The Wit and Wisdom of Richard J. Maybury
are from his newsletter, books, interviews, and speeches — Last updated 15-October-2024
"The country and the government
are not the same thing."
America
"America is one of the few countries founded on a set of ideas, as opposed to simple loyalty to a ruler or piece of real estate."
"About thirty years ago I reached the conclusion that America was headed for a huge economic disaster, and this disaster would bring radical political change. I believed, and still do, that the change will go either in the direction of the American Revolution, or the French Revolution."
"To stand on the shoulders of the American founders is to see farther than others can."
"Unlike other nations, America isn't just a place, it's a set of ideas."
"Political cataclysms happen once or twice per century. Lots of people come out of them better off than they went in, and you can be one of them. Just stay informed and adaptable, and talk with like-minded people who are aware that times are changing."
Constitution
"A government and its country are not the same thing. The government may kick the bucket but the country won't. Life will go on. And if America returns to its Constitution, we will instantly be back on the road to great liberty and abundance."
"The Constitution is far from perfect, but it is light years ahead of its mortal enemy socialism."
"Most Americans will soon see clearly that both major parties are failing them catastrophically. Everyone, therefore, is awakening to the fact that they must seek an alternative. And there, in all the libraries and on the Internet, is the Constitution, waiting to be discovered."
"To most, the Constitution will always be just a symbol, like the Liberty Bell and the Statue of Liberty. But as long as they are desperate enough to give it a try, this will start the country back in the direction of peace, liberty and abundance."
Democracy
"Democracy is not liberty. Democracy is majority rule, and majority rule is mob rule. Nowhere in the literature of the American Revolution have I seen anyone say they were fighting for democracy. It was always liberty."
Economy
"Everyone with his eyes open can see now that politics is wrecking the world economy."
"Keynesianism and socialism are really politics in sheep's clothing."
"What may be the most important fact in your financial health is that, like all of us, economic 'experts' advising money managers today were trained from childhood to think socialist.
They cannot get rid of patterns of thinking they don't know they have."
"Economics is a study not of physical objects but of human behavior, and humans have free wills, they change endlessly. So, the economy is not a machine, it is an ecology of living organisms."
"Lawyers in politics have made up laws which economists know are wrecking the US and global economies. This while thousands of (socialist) economists in government agencies have recommended economic policies which lawyers know can undermine the rights to our lives, liberty and property. But they do not talk to each other."
"Civilization exists, to help each other. The most help by far comes in the form of free trade. Free trade is the engine of progress. Free trade, free enterprise, capitalism, whatever you choose to call it, is the one system in which both parties win, each helps the other.
The sum of the benefits from all the billions of trades each day is what we call progress, and progress leads to the rise and flourishing of civilization."
"Free trade leads to progress, which leads to a more advanced civilization, which brings more trade, more progress, etc. This is what economists call a virtuous cycle.
By hampering free trade, governments undermine progress, and civilization."
"The world's politicians and bureaucrats have become so powerful they are causing their economies to implode. The parasites are killing their hosts, and their hosts are growing mighty unhappy about the effect on their families."
"America is now the world's largest banana republic."
"In a government-controlled economy, force is involved in millions of transactions every day. Anything involving taxes involves force."
"Few alive today remember a time when, year after year, the (gold backed) dollar retained its value, and realistic accounting and long-term planning were possible."
"An investor cannot be fully informed unless he or she knows the economic forecast and the paradigm on which it is based."
"Keynesians want to believe in the Soviet premise that if they are given enough power, they can steer our economic lives better than we can."
"The first rule in financial success is not, earn profits, it's, avoid losses."
"Rare is the economist who is willing to give up his prestige, so you won't often find one who will admit that the math in economics and finance is very, very suspect. This is why I frequently draw attention to the fact that finance and economics are not the study of charts, graphs and equations, they are the study of human behavior. No two humans are alike, and the ability to describe them in mathematical terms, and predict their actions, is, to put it mildly, laughable."
"The 'economy' is an abstraction, it doesn't exist. What exists is humans. The 'economy' is the people."
