On liberalism, socialism and the welfare state

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Suppose a person has a wish to help people (in a material sense). What is the best way to do it? That is a question I have asked myself in the past. The answer I came up with was the following: Start a business that employs people. If you wish to help them in a material way, that is the best way to do it. Give them a job. It is better than just giving them money. By giving them a job, you are not only giving them an income, you are also giving them something to do. (Man needs more than just food and shelter. He also needs occupation. Idleness destroys. Having nothing to do is stressful. A person needs occupation.) So what kind of person helps people the most (in the material sense)? It is the business owner. If you can come up with the financial resources, build a factory and manufacture something. Then you are helping a lot of people. Others have understood what I am talking about. I quote the following:

If you really want to help the poor, help the rich. They're the ones who will invest, build more factories, create more jobs. William E. Simon

Now with all of this said, there is something more to say. What underlies the great tide of liberalism that has so taken over America? How do you explain the strong radical left sentiments that dominate on college staffs across the country? It is not reason. Reason does not support leftist ideas. It doesn’t support Marxism-Leninism or socialism. I think it is envy of the rich. These intellectual elites hate the rich and want to see damage done to them. Their views are created and driven by envy and hatred. And this envy and hatred of the rich resonates with many of the poorer segments of our society and consequently liberal ideas of heavy taxation of the rich sound great to them. There is great envy, jealousy, hatred of the rich in this country.

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There exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom. Alexis de Tocqueville

The cheap but simple human emotion of envy is the driving force of all socialism, of all anti-capitalist philosophy. It is the mark of the intellectual. Andrew J. Galambos

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxes on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on the larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them. Ludwig von Mises

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One can see how much appreciation the businessman and entrepreneur gets for the good that he does people. This world is just filled with fools. Then people complain because the entrepreneur takes his money overseas and builds his factories over there.

The liberals despise the idea of a God, hate religion, and hate the rich. Liberalism is a dogma/mind-set rooted in envy and hatred.

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Liberalism is really piecemeal socialism, and socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property. Religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state; the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state; and property, because it means material independence of the state. Joseph Sabran

Liberalism in various guises - feminism, the sexual revolution, gay activism - has been at war with marriage and family for several decades now. And when do-gooders look around at the wreckage of human lives caused by disintegrating families, they call for government to act as father, mother, brother, and sister." Mona Charen

The greed and envy of the nonproducer is insatiable, so that eventually nothing short of 100% taxation will please him. Robert Ringer

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The basic idea of socialism is to take from the rich and give to the poor, to take from John (because he has more than he needs) and give to Peter. [Note. This idea immediately runs into problems with religion (any religion) because it entails stealing (wrong in any religion)]. Not many people would like the idea of the government taking some of their own money and giving it to the poor. That is not something they would like at all. If they want to give to the poor, they want to do it themselves, not have the government take it from them and do it. But the idea of the government taking some of a rich man’s money and giving it to the poor sounds great to them. Liberals are often nice people who read sad, sentimental stories written about the poor (probably written by some liberal), feel pity for them, and think that the idea of this vague entity called “the government” (which they envision as very rich with endless resources, endless wealth gotten is some way that they don’t completely understand) helping the poor, innocent, unfortunate person in our society sounds really good. They are tenderhearted individuals who are inclined to be generous with needy, unfortunate people as long as the money being used does not come from them. (Many people of our society are surprisingly ignorant and their thinking surprisingly foggy. Our schools have perhaps not done their jobs very well, or they were just not much for learning, or they have just never put much effort into the improvement of their mind.) Anyway, they are simple-minded people with minds that are not very analytical, people who just don’t think very carefully about things and never see all the many ramifications and implications of a particular idea. They are naive, gullible, easily taken in by smooth talk.

