Libertarians From The United States

"Freedom of enterprise CANNOT ‘produce a society in which there is great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few and considerable poverty among the many.’ Dr. Blake might as well ask, ‘What is our political and Christian duty when water runs uphill, when the earth turns from east to west, when air is heavier than lead?’ Doesn’t he know any facts at all? Does he never LOOK at his country? How can he avoid seeing, if he ever glances at any city, town, highway, or farm, that the salient characteristic of this country is distribution, not concentration, of wealth? Doesn’t he know that even ownership of capital wealth is not concentrated?—that, for example, some 600,000 ‘among the many’ own General Electric? What free enterprise produces most unexpectedly, is a society in which great economic responsibility is concentrated and great wealth is distributed among the many."

"As to the restraint of trade by business, that is impossible; the notion that money is power is another lie. There is no possible means by which the duPont Company can stop me (if I have the brains, and not a penny) from starting an enterprise that will eventually totally destroy the duPont Company. I can be stopped only by violence, by physical force. The duPont Company, desiring to stop me, has two possible methods: (1) You can hire and pay a gunman to kill me or kidnap me, and gangsters to destroy my property; you cannot do this successfully if the State performs its proper function of protecting human rights (my right to life, liberty, and ownership of property). (2) Or, you can bribe enough Congressmen to pass an Act of Congress setting up a commission and requiring that anyone engaging in any enterprise in the field of duPont Company’s activities must first obtain a permit from the commission and thereafter be ‘regulated’ by the members of the commission."

"They were the final blow that brought down that whole planned structure. The great English reform movement of the 19th century consisted wholly in repealing laws. There was nothing constructive in it; it was wholly destructive. It was a destruction of Government's interference with human affairs, a destruction of the so-called ‘protection’ that is actually a restriction of the exercise of natural human rights. In that mid-19th-century period of the greatest individual freedom that Englishmen have ever known, they made the prosperity and power of the British Empire during Victoria's long and peaceful reign. And to that freedom, and prosperity and power and peace, the American clipper ship contributed more than any other one thing."

"American clipper ships opened the British ports to free trade. Half a century of American smuggling and rebellion and costly ineffectual blockades; seven years of war in America, and the loss of the thirteen colonies; and all the sound and sensible arguments of English liberals and economists, could not break down the British planned economy. American clipper ships did it."

"Men stood up in Parliament and pointed to the American facts. What had created the clipper ships? Not the American government. Not protection, but lack of protection. What made the British marine second-rate? Safety, shelter, protection under the British Navigation Acts… The result was catastrophe. American clipper ships ran away with the Indian trade. They ran away with the trade in England's own home ports."

"But responsibility for whatever the men in American Government do, is the individual citizen's responsibility. The men who began the Revolution created and bequeathed to every future American the tools for progressively reducing the use of force in human affairs. Every American inherits these unique tools: the Constitution that checks the acts of men in public office, and the convention of delegates which is the peaceful means of changing the Constitution."

"Public debt is a new problem for Americans; a century ago, no one imagined it. Congress then did not know what to do with all the surplus money in the Treasury, and finally returned it to the States."

"Freedom is not a permission granted by any Authority. Freedom is a fact. Whether or not this fact is known, freedom is in the nature of every living person, as gravitation is in the nature of this planet. Life is energy; liberty is the individual control of human life-energy. It can not be separated from life. Liberty is inalienable; as I can not transfer my life to anyone else, I can not transfer my liberty, my control of my life-energy, to anyone else."

"Inside these modern National frontiers, the workers have been working harder and getting little more than their ancestors did in the feudal system. So the so-called revolutionists attack their Governments and ruling classes, accusing them of not controlling the social system as it should be controlled. Socialist, Social-Democrat, Communist, Fascist, National Socialist (Nazi) all demand that Government make a better social system; that Government control the men who produce and distribute goods; that Government create security for men on this earth. The basis of all this thinking is ignorance of creative energy; it is ignorance of the real nature of human beings; it is the ancient, pagan superstition that Authority controls a static, limited universe."

"Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god—Society, The State, The Government, The Commune—must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is."

"When Government has a monopoly of all production and all distribution, as many Governments have, it can not permit any economic activity that competes with it. This means that it can not permit any new use of productive energy, for the new always competes with the old and destroys it. Men who build railroads destroy stage coach lines."

"The reason is that Government, by its nature, can not per mit a competitor within the field of its activities. Everyone knows that Government is a monopoly of the use of force; it can not permit individuals to use force against each other, or against the Government, nor can it permit another Government to use force inside its frontiers; if it does, it ceases to be Government."

"I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does not control me. It can not even make me read Spengler, if I'd rather read a pulp magazine."

"This is the nature of human energy; individuals generate it, and control it. Each person is self-controlling, and therefore responsible for his acts. Every human being, by his nature, is free."

"Men are alive on this earth, only because the imperative human desire is to attack the enemies of human life."

"The Republican Party remains a political mechanism with no political principle. It does not stand for American individualism. Its leaders continue to play the 70-year-old American professional sport of vote-getting, called politics."