"It's long been axiomatic that financial markets are driven primarily by two emotions: fear and greed."
Empire
"The swamp's foreign policy for more than a century has been in three parts: 1. Not only should everyone be forced to have a government but; 2. Everyone should have one like ours, and; 3. If a country does not choose democracy (majority rule), we're going to give it to them good and hard, because look how well ours works."
"For most of its history, the swamp got along without an income tax. The federal government was so small it lived on taxes from imports, liquor and tobacco.
Today the income tax has become one of the greatest engines of tyranny. But when it was launched in 1913, there was little resistance from the public, because nearly all of them paid just one percent or less.
Rates and complexity were gradually bumped up to today's horrific levels. The power junkies knew the population would be like the proverbial frog. Drop him into a pot of boiling water and he will jump right out, but leave the water cold, turn up the heat slowly, and he will allow himself to be boiled
."
"I could be very wrong about this, but I get the impression the swamp's empire is about where Rome's was after Attila the Hun showed up in 440 AD.
The generally accepted date for the fall of the western Roman Empire is 476 AD. 36 years later."
"The rate of change is much faster today, so Biden may go down in history as the man who presided over the demise of the swamp's global hegemony.
If it does not happen under Biden, then I think there's a 90% chance whoever follows him will get the credit. And credit is the right word. The federal empire is a plague, good riddance."
Federal Reserve
"Since 1913, when lawmakers granted Fed bureaucrats the privilege of manipulating the money supply, these bureaucrats have hit us with two depressions, 16 recessions, and three serious inflations."
"Federal Reserve officials should go back to the gold standard. Make dollars convertible to gold, cease creating any more of them, then resign and go out of business. Sell the building, and get real jobs doing something useful."
"The Fed does a superb job of convincing the population that they are helpless and in need of a giant federal bureaucracy to take care of them. I sometimes think the true purpose of the Fed, known to its long-dead inventors but not to today's Fed personnel, is simply to create turmoil and fear, to boost the demand for more government."
"I can't prove it, but I am convinced that, at bottom, the single greatest cause of business failures, job losses, bankruptcy, divorce, poverty, mental illness, child abuse and practically every other misery in America is the Federal Reserve's tinkering with the money supply."
"The mainstream press rarely says anything about the emotional and social havoc caused by the Fed's tightening and loosening, I don't know why."
"To this day, the Fed remains one of the most cleverly run, most perfectly socialist institutions ever invented."
"One of the greatest failings of statism is that it tends to view symptoms as causes. Today's problem is not the financial crash, or mortgages, unemployment, business failures or other headline stories. It's the malinvestment created by the Federal Reserve injecting trillions of dollars into the economy over the past 108 years."
"Under socialist and Keynesian economics, governments around the world have been experimenting on us extensively ever since the Federal Reserve was launched in 1914."
Government
"Ever since governments first appeared on this planet they have been built on this premise: There are humans so good, wise and noble they can forcibly steer other people's lives in overt and covert ways that have benefits greater than total hidden and unhidden costs.
To my knowledge, no one anywhere has ever proven this claim, but evidence to the contrary is mountainous."
"One of the worst federal offenses against the rest of the world is Washington's insistence that everyone adopt majority rule. This is abhorrent to millions whose religions tell them right and wrong cannot be determined by voting."
"When I was young, almost no one feared the government. Nearly everyone saw it as their friend, their helper, a little loopy but basically good.
Now polls show that roughly half the population fears and hates the government."
"Every government bureaucracy keeps three sets of statistics: one to mislead the public, another to mislead the rulers, and the third to mislead itself."
"As long as we have big government, we will have big trouble."
"No matter how brilliant an economics or finance expert might be, or how sophisticated his AI programs, the government remains in the hands of humans who have free wills and can change their minds at the drop of a hat.
Therefore, in football terms, an investor must be a broken-field runner, always dodging trouble and running toward daylight, which governments never stop altering."
"Directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, not just Americans but the vast majority on the planet are victims of the swamp. Tired of its psychopathic encroachments, millions around the globe have begun rising against it.