I associate with the liberal intellectual (socialist) elite high intellectual dishonesty; specious arguments; foggy thinking; outrageous accusations and charges; aggressive confrontational tactics; twisted logic. They are people who have been brainwashed by Marxism-Leninism or ideas akin to it. They are mindless slaves to a dogmatic system. In their mind capitalism is an ugly, immoral, greedy, unjust institution. It is evil. Well, their mentality is just totally outside my mind. They just don’t think right. That is all I can say. It is not as if I am alone in how I feel. There are many people who think and feel as I do. One can hear them if you listen to conservative talk radio. The conservatives see things clearly. I suspect liberals in general to be of a certain personality type: impractical, visionary dreamers totally devoid of understanding --- eggheads void of sense. That is the only way I can explain their behavior. I think they are envious, angry troublemakers; instigators, always trying to cause divisions. They hate Christianity, hate everything I believe in. They are trying to destroy everything I believe in. They have done and are doing immeasurable harm to this country. And worst of all, they dominate in the country, hold all the positions of power. And they are trying to force their atheistic outlooks and values on the country. With all the liberal type legislation that has been passed by Congress in the last fifty years, all the liberal propaganda that has been impinging on us from every direction for years, and all of the “politically correct” type thinking that has taken over the country, it is obvious that they are succeeding. The outlook for the future of this country looks very dismal to me.

Modern liberalism has all the earmarks of a cult. And it is an evil cult. It is a fountainhead of hatred, malice, division and bad feeling in this country. It has instilled hatred of the Black against the White, of women against men (feminism). It stridently accuses others of bias and hatred while it itself is the real source of bias and hatred. Slavery is an institution whose history goes way back into antiquity. In ancient times victors in a war often, instead of just killing everyone, took the women and children as slaves. That is how people became slaves. And then the descendants of the slaves were then also slaves and the thing perpetuated. The majority of the populations of ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, Persia, etc. were probably slaves. For hundreds of years the Moslem Arabs captured people, white and black, enslaved them, and made a lot of money selling them. The teachings of the Koran are that Islam is the only true religion and that anyone who is not a Moslem is dirt, worth nothing, deserving of no kind of good or humane treatment. So that was the attitude of Arabs toward Christians, Jews and all non-Moslems and Arabs could easily justify enslaving people and treating them like animals. In the 1700's and early 1800's white traders bought black slaves from the Arabs and sold them to planters in the Americas. Slavery was an ancient institution that was universally accepted. Then around the middle of the 1800's this age old practice started being questioned as being morally wrong and the practice was brought to a halt. Who was responsible for bringing it to a halt? Religious, Christian white people. In the American south after the Civil War Negroes were looked down on as inferior, there was bias against them. Certainly, as a class, the Negroes were probably very ignorant, their morals may have often been poor, and there may have been some justification for prejudice. The southerners were indeed guilty of prejudice and discriminatory practices but the modern liberal has used that fact to stir up a general hatred for the white man. It has, by exaggeration and false argument, created a general anti-white sentiment and bias: “White men are evil and bad, responsible for all kinds of social wrongs. Christianity is bigotry. Etc.” The liberal American north has forced a lot down the throat of the conservative, religious American south. We are now at the point where it has forced homosexual marriage down its throat. In my opinion, compared with the sin of homosexuality, racial bias is a mere peccadillo. Homosexuality is high wickedness! Really high wickedness! In my opinion the people of the conservative, religious American South are a far better people that those of the liberal North.

Following are some quotations on liberalism, socialism and the welfare state:

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The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism -- the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise. Henry Hazlitt

The characteristic feature of modern capitalism is mass production of goods destined for consumption by the masses. The result is a tendency towards a continuous improvement in the average standard of living, a progressing enrichment of the many. Ludwig von Mises

Socialism (modern liberalism) is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. Ludwig von Mises

Socialism destroys the incentive to produce, dampens the human spirit and results, ultimately, in less for everyone. David Limbaugh

Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach student what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of "race, class and gender". Thomas Sowell

Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state. Thomas Sowell

We know that welfare is a failure. It has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient. It has torn at the social fabric of the country and been a significant factor in increasing out-of-wedlock births with all their attendant problems. It has weakened the work ethic and contributed to rising crime rates. Most tragically of all, the pathologies it engenders have been passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation. Michael D. Tanner

Once we realize that government doesn't work, we will stop dreaming that this or that social problem can be solved by passing a law - or by creating a new government program - or by electing someone who will make Washington more efficient or cost-conscious. Harry Browne

Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within bounds it tends to reduce the incentives to work and to save, both of those who receive it and of those who are forced to pay it. It may be said, in fact, that practically every measure that governments take with the ostensible object of "helping the poor" has the long-run effect of doing the opposite. Henry Hazlitt

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. Thomas B. Reed

The truth is the committed left press in America is no longer interested in reporting the news. Anything that hinders a favorable view of the far left will be ignored; anything that advances liberal causes will be celebrated. News reporting today is largely about ideology and shaping the culture, not about informing the public. Bill O'Reilly

