst civilized men -- unless possibly the pretence of a “Divine Right,” on the part of some, to govern and enslave others -- embodied so much of shameless absurdity, falsehood, impudence, robbery, usurpation, tyranny, and villany of every kind, as the attempt or pretence of establishing a government by consent, and getting the actual consent of only so many as may be necessary to keep the rest in subjection by force. Such a government is a mere conspiracy of the strong against the weak. It no more rests on consent than does the worst government on earth.more Lysander Spooner quotes | The strong are always free by virtue of their superior strength. So long as government is a mere contest as to which of two parties shall rule the other, the weaker must always succumb. And whether the contest be carried on with ballots or bullets, the principle is the same; for under the theory of government now prevailing, the ballot either signifies a bullet, or it signifies nothing. And no one can consistently use a ballot, unless he intends to use a bullet, if the latter should be needed to insure submission to the former.more Lysander Spooner quotes | The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.:
1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth.
2. Dupes—a large class, no doubt—each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a “free man,” a “sovereign”; that this is “a free government”; “a government of equal rights,” “the best government on earth,” and such like absurdities.
3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.more Lysander Spooner quotes | America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold:
its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life.
If we can undermine these three areas,
America will collapse from within.more Josef Stalin quotes | Government is like fire. If it is kept within bounds and under the control of the people, it contributes to the welfare of all. But if it gets out of place, if it gets too big and out of control, it destroys the happiness and even the lives of the people.more Harold E. Stassen quotes | The state may not establish a ‘religion of secularism’ in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus ‘preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.'more Justice Potter Stewart quotes | It is a maxim among lawyers that whatever hath been done before may be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities to justify the most iniquitous opinions, and the judges never fail of directing them accordingly.more Jonathan Swift quotes | The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.'
But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.more Thomas Szasz quotes | | | Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the
Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing
it, then “America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution.” The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.more John Taylor quotes | If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything ... quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 States.more Justice Clarence Thomas quotes | No government of the Centre would seek powers to imprison individuals who have committed no crime merely on the say-so of "experts" who believe they might commit a crime. No libertarian government would want to reduce our right to trial by jury, to curfew children, to place "anti-social behaviour orders" on citizens, to conduct compulsory DNA and drug tests on all offenders. No government that was concerned with freedom would seek to ban pursuits that harm no one, such as foxhunting, simply because they are unpopular. No government that has respect for its citizens would seek to interfere so intimately with so many of their private activities -- for instance, what right does a government have to tell me under what terms and conditions I may sell my house. The transaction should, quite simply, be none of their business.more George Thomas quotes | | The last stage but one of every civilisation, is characterised by the forced political unification of its constituent parts, into a single greater whole.more Arnold J. Toynbee quotes |
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