I challenge anyone to find one country — just one — in which the swamp has not meddled, to the detriment of a sizable portion of the population."
"I have traveled the world enough to know that foreigners generally like Americans, and often even admire us. But except for the foreigners in bed with the federal government, they hate and fear the swamp.
A travel tip: wherever you go, remember that the swamp has been there ahead of you"
"When I was young, I didn't know anyone who feared or hated the government. They trusted it.
Today I don't know anyone who trusts it. But I know many who are terrified of it and despise it."
"Everything government does is a loss to someone, usually many someones.
When you see something done by government, say to yourself: to pay for that I wonder who was deprived of what."
"Governments are the most greedy organizations on the planet. They do not collect taxes to perform services, they perform services as an excuse to collect taxes."
"Government thinking reminds me of someone trying to slice bananas in an electric fan (but it seemed like a good idea at the time!)"
"Numerous times over the years I have warned that the swamp's foreign and military policies boil down to just five words: poke sharp sticks at rattlesnakes.
It would be impossible to calculate how many foreign enemies Washington has made. "
"I once asked my top researcher to find countries in which Washington does not meddle.
He worked on the task for weeks and could not find any."
"Trying to control every part of our lives, the vast bulk of legislation is intended to dictate our economic behavior. Yes, dictate, as in dictator, tyrant, tyranny."
"Rulers in DC have spent over a century convincing the world they stand ever ready to sacrifice American blood and treasure fighting other government's wars for them."
"Please tell others, the country and the government are not the same thing. America the country is wonderful, but it's government is a screaming nightmare."
"In my opinion, much science today is so corrupted by government it isn't really science."
"People in the top levels of governments are not in the business of doing good. They are in the business of being powerful and feeling the thrill of using their power on others."
"Government expands to fill the space allotted. Whatever those people are allowed to do to us, they will do to us."
"Traditionally during election seasons, I offer this about politics:
What is politics?
It is a candidate standing before a crowd and thundering, 'If you elect me, I will give you everything you want, and you won't need to pay for it! I will force the evil rich person standing next to you to pay!'
And the crowd cheers."
"I have often mentioned my belief that the US is now split roughly 50-50 between people who fear and hate the government, and those who love it and want more of it."
"Everyone has been taught to refer to the government as we. To say we or us when talking about the government is to accept the blame for whatever the politicians and bureaucrats do."
"I trust private data much more than that of governments. Governments habitually lie, while private organizations are perpetually concerned about their credibility. If their credibility disappears, their incomes do too. Governments, on the other hand, take money by force, so they do not need to earn it."
"I think there is a 90% probability that, with rare exceptions, all national governments are going out of business."
"If you are a member of this pro-Constitution movement, please, please make no attempt to harm the government. You don't need to. It is committing economic suicide."
"In most cases, government isn't the solution to mankind's problems, it's the cause. The only lasting remedy is one any of the American Founders would have recommended: less government today, even less tomorrow, and so on, until we need a microscope to find it."
"The primary purpose of government-controlled schools is to make us naïve about the true nature and behavior of government. I applaud this remark usually attributed to George Washington: 'Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.' "
"To refer to the government as the country is to give the impression the whole population is of one mind. Yet, I don't know of any case where this has been so. The government is one group, and the population is another."
"The [Washington DC] swamp is widely hated not only in the US but everywhere, except possibly in the capitol buildings of the despots it subsidizes."
"In my experience, people in other lands are generally quite friendly to Americans as individuals, and to America as a place. They find our openness, and our habit of telling political jokes without fearfully looking over our shoulders to see who is listening, as fascinating. But lots of them hate and fear the US government."
"I love America, especially the principles on which it was founded, and would not want to live anywhere else. But the country and the government are not the same thing. I consider the government to be the country's most dangerous enemy. It is forever meddling in other nations, often taking sides with crooks and tyrants."
"America and Americans are still widely liked, and even admired. But almost everywhere, the federal government is hated, and its currency, the US dollar, is becoming a target, a symbol of arrogance and oppression."
