Right Libertarians From The United States

"We're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?"

"Don’t get me wrong. These people are mine. I like and in many ways admire them. They’re the salt of the earth. It’s simply that I want other condiments too."

"It wasn't intelligence — it was propaganda. They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."

"I am honored beyond belief to be the 2018 recipient of the Sam Adams Award, and I thank Ray McGovern and the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity... There have been many American patriots and truth tellers who have received the honor you have given me tonight – and I am going to name them here because I stand in awe of all of them..."

"My backstory is pretty well-known to most people here, and to anyone who was interested in understanding US war policy in the early 2000s. I had a small role to play, in concert with a number of other truth tellers in media and in the national security bureaucracy. For every one of us, there were probably 20 to 50 people working beside us and around us, who understood a lot about what was happening, and who probably got a funny feeling about being in an organization where we all swore to uphold the Constitution, but in fact were engaged in promulgating lies of both omission and commission, mistruths and misdirection, aimed not at our enemies abroad but against the American people. We were lying, with the help of a compliant and war-supportive media, to patriots young and old. Millions of Americans were eager to enlist, to fight, to sacrifice their life and health – for a made-up government fairy tale."

"...It is in our country’s interest — as security professionals, as intelligence professionals, as soldiers and citizens, as writers and newsmakers – to be sensitive to the lawlessness, the immorality, and the wrongdoing of the bureaucracies and the leaders of the organizations we are a part of. That is the first thing we must cultivate and encourage – a sensitivity to and an awareness of something as simple as right and wrong. This is fundamental. From knowing right and wrong, we move to the factor that motivates so many whistleblowers, something that we all share as human beings, and that is an idea of justice."

"When you look at the experiences of people who made the dangerous and difficult decision to act, like Daniel Ellsberg, and Sam Adams, and Sibel Edwards, Jesselyn Raddick, Colleen Rowley, Thomas Drake, Ed Snowden, Julian Assange, and many others, you realize that speaking up and doing the right thing had a primary impact. That impact wasn’t improved transparency, a more informed democracy, a more aware and alert citizenry and better government decisions by our elected leaders. Those were all secondary impacts, and in many cases tenuous, as the improved level of national understanding seems to last for less than a single generation. No, the primary impact was the unimaginable wrath of the state aimed at the life, livelihood, reputation, family, character and credibility of the truth teller. In several cases, this included physical and psychological abuse, prison time, gag orders, and even more devious programs. The rage of the state against these truth tellers is not impulsive and short-lived – it is a forever project funded by tax dollars, and fueled by very profitable agendas...."

"There is something remarkably childlike and simple in being honest, in observing without fear what is happening around you, and reporting this to the person who pays the bills. In the case of the national security arena, the bill payer is the American people. To tell the truth is simple, honorable, and good for the health of the Republic. The fact that it drives the security apparatus and the government crazy is just icing on the cake. Granted, we all need jobs, and our mental health, and we don’t want to be imprisoned, tortured or killed. But the more of us – specifically those working with and inside the US government today – who tell the truth, the less likely that government embarrassment will result in harm to a whistleblower, and the less likely in the long run that we will see whistleblowers as we tend to see them today. In a world of that values honesty, they would be receiving the public commendation of a proud Congress, a grateful media and President, and a contented population..."

"I’m worried about the role the US government is playing at home and abroad. The kind of devastation that the US tolerates, supports and initiates around the world – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, of course Yemen comes to mind, the horrendous situation that Julian Assange is still facing as we speak – is not limited to “overseas.” The industrial warfare state is as dangerous to Americans as it is to Iraqis, Syrians, and Yemenis. The arts of the warfare state are already being practiced here, against Americans. We – average Americans – are increasingly controlled, spied on, monitored, tracked, threatened, boxed in, and shut down by tools that were first used and tested on some contrived wartime enemy."

"You don’t need me to tell you this, it’s in every newspaper every day, on every page. It is our modern reality. Truth and transparency are its only antidote, and truth and transparency needs all of us. To live in a society, to be a citizen, to love your country — you cannot sleepwalk through it."

"People who value wisdom, people who value common sense, people who value justice and people who believe that being woke is a good thing – congratulations! You are the majority! You are alive, you are in charge of this country, and you can choose. America is worth preserving, healing, and saving – and if she is to be saved we will do it by first learning the difference between the truth and a lie, and then speaking the truth loudly, boldly, to anyone who will listen, over and over and over again."

"If you see something, say something,” we so often hear. Karen Kwiatkowski took that saying to heart. She saw her Pentagon superiors acting as eager accomplices to the Cheney/Bush administration’s deceit in launching a war of aggression on Iraq. And she said something — and helped Knight Ridder reporters Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay see beneath the official lies and get the sordid story right before the war."