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. G. Gordon Liddy

It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself. Justice Casey Percel

The only way to break the cycle of unwed motherhood, fatherless children, poverty, crime, and welfare is to recognize that welfare causes more problems than it cures. David Boaz

Man is not free unless government is limited ... As government expands, liberty contracts. Ronald Reagan

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. Jacob G. Hornberger

To finance "entitlement" programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy? John Stossel

No government can print wealth. A government can get away with the illusion that paper is wealth, but in the end too much paper is always created, and with that action the illusion falls apart. Richard Russell

The facts of life are conservative. Margaret Thatcher

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. William Pitt

By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty. Dennis Prager

The welfare state has bred a generation of obnoxious, drug-addicted criminals and ne'er-do-wells. It has also, incidently, burdened what was the world's biggest, most dynamic economy with the dead weight of an obstructive and vastly expensive state machine. Martin Durkin

Assume that a surgeon has discovered how to do a brain surgery, that he can do only one a month, that 1000 persons a year need such an operation if they are to survive. How is the surgeon's scarce resource to be allocated? Charge whatever price is necessary to adjust supply to demand, say $50,000! "For shame," some will cry. "Your market system will save only wealthy people." For the moment, yes. But soon there will be hundreds of surgeons who will acquire the same skill; and, as in the case of the once scarce and expensive "miracle drugs," the price will then be within the reach of all. Leonard E. Read

Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their misdeeds. Herbert Spencer

Government doesn't work. You work, I work, Federal Express works, Alcoholics Anonymous works, but government doesn't. Harry Browne

Most change in America doesn't come from politicians. It comes from inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn't come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up. David Boaz

The sad truth is that one of the reasons people have to go on relief in the first place is that they have been as incompetent or heedless in spending money as in earning it. The worst thing one can give a spendthrift, a drug addict, or a compulsive gambler is cash. Henry Hazlitt

The same government that requires a taxpaying citizen to document every statement on his tax return decrees that questioning a welfare applicant demeans and humiliates him. Ronald Reagan

During the 1930's, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model --- all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food. Thomas Sowell

Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest. Ludwig von Mises

Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement. Walter Williams

The brutality of communism was quickly swept under history's rug, in large part because so many on the left had embraced it as the solution to humankind's problems. Cal Thomas

Social security is a fraudulent scheme in which the government collects money from you for your retirement -- and immediately spends the money on something else. Harry Browne

Highly graduated taxation realizes most completely the supreme danger of democracy, creating a state of things in which one class imposes on another burdens which it is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the whole costs will be thrown upon others. W. E. H. Lecky

Government is in the business of misdirected incentives. Take poverty. Years ago LBJ unleashed a flurry of government programs to eliminate it. We've spent well over a trillion dollars and all our good intentions got us is more poverty. Tom Purcell

Most activists on the left believe that they, not their values, are morally superior to their adversaries. Therefore, coercing people to adhere to "progressive" values is morally acceptable, even demanded. Dennis Prager

Government aid programs have been endlessly expanded, and the government has sought to maximize the number of people willing to accept handouts ... Roughly half of all Americans are dependent on the government, either for handouts, pensions, or paychecks. James Bovard

Government welfarism, with its ever-increasing army of pensioners and other beneficiaries, is fatally easy to launch and fatally easy to extend, but almost impossible to bring to a halt - and quite impossible politically to reverse, no matter how obvious and catastrophic its consequences become. Henry Hazlitt

Everything brought forward in favor of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make Socialism workable. Ludwig von Mises

Once a fellow's enjoying the fruits of government health care and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest; He's got his, and if it's going to bankrupt the state a generation hence, well, as long as they can keep the checks coming till he's dead, it's fine with him. Mark Steyn

No matter what federal program one selects - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the drug war, the income tax and the IRS, education, foreign interventions and wars - they are all a giant mess. Jacob G. Hornberger

Once Congress establishes that one person can live at the expense of another, it pays for everyone to try to do so. Walter Williams

The tendency of government-supported education must be finally to achieve a government monopoly of education. Henry Hazlitt

So you want to know the future? It's not so hard as it seems. Expect every government program to fail to achieve its stated aims - domestic and foreign - and you will hit the mark every time. Llewellyn H. Roskwell, Jr.