"Keynesianism certainly violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Bill of Rights, which requires the government to leave us alone."
"A small prediction: as the economic crisis worsens, Americans will rediscover Ronald Reagan's words: 'government isn't the solution, it's the problem.' "
"Judging by the evidence I've seen, at least 90% of the federal government is a hoax."
"The federal government is the Wizard of Oz, smoke and mirrors. Most of it is just people shuffling papers; they don't do anything. It's a giant red tape factory, just an excuse to collect taxes."
"Governments are the greediest organizations on earth. They do not collect taxes to perform services, they perform services as an excuse to collect taxes. This is why so much of what they do is grossly expensive and of poor quality."
"Governments are the most greedy, predatory institutions ever invented; they corrupt everything they touch. As Will Rogers said, 'Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.' "
"Taxes are mostly fraud. Their main purpose is to rob Tom to buy the votes of Dick and Harry."
"We are ruled by an idiocracy. (Idiocy + bureaucracy.)"
"Nothing on the internet will ever be secure as long as governments use it as a battlefield."
"Once a government grows past a certain size, it becomes all power and no brains."
"Before the people in government run their experiments on the 330 million of us, they should be required to show proof they have learned how to run their own lives wisely."
"When the government grows large enough, the losses outnumber the gains and civilization moves backward. We apparently reached this point sometime in the early 1970s."
"The American founders were vastly more astute about the true nature and behavior of government and political power — and the ways these affect our finances — than any group of thinkers before or since."
"America is wonderful but its government is cruel and insane."
History
"Many books about American history—I'm tempted to say most now—are written by socialists who subtly discredit or trivialize the Founders and their principles."
"One of the many things I try to do is see things through the eyes of the Founders, because I believe they were some of the most brilliant people in all of world history. And when it comes to economics, geopolitics, and the other forces that affect your money, no one today has the wisdom they did."
"After studying 2,500 years of economic history, I can tell you for a fact that when times become hard, people rise to the occasion. For those who are prepared, today's massive turmoil is a welcome housecleaning that will clear the way for a new golden age of liberty and abundance."
"History repeats, because governments keep making the same stupid mistakes. As Mark Twain said, history does not repeat, but it rhymes."
"Compared to any other time or place in history, America's general rate of change today is supersonic."
"By far the most reliable trend in all of human history has been wars, more than 14,000 of them."
Inflation
"Washington exports its inflation, and today the whole world is engulfed in this madness. Another way of saying it is, federal power junkies long ago bullied the whole world into using Keynesianism."
"Knowing what others don't is important not just for being the star at a social gathering, but for making sure the Fed's inflationary turmoil works for you instead of against you."
"Inflation is not rising prices. It is an increase in the amount of money that causes rising prices. The mainstream media seem not to understand this, or they have been intimidated into not revealing what they know."
Internet
"Speaking of told-you-so's, we have long warned not to believe claims from banks and other financial firms that 'we have excellent cyber protection.'
Now the age of AI has arrived. Everything on the internet about your personal or business life is vulnerable. Putting it on the internet automatically gives it to miscreants.
Tell your bankers, brokers, accountants and anyone else who has financial data on you to keep it off the internet. Tell them to use snail mail."
"I think in a few years or less, the fantasy of everyone being connected to everyone else will be ridiculed. The internet will be replaced by a "splinternet," by which I mean a quality-based spectrum of services and security.
At the bottom of the spectrum will be what we already have—a free cesspool infested with all manner of crime, complexity, frustration, fear, wasted time, wasted money, harassment and heartbreak. No sane person will want his or her loved ones anywhere near this electronic sewer.
Moving upward from there, with climbing levels of security and simplicity, will be paid services as in the days of Prodigy, America Online and Compuserve.
At the top will be the most expensive services. For these, users will be vetted, bonded and periodically surprise inspected."
"I have been warning about the internet. A desire to connect everyone with everyone else, on a planet where real ethics is nearly dead, is the height of insanity. But this is what the internet does."
"The internet and organizations connected to it are fast becoming the most paranoid and intrusive surveillance state in history, the envy of every Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.
