Libertarian Conservatives

"Were it necessary to bring a majority into a comprehension of the libertarian philosophy, the cause of liberty would be utterly hopeless. Every significant movement in history has been led by one or just a few individuals with a small minority of energetic supporters."

"A society such as this [Mont Pelerin Society], beyond entertainment or evil has one other possibility -- an intellectual levelling-up of its members. After attendance at three meetings I have experienced nowhere near the edification I can obtain elsewhere and at lower cost. Maybe these folks are too far advanced for me to grasp their wisdom. In any event I am not benefited...These pedants have a gadgetry of scholarship -- degrees, licenses, titles, readings of all old-world philosophy -- to which those outside are not admitted except in condescending tolerance, a form of gentle and mannerly contempt."

"I have never met a single European who had a clean, clear-cut understanding of the principles of strictly limited government."

"Self-promotion is self-defeating. No matter how brilliant an individual, one becomes instinctively "leery" when he toots his own horn."

"Civilization, I sometimes think, is little more than a thin veneer of culture covering a host of red-assed baboons!"

"Clever phrases or cliches such as "Human rights are above property rights" or "What would you do, let them starve?" have influenced untold numbers of Americans to vote for charlatans and to advocate legal thievery."

"Once an activity has been socialized, it is impossible to point out, by concrete example, how men in a free market could better conduct it. How, for instance, can one compare a socialized post office with private postal delivery when the latter has been outlawed?"

"An action is morally good which aids or promotes this unfolding of self and it is morally bad if it inhibits or destroys the process. It, of course, goes without saying that this does not include one's own rise at the expense of another."

"Government can no more use coercion against the life or property of a person and, at the same time, perform its proper function of defending the life or property of that person than I can practice Christian charity on another while robbing him."

"Socialism is founded on a lie -- the premise that man knows more than he in fact does know."

"It should be noted that people in the free market rarely bear false witness; integrity is the rule. The morning mile, phone calls, planes the airlines buy, autos by the millions - no one could list the instances - are as represented. We have daily, eloquent, enormous testimony that the Ten Commandments can be and are observed by fallible human beings. Contemporary politics is the most glaring of all exceptions."

"When all the verbiage is cut through and all the shouting dies down, what really is it FEE argues for? Just this: You preposterous egotists! Get the hell off the backs of folks who know as much as you but who know they don’t know much. Leave us with ourselves and our Creator. The Creator, not you, is our source of creative action. Sure, all of us will organize to protect this creative relationship but, other than this, get gone! Leave the creative relationship be, you would-be gods! We are no less fallible than you but you are dizzy."

"Government cannot, in logic and justice, possess any powers or rights that are not properly the powers and rights of any or all of the individuals who establish it."

"The distinction between individuals is not to be found in self-interest. It is to be found in the degree of intelligence they apply in interpreting their self-interest. The "selfless" one, in the name of doing good, charity, and sacrifice, is not intelligent enough to see that his greatest contribution to others would be his own evolution, presenting society with a more perfect person. The intelligent one knows that his value to others is identical with value to self, and that this value rests on the extent of his perfection, the extent that he excels, the extent that he has something over and above which can be drawn on by others."

"Freedom is the key to Godliness"

"Assuming the market is free from fraud, violence, misrepresen­tation, and predation, the economic failure or success of any individ­ual is measured by what he can obtain in willing exchange—fair­ness being a state of affairs that is presupposed in the assumption. Everyone, according to any moral code I would respect, is entitled to fairness in the sense of no special privilege to anyone and open op­portunity for all; no one is entit­led to what is implied by a fair price, a fair wage, a fair salary, a fair rent, or a fair profit. In mar­ket terms, one is entitled to what others will offer in willing ex­change. That is all!"

"Why do tourists gape so eagerly at this sort of thing [Château de Fontainebleau]? Most people, I believe, aspire to what these agents and sycophants of the state achieved: ease without work, services for themselves by edict, power and position by wishing plus, of course, a little intrigue."

"'What would you cut out of government expenditures?' I cannot answer that question. Ask me what I would leave in."

"If we are free to be our varietal selves; if there be no obstructions to the exchange of ideas and goods; if we have the liberty to move; society and"

"Coercion doesn't change from evil to good if employed by two against one or by 200 million against one. Arithmetic has no bearing on moral principles."

"I have yet to find a person who does not agree with this: "It is wrong for me to control you or for you to control me." Then I say, "It is wrong for two of us to control you." Agreed. Then I say, It is wrong for 150 million of us to control you." Agreed. But the BUT arises as soon as most persons begin to reason from the general to the particular. The penetration of the social cancer is so deep that they can no longer see how persons could be educated, or roads could be built, or the mails delivered, or prosperity made possible, short of coercion, the thing they admit to be evil."