The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody ... It is not in the power of the government to make everyone more prosperous. Ludwig von Mises

Not only is patriotism disdained, the very basis for pride in one's country and culture is systematically undermined in our educational institutions at all levels. The achievements of western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they were peculiarities of the west. Thomas Sowell

The more people expect from government, the more biased they become against limiting government power. James Bovard

If the history of welfare teaches us anything, it teaches us that government money is as addictive as any narcotic. Michael D. Tanner

The capitalistic system has lifted mankind out of mass poverty. It is this system that in the last century, in the last generation, even the last decade, has acceleratively been changing the face of the world, and has provided the masses of mankind with amenities that even kings did not possess or imagine a few generations ago. Henry Hazlitt

Tyranny is a political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy. Ludwig von Mises

The liberals say they are for civil liberties and personal freedom, but they continue to advocate government regulation of business, redistribution of wealth, and various forms of social engineering to manipulate human relationships and attitudes. Richard M. Ebeling

The State, by relieving idleness, improvidence, or misconduct from the punishment, and by depriving abstinence and foresight of the reward, which have been provided for them by nature, may indeed destroy wealth, but most certainly will aggravate poverty. Nassau Senior

Once a bureau is created, its staff becomes a tenacious political interest group, well placed to defend its budget and to make a case for expanding its activities. Robert Higgs

We have more than a century of experience to show that ever bigger, ever more expensive, ever more intrusive government simply doesn't work. Big government has not eliminated or even significantly reduced poverty. It has not made our health care or retirement systems better. It has not improved education. It has not solved any of the myriad problems our society faces. Indeed, more often than not, it has made those problems worse. Michael D. Tanner

Throughout history governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear; unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society. Murray N. Rothbard

The typical local government agenda has these goals: finding ways to get more tax dollars, improving the pay and benefits packages of those who work for government, hiring more staff, securing additional powers for those who run the government, implementing more rules that dictate how citizens can live while reducing the number of rules that govern those who run the government. Steven Greenhut

Envy is always referred to by its political alias: "social justice". Thomas Sowell

Each trillion dollars devoted to failure is a trillion that is not available for success. Martin Hutchinson

The idea that even the brightest person or group of bright people, much less the U.S. Congress, can wisely manage an economy has to be the height of arrogance and conceit. Walter Williams

What does "economic justice" mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return? Thomas Sowell

Eventually economic growth reaches the point at which the accumulation of wealth in the families of achievers becomes so significant that the hatred and envy of success becomes stronger than the desire for continued economic growth, and a period dominated by resentment begins. Robert Sheaffer

The greed and envy of the nonproducer is insatiable, so that eventually nothing short of 100% taxation will please him. Robert Ringer

Rule by the statist elite is not benign or simply a matter of who happens to be in office; it is rule by a growing army of leeches and parasites battening off the income and wealth of hard-working Americans, destroying their property, corrupting their customs and institutions, sneering at their religion. Murray M. Rothbard

The marketplace is a wondrous institution. It harnesses the self-interest of each of us and puts it to work for the benefit of all. And it does so without intruding upon our desires, our privacy, or our freedom. In deed it is regulation by reality, not by coercion. Harry Browne

Once empowered, socialism refused to yield its promised rewards. The more dogged the effort to achieve it, the more the outcome mocked the humane ideals it proclaimed. Joshua Muravchik

It isn't possible to give the government just a little control over the economy and our lives. Once we cede that power to government, it uses the power to take more from us. That's why every year the government controls more of our lives. Harry Browne

The intellectual finds it reassuring to say that the businessman gets his money by luck; or monopoly, or exploitation, or dishonesty, or what have you. As a matter of fact, the truly dishonest man will last longer in college teaching or the ministry than he will in the business world. Benjamin A. Rogge

The stark truth is that as long as the welfare state makes it possible for young women - or teenage girls - to have children without a husband and survive without a job, out-of-wedlock births will remain high, and the inner city will continue to be marked by crime, poverty, and despair. David Boaz

The cheap but simple human emotion of envy is the driving force of all socialism, of all anti-capitalist philosophy. It is the mark of the intellectual. Andrew J. Galambos

These guys [liberals] will never tire of spending our money and will never hold themselves accountable for their boondoggles. For them the failure of $5 trillion to eradicate poverty simply means we haven't spent enough money. Ditto with education. The solution is always more money. No amount of empirical evidence will shake their socialist theology. David Limbaugh

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them that it never happened. Thomas Sowell