At some point people will realize the benefits of the WWW are no longer worth the costs in terms of money, aggravation or time."
"For six years, EWR has been warning that the internet—meaning the system of connecting everything and everyone—is a grossly naïve notion. It might have been wonderful, if most people had been ethical. But we are now living in a world where socialism has shrouded the very definition of ethics (the 17-words: do all you have agreed to do and, do not encroach on other persons or their property). So we are surrounded by high-tech savages."
Investments
"I never use anyone else's analysis. I read only for facts, because the main benefit my readers are paying for is my original analysis and insights, not someone else's."
"One of the best pieces of advice I can offer is, in business and investing, do not make long-term plans that cannot be altered at the drop of a hat. Fed officials are fickle.
I suggest you put a sign on the cover of your investment research file saying Beware of the Fed!"
"Neither the economy nor our investments can be stable when the foundation, the law, changes daily."
"Practically all my investment suggestions boil down to diversify, diversify, diversify and, in football terms, be a broken-field runner dodging from one opportunity to the next."
"Investments are not things, they are forms of human action. To study changes in interest rates, stocks, bonds, gold, oil and so on is to study the decisions of individuals, millions of them."
"The government's controls on the economy are so pervasive—and have been for at least a century—that 90% of long-term investment analysis should be political analysis."
"Some investments are safer than others, but today real financial security is impossible. In my opinion, all safe investments now contain a level of risk that Americans a hundred years ago would have considered insane."
"The first three rules for reducing risk are diversify, diversify and diversify."
"I sometimes hear people say they are not reading economic or investment material right now because, at the moment, they aren't investing. Well, sorry about that, if you have money—even if it's just a few hundred dollars—you are investing. In fact, you are speculating."
Law
"By far the bulk of US law today is administrative. Politicians do not want to deal with an issue, so they delegate it to unelected 'experts' who are paid to make up and enforce laws on you and me.
This is what wrecked the Soviet Union."
"In the US, as I have pointed out many times, federal politicians and bureaucrats have made up more than 300,000 laws—on top of the plethora of state and local acts.
Each is an experiment on someone, often millions of someones."
"Today we live under the 300,000 laws made up and enforced — let me emphasize the five letters, f-o-r-c-e — by federal politicians and bureaucrats, plus hundreds of thousands more laws made up and enforced by state and local politicians and bureaucrats.
The typical American commits three felonies per day."
"The key concept in the American Revolution was a spiritual one, that there is a Higher Law than any human law, and the government was violating this Higher Law.
Right at its beginning the Declaration of Independence proclaims that everyone's rights are endowed 'by their Creator.' "
"Administrative law is socialist central planning, meaning political control of our businesses, careers, investments and personal lives, by bureaucrats."
"America was founded foremost on the belief there is a Higher Law than any human law."
"My Two Laws are stated and restated throughout the lore of all the great religions. They are the point on which all come together."
"The foundation of every civilization has always been the two fundamental laws expressed in these 17 words: Do all you have agreed to do and, do not encroach on other persons or their property. If we want peace, freedom, prosperity and personal success, we must follow these 17 words, both in our personal and political lives."
"Many who throw out religion are also unknowingly throwing out Natural Law. Rather than using objective truth—The 17 Words—they resort to subjective opinion. The result will be a generation, not of immoral children, but of amoral children."
"A person who will break agreements in small ways may be inclined to major fraud."
"Law is the foundation of the economy. The economy cannot be stable if the law isn't."
"In my lifetime, America has gone from being the land of the free to the land where everything that isn't forbidden is mandatory. The first thing that needs to happen is politicians and bureaucrats must be stopped from making up any more laws."
"The point to remember is that when the power junkies make up their laws, they are experimenting on us; we are their guinea pigs."
"The law is no longer a shield, it's a sword."
"The root cause of the current decline of civilization is that every government in the world has adopted the assumption that law determines ethics. Whatever lawmakers decide, is right, even if it's wrong."
"Who can plan anything when the political berserkers can make up their crazy laws faster than we can adapt to them?"