"Karen’s courage brings to mind the clarion call of Rabbi Abraham Heschel against the perpetrators of an earlier war — Vietnam. “Few are guilty,” he said, “but all are responsible. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.” Karen would not be indifferent to evil... With all the gloom and doom enveloping us, we tend to wonder whether people with the conscience and courage of Ed [Snowden] or Karen still exist in and outside our national security establishment."

"Our country is in dire need of new patriots of this kind... Meanwhile, we call to mind the courageous example not only of Karen and Ed, but also of Coleen Rowley and Elizabeth Gun, our first two awardees, who took great risks in trying to head off the attack on Iraq. And we again honor Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange who is now isolated in what the UN has called “arbitrary detention,” for exposing the war crimes resulting from that war."

"Presented this 8th day of December 2018 in Washington by admirers of the example set by the late CIA analyst, Sam Adams. Know all ye by these presents that Karen Kwiatkowski is hereby honored with the traditional Sam Adams Corner-Brightener Candlestick Holder, in symbolic recognition of her courage in shining light into dark places."

"I came to share with many NSA colleagues a kind of unease, a sense that something was awry. What seemed out of place was the strong and open pro-Israel and anti-Arab orientation in an ostensibly apolitical policy-generation staff within the Pentagon."

"Interestingly, the Downing Street memo is actually being reported by CNN and FOX News. It is being discussed in the major papers. Congress intends to examine it. Hearing it mentioned on the half hour by CNN Headline News has not dispossessed me of the belief that a state suicide is impossible. Thus, my gentle thoughts are increasingly turning to murder. Murder of the state. In self-defense, of course!"

"I consider myself to be an old-fashioned liberal. I'm a liberal the way liberals used to be when they were like John F. Kennedy and when they were like Hubert Humphrey. When they were upbeat and enthusiastic and mainstream. I am not a liberal the way liberals are today at least as exemplified by Al Franken and Michael Moore, where they're angry, nasty, closed minded, & not mainstream, but fringe."

"They're responsible for the problem [of cultural meanness]."

"I admire Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly a lot because I think they're standup guys."

"The big 3 networks don't like the fact that there's a Rush Limbaugh out there, they don't like the fact that there's a Fox News, they don't like the fact that there's a Matt Drudge. They liked it when it was nice, when it was just the three of them. Well, it ain't that way anymore."

"This is the essence of the problem. To Dan Rather and to a lot of other powerful members of the chattering class, that which is right of center is conservative. That which is left of center is middle of the road. No wonder they can't recognize their own bias."

"It doesn't happen that way."

"I find this guy [Michael Berg] despicable. Everything in me says that. The want to be a better person today than I was yesterday says he's a dad, he's grieving, but I don't buy that. I'm sorry, I don't buy it. I think he is grieving, but I think he's a scumbag as well. I don't like this guy at all."

"Can you let your son's body become the same temperature as your son's head before you turn this into a political campaign against the president? Could you do that?"

"Beck will deny everything about violent approach, deny everything about conspiracies, but he'll give you every reason to believe it. He’s protecting himself, and you can't blame him for that. So, but I understand what he's doing."

"I would have never started watching Fox News if it wasn't for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind."

"But what ought to worry conservatives in particular is that Beck not only has the unusual capacity to discredit virtually every cause he takes up; he also confirms the worst caricatures of the right."

"Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking."

"Who'd have thought a history buff with a quirky sense of humor and a chalkboard could make for such riveting television? Glenn's like the high school government teacher so many wish they'd had, charting and connecting ideas with chalk-dusted fingers — kicking it old school — instead of becoming just another talking-heads show host. Self-taught, he's become America's professor of common sense, sharing earnestly sought knowledge with an audience hungry for truth."

"The danger of today's version of the mythical homespun aw-shucks-TV-totalitarian-Lonesome-Rhodes Glenn Beck is summed up by remarks today in which he claims that a revolution has begun in this country — a 'stealing of America in the guise of an election' — and his repeated insistence that the President is a Marxist. The comfort of today's mythical homespun aw-shucks-TV-totalitarian-Lonesome-Rhodes Glenn Beck is that everyday he gives away the essential truth that he is an idiot."

"I don't think he has ever really read Thomas Paine, because it's nothing to do with what he believes in or what he professes to believe in."

"When Glenn Beck had his big rally on the mall, he said something like — he at one point said, "Today, I was holding George Washington's inaugural in my hand." No, you can't do that, it's in Plexiglas — you can't — it's 200 years old. You can't give that to people to pass around and smudge up with their grimy fingers. But it didn't matter, because it never matters to these people because nothing they say is ever fact-checked."

"Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."