Friedrich Hayek made the point that one of the keystones of socialism is the denial of individual responsibility. Thus, the crusade for socialism always included attacks on individual responsibility. For if individuals do not have free will, and are not responsible for their actions, then their lives must be controlled somehow - preferably by the state - according to the socialists. They must be regulated, regimented, and controlled - for their own good. Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time - more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare, or homelessness because it drives everything else. Charles Murray

Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The welfare system is the breeding ground of crime, addiction and radical politics. James Cook

Notwithstanding what some regard as the institutionalization of compassion, the transfer society quashes genuine virtue. Redistribution of income by means of government coercion is a form of theft. Its supporters attempt to disguise its essential nature by claiming that democratic procedures give it legitimacy, but this justification is specious. Theft is theft, whether it be carried out by one thief or by a hundred million thieves acting in concert. And it is impossible to found a good society on the institutionalization of theft. Robert Higgs

It is truly hard to understand how liberal politicians, activists and journalists so consistently escape accountability for stoking the flames of racial disharmony while purporting to dampen them and for dividing our society along racial, gender, and economic lines while claiming to unite us. David Limbaugh

The political left, which holds itself as progressive, rational and fact-based, is becoming an enemy of academic inquiry, and a practitioner of thought control on a wide variety of issues. Increasingly, from the left's perspective, there is just one acceptable viewpoint. David Limbaugh

Our nation is in deep trouble - morally, economically, and politically. Practically everything in which the federal government has embroiled itself for the last several decades is in crisis - education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, inflation and the dollar, welfare, government spending, the drug war, and, of course, foreign policy. Jacob G. Hornberger

Quotas have done nothing to help the black underclass, or break the vicious cycles of welfare dependency and drug abuse, unwed motherhood and crime, fatherless families and dysfunctional public schools ... Uncle Sam spent trillions of dollars making a bad situation worse. An avalanche of government welfare money - no strings attached - paid people not to work or marry, save or invest, or confront the behavioral causes of their poverty. Rod Martin

I am particularly struck by the neo-socialist concern for the well-being of plants, animals, lakes and rivers, rain forests and deserts - particularly when the concern for the environment appears far more intense than the concern for the human family. Robert A Sirico

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. Winston Churchill

Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe. George Will

Immigrants used to come to America seeking freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom from government. Now they come looking for free health care, free education, and a free lunch. Harry Browne

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it. Harry Browne

It is easy to be conspicuously "compassionate" if others are being forced to pay the cost. Murray N. Rothbard

The market economy has created unfathomable prosperity and, decade-by-decade, century-by-century, miraculous feats of innovation, production, distribution, and social coordination. To the free market, we owe all material prosperity, all leisure time, our health and longevity, our huge and growing population and nearly everything we call life itself. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism -- by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide. Ayn Rand

If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put into it, each person has an incentive to be a free loader, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible, because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else. John Stossel

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. Ludwig von Mises

Our educational system, from the schools to the universities, are actively undermining any sense of loyalty to the traditions, institutions, and values of American society. Thomas Sowell

To the masses the catchwords of Socialism sound enticing ... so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up. Ludwig von Mises

If you really want to help the poor, help the rich. They're the ones who will invest, build more factories, create more jobs. William E. Simon

Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it by too much poking. Lao Tzu

Never in our history have we been headed at such breakneck speed toward our own financial, political and cultural destruction. David Limbaugh

The key reason we are richer than our ancestors is that these ancestors have bequeathed us buildings, factories and machines that have given us a high living standard to start with. Driven by irresponsible policy makers, America's present generation is consuming the nation's capital. Kurt Richebacher

A private-property, market system has much to recommend it. A system is more moral if it holds individuals accountable for their actions and encourages them to help others than if it allows them to impose costs on others without their consent. Peter Hill

"When our people were fed out of the common store, and laboured jointly together, glad was he who could slip from his labour, or slumber over his taske, he cared not how. Nay, the most honest among them would hardly take so much true paines in a weeke, as now for themselves they will doe in a day: neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever the harvest prospered, the generall store must maintaine them, so that wee reaped not so much Corne from the labours of thirtie, as now three or foure doe provide for themselves." Captain John Smith

Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to "the public good" of the collective. Ayn Rand

Socialism's failure in the former Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries stand as a clear and unquestionable warning as to which path any rational and sane people should never follow again. Government planning brought poverty and ruin ... Unfortunately, America is not absorbing the lessons that should be learned from the socialist experience and, instead, is following the same path of destruction. Richard M. Ebeling

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July 2016