"At one end of the intellectual spectrum are the wise, those who know they don't know much; and on the other end are the egotists, those who have little, if any, awareness of how little they know."

"Socialism depends upon and presupposes material achievements which socialism itself can never create. Socialism is operative only in wealth situations brought about by motes of production other than its own. Socialism takes and redistributes wealth, but it is utterly incapable of creating wealth."

"A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!"

"Statism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others - on the grand scale. There is no moral — only a legal — distinction between petty thievery and political Robin Hoodism, which is to say, there is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other piece of socialization."

"The more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one."

"There are two ways of getting on top. One way is to outrun all the others. The second way is to hold others back to a pace slower than one's own. The first way requires ability; the second way is possible only by the use of coercion. The first way is the ingredient of all progress; the second is an ingredient of regress. The function of government is to defend the former against the latter. The function of revolution is to destroy any government when it joins forces with the latter."

"Communism, socialism, the welfare state, et cetera, are essentially one and the same thing."

"All creative thought and creative action is strictly personal. A committee, any collective, cannot think. It cannot act creatively. It can only act destructively. It can exercise brute force."

"The proper function of government does not include government's intrusion into economic activities;..it should"

"There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism."

"The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed."

"Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Republicanism, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing."

"Whenever government assumes responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies."

"In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news – at least one day ahead... Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules."

"I am a conservative. I'm very much pro-life. If you go down the list of what makes up a conservative, I'm there almost all the way."

"I believe anyone who supports feminism is anti-woman even if they are not conscious of it. Feminism and "female empowerment" has led to a generation of the least happy women in history. They are lost and are being told that they are the EXACT same as men and should be able to compete at the same level in all fields of life. How sad to always fail at something you are supposed to be equal in. How sad to be led astray to never get married then hit a wall where you wish for nothing more than a family but cannot have it... simply because you bought into this false notion of feminism that promised happiness and fulfillment. The reality is women are biologically different and different things will make them happy."

"Excellent stuff from CPC leadership candidate @MaximeBernier There's hope for Canada!"

"He's one of the great all-time frauds of American politics... His reputation vastly exceeds his ability. ...His personal effects... rival those of Imelda Marcos. ...In my view, the man's word is no good... Every meeting I've had with the guy, I wanted to wash my hands three times afterwards."

"A lobbyist can perform no greater favor for a lawmaker than to help get him elected. It is the ultimate political IOU, and it can be cashed in again and again. No other firm holds more of this precious currency than the Washington shop known as Black, Manafort. Legally, there are two firms. Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, a lobbying operation... Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater, a political-consulting firm, has helped elect... powerful... politicians... The partners... say that the lobbying and political-consulting functions are kept separate. ...Charges , president of the public-interest lobbying group : "It's institutionalized conflict of interest." ...The partners charge six-figure fees to lobby and six-figure fees to manage election campaigns. As a result, they take home six-figure salaries. ...They unabashedly peddle their access to the Reagan Administration."

"Check out @MaximeBernier if you want to save Canada."

"As a political firm, Black, Manafort represents Democrats and Republicans alike--and sometimes candidates running for the same seat. ...Stone and Atwater's offices are right across the hall from each other, prompting one congressional aide to ask facetiously, "Why have primaries for the nomination? Why not have the candidates go over to Black, Manafort & Stone and argue it out?" Stone and Atwater present a contrast in styles. Stone, who practices the hardball politics he first learned as an aide to convicted Watergate Co-Conspirator ..."

"Stone likes to think of himself as a fixer -- "the next generation's ," in the words of one friend -- and identifies with the modern consultant-as-slick-salesman..."

"I’m an agent provocateur."

"Corey is now openly telling people he's got the goods on me. ...He's telling reporters that he has something on Manafort that will blow him out of the campaign. ...We gotta take the little prick out."

"Stone’s partner Lee Atwater recently told the Washington Post that [Stone] studies the ' every week, since it’s the literary staple of America’s swing voter. All this "expertise" amounts essentially to a respectable veneer for what Stone and his firm really offer: connections, hype, and hardball negative campaigning."

"Well, my attitude regarding those who criticize me for being friends with or Richard Nixon is, "F—'em.""

"After the Reform Party cost the Republicans the White House in '92, again in '96... Yeah, I may have played some role in derailing them as a party."

"I went to the cafeteria, and as each kid would go through the cafeteria line [in my elementary school] with their tray, I would tell them, "You know, Nixon has proposed having school on Saturdays." ...[T]he mock election [in my elementary school] was held and to the surprise of the local newspaper, Democrat John Kennedy swept this mock election. For the first time ever I understood the value of disinformation."

"Talking memes with @MaximeBernier"