"Only in America can you make that much money crying. Glenn Beck is not aligned with any party. He is aligned with cynicism and there has always been a market for cynics. But we became a great nation not because we are a nation of cynics. We became a great nation because we are a nation of believers."

"Glenn Beck (who got his start in television from CNN, to its eternal shame) lured a massive cable audience to his daily chalkboard-enabled rants, detailing complex liberal/progressive conspiracies with a healthy dose of historical revisionism."

"We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?"

"James Cameron, who directed Avatar, is in a feud with Glenn Beck, because Cameron called him a madman. The two are very different. One makes millions creating fictional stories, and the other is James Cameron."

"I said, "Let's start doing some Glenn Beck stuff but in praise of Glenn Beck." But every time we do one, he will have done something dumber. He raised the stupid bar and now it's nearly inapproachable. I worry that if we use that as a model...if somebody doesn't believe what they're saying, it's very hard to out-stupid them. Because then there's no place to sink our hook into, there's no mountain to climb there. I can't climb Glenn Beck since there's nothing there."

"Glenn Beck has Nazi Tourette's."

"This is a guy who uses more swastika props and video of the Nuremberg rallies than the History Channel."

"Donald Trump I really truly believe is a very dangerous man. If you listen to the things he said this weekend... I could go onto Fifth Avenue and shoot people and I wouldn't lose a vote. He has joked about killing reporters — and 'not' killing reporters like Putin does... We don't change with the mood of the country. That is the problem with our country right now. The Constitution is to anchor us in principles that help temper the mood of the country... The mood of the country is very angry, but you never make a good decision when you are angry... The worst thing we can do is to now start looking at, who is going to get revenge? One of the things that Donald Trump does, when you have a guy who is angry and then has an enemies list and starts to just take people down over and over and over again — if you disagree with him, he destroys you. If that is the mood of the country, we are in more trouble than I thought."

"I beg you not to listen to the experts in this country anymore. The fools disguised in tweed jackets or ascots of the Ivy League campuses. The scholars and the experts and those who have been around in the State Department forever, blahdy blahdy blahdy. They couldn't find their way through an unlocked door at a locksmith shop. They come on TV and they lecture you about how everything is fine and everything is in a box. I have news for you: I believe it was the great philosopher Depeche Mode that said "nothing is impossible." Life is outside of the box now and if you're inside of the box, you'll suffocate."

"You want to talk about rape? That's— that's media rape right there. You said you would not do that! Since when does your no mean yes? Do you know the definition of no, sir? You've just raped Bill Cosby. You said you wouldn't do it. You just did it. And then you blamed it on him. My gosh, maybe we should have a lesson on rape."

""Shut up, sit down, zip your mouth. Know that I am God." Okay. When we have the chance, if this stuff all falls into place, that The Blaze is going through right now, I'm telling you — miracles, absolute miracles."

"We are Germany 1930. And if people don't speak out, you have no choice of changing course later. You can deny it all you want, but the socialist revolution is here."

"But I believe in the American people. I believe that we are not too far gone. I believe that people can watch and see the difference. They can feel the difference. When you watch Barack Obama, you can just see he is angry. When you watch Mitt Romney, you can see he is not. We are not an angry nation. We don't listen to demagogues like that. It doesn’t work. No matter how much power he has amassed, no matter how many friends in the media he has, Americans know. And if they reject it this time, if they're so dead inside - that's a possibility - if they're so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed because we will be a remarkable evil on this planet."

"Glenn Beck: But I was standing on the stage with Freedom Works on Friday in a show that we’re going to air tonight at 8:00 on TheBlaze and I was giving a speech and it struck me about halfway through, the similarities of what is being done right now to the beginning of our country— we are repeating, and we're at the very beginning of it, but we're repeating all of the steps that it took for use to be free in— around the time of the Declaration of Independence, don't you think? David Barton: I agree. And I look— Glenn Beck: It's starting to happen."

"We’re living in a media landscape that seems to get more infantile and politically simple-minded all the time—-look at the huge popularity of Glenn Beck…and I saw someplace recently that Jon Stewart is now the most trusted man in America. The clowns seem to be taking over the circus."

"Allen West: We're going to be successful Tuesday night, don't worry. Glenn Beck: I'm not worried, I think that— I believe in the protection of divine Providence. And I believe there are millions of Americans that are— still believe in and are still harkening to the spirit and harkening to God and God is not neutral in freedom of all of mankind. And if America falls, freedom all over the world takes a mighty blow, and it may take a thousand years to be able to recover from it. And he's not neutral. His work isn't done. And as long as we are decent, God-fearing people, we will be preserved to do his will. And I think that's exactly what you're going to see on Tuesday. I do."