"In 1933 a group of sincere and ardent collectivists seized control of the Democratic Party, used it as a means of grasping Federal power, and enthusiastically, from motives which many of them regard as the highest idealism, began to make America over. The Democratic Party is now a political mechanism having a genuine political principle: national socialism."

"For nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar. I am not an alarmist; that is plain fact."

"[D]uring half a century, reactionary influences from Europe have been shifting American thinking onto a basis of socialistic assumptions. In cities and states, both parties began to socialize America with imitations of the Kaiser's Germany: social welfare laws, labor laws, wage-and-hour laws, citizens' pension laws, and so-called public ownership."

"To believe that any action based on an ignorance of fact can possibly succeed, is to abandon the use of reason."

"History is nothing whatever but a record of what living persons have done in the past."

"What I can't understand is, how can anybody figure now that the government can support us, when we support the government."

"We would learn more by looking at America. Oddly enough, statistics appear only in times of agitation and distress. Their function would appear to be that of omens of worse to come. We seem to have a morbid taste for them, like that of children for ghost stories that raise the hair. The American air has not been so full of fragmentary statistics since the Panic of 1893. I read again, for instance, that less than 10 per cent of our population own more than 90 per cent of the wealth… I read also that a hundred years ago 80 per cent of our population owned property and that today the percentage is 23."

"The American pioneers phrased this clearly and bluntly. They said, ‘Root, hog, or die.’ There can be no third alternative for the shoat let out of the pen, to go where he pleases and do what he likes. Individual liberty is individual responsibility. Whoever makes decisions is responsible for results. When common men were slaves and serfs, they obeyed and they were fed, but they died by thousands in plagues and famines. Free men paid for their freedom by leaving that false and illusory security."

"No jailer can compel any prisoner to speak or act against that prisoner's will, but chains can prevent his acting, and a gag can prevent his speaking."

"I am not implying that our entire Government is corrupt. I am saying that it is corrupt to the point that no-one is untouched by it."

"Software production is unlike any other production that preceded it. No raw materials are required, no time is required, and no effort is required. You can make a million copies of a piece of software instantaneously for free. It's a totally new paradigm of production."

"Hope is paltry food for living."

"If you have the winning cards, why cheat?"

"Opinions need a willing ear."

"If the majority holds some thing of value, you can be certain it has none."

"History is sympathetic to its authors."

"Disobedience is the vehicle of progress."

"If you own the facts, you may distort them as you like."

"A good example is more irritating than a bad one."

"John McAfee has never been convicted of rape and murder, but — crucially — not in the same way that you or I have never been convicted of rape or murder."

"For better or worse, John McAfee is a name we all know. In true McAfee style, he is slowly but surely surreptitiously installing himself in the cryptocurrency community – usually in places where he’s probably not needed."

"I am content in here. I have friends. The food is good. All is well. Know that if I hang myself, a la , it will be no fault of mine."

"Well, God is trisexual, number one. We all know that, I mean those of us who've taken heroin certainly know that. [...] Okay, male, female, and shemale. I mean, good God people, have you never watched fucking Pornhub!?"

"Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: "We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself". I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd."

"I think that it's when we step out of the road, step outside the box, become our own person and we walk fearlessly down paths other people wouldn't look at, that true progress comes. And sometimes true beauty as well."

"Ignorance and confidence are constant companions."

"You know, I understand how you feel. This is a really contentious issue. Probably as contentious, and potentially as troubling as the abortion issue in this country. All I can tell you is, rushes to pass legislation at a time of national crisis or mourning, I don't really think are proper. And more importantly, nothing in any of this legislation would have done anything to prevent that awful tragedy in Littleton.What I see in the work I've done with kids is, is troubling direction in our culture. And where I see consensus, which is I think we ought to concentrate on in our culture is... look... nobody argues anymore whether they're Conservatives or Liberal whether our society is going in the wrong direction. They may argue trying to quantify how far it's gone wrong or why it's gone that far wrong, whether it's guns, or television, or the Internet, or whatever. But there's consensus saying that something's happened. Guns were much more accessible 40 years ago. A kid could walk into a pawn shop or a hardware store and buy a high-capacity magazine weapon that could kill a lot of people and they didn't do it.The question we should be asking is... look... suicide is a tragedy. And it's a horrible thing. But 30 or 40 years ago, particularly men, and even young men, when they were suicidal, they went, and unfortunately, blew their brains out. In today's world, someone who is suicidal sits home, nurses their grievance, develops a rage, and is just a suicidal but they take 20 people with them. There's something changed in our culture."

"I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived [to sign up for courses], architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it. So I signed up for acting instead."

"Blow me a raspberry."

"Why westerns get segregated into a genre in Hollywood, I don't know... It's just good entertainment."

"All I see is people out there who are hungry for more."

"Progress toward a more abundant material life does not come like manna from heaven, however. My message certainly is not one of complacency. The ultimate resource is people — especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty — who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit and inevitably benefit the rest of us as well."

"We now have in our hands — really, in our libraries — the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next seven billion years."

"This increase in the world's population represents humanity's victory against death."