Liberty
"Thanks to the government-controlled "education" industry, which is even worse than the government-controlled press, few Americans any longer even know what the System of Liberty is. It is explained in my Uncle Eric book, Whatever Happened To Justice?, which has become a staple of the home education movement."
"In the 1800s, under the System of Liberty, which grew from the principles of Common Law, America became the most free and prosperous land ever known. It was far from perfect, but it was unsurpassed.
People in other countries saw this unprecedented liberty and abundance, and wanted the same for themselves. Some migrated to America. Others stayed home and overthrew their governments."
"The 19th century brought the burst of progress fostered by the capitalist Industrial Revolution. This grew out of the freedom movement toward what was known in 1776 as the System of Natural Liberty.
Note, liberty is not so much a condition as it is a system.
The System of Natural Liberty is what leaders of the socialist-environmentalist movement are trying to destroy."
"Today we have all been taught to see politics as left vs. right, democrats vs. republicans, liberals vs. conservatives. A much clearer way to view politics is the way it was seen in America's revolutionary era: liberty vs. power."
"People will long for some sort of coherent, logical system in which they can have faith. They won't go to the System of Liberty because they like it or because they understand it; they'll go because it's the only thing left to try."
"The world is far too complicated for humans to understand. The best choice is to allow each individual to plot his own course. It's called liberty."
"Imagine where the world would be today if in 1776, Tom Paine had written Common Sense, and Ben Franklin had said, you can't publish that, it would cause instability?"
Money
"Currencies today are not real money. At their best they are mere slips of paper, called fiat (fee-ought).
Most fiat now is just electronic blips in the banking computer network, concocted and regulated by federal and state bureaucrats.
In other words, banks today are just a form of crypto run by governments.
What could go wrong?"
"Real money is, and has been for thousands of years, gold or silver—also called specie (spee-see), or bullion, commodity money or my favorite, hard money."
"The wise investor always has most or all of his or her financial net worth in things that cannot be created out of thin air as today's 'money' is.
Chief among them are 10% to 20% in gold, silver, platinum and palladium coins.
I suggest all four metals. Each has its own supply-and-demand fundamentals, and especially strengths and weaknesses in the face of politics."
"Fads run their course and disappear. This is why investors eventually return to the metals, which have track records stretching back centuries and even millennia "
"When the currency itself is not trustworthy, all financial instruments contain added peril."
Political Power
"The founders understood that political power corrupts. Even if every high government office were staffed by saints and angels, in six months they would all be power junkies.
In short, the founders created a government inherently stupid and disorganized so that anyone who got control of it would not be able to do much damage."
"No one admires the American founders more than I do. But they were human and they made mistakes. In my estimation, the most serious is, their Bill of Rights stops at the border.
Inside the US, federal power junkies are legally forbidden to inflict abuses on Americans. But in other countries they can do as they please, and they do. After all, what's the point of having political power if you can't use it on someone?"
"Looking back through thousands of years of human history, when political power junkies are seen as devils who are causing harm to the population, they generally go looking for another devil onto whom they can shift the blame.
As Plato (429?-347? BC) warned, 'When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader.' "
"The swamp is so powerful that in one way or another it bends and twists the lives and investments of everyone on earth.
Yes, people in government have that much power over us. They are ordinary run-of-the-mill specimens of Homo Sap, except they have the legalized privilege of encroaching on the rest of us in a thousand ways."
"There is an iron law of politics: people who want political power cannot be trusted with it. "
"I wonder how many politicians and bureaucrats have plaques in their offices quoting Psalm 46:10. 'Be still and know that I am God.' "
"The earth warms, then cools, then warms, etc. There have been at least 25 rapid and extreme warming cases starting about 115,000 years ago, called the Dansgaard-Oeschger events. I believe another such event has started, and governments are using it to frighten their populations into begging for more government."
"In case you have not guessed, I think the words political and crooked are synonyms. But that's the world we live in and it's the one to which we must adapt."
"To liberty and prosperity, political power is kryptonite."
"The top priority of any power junkie is to stay in power."
"Political power corrupts the morals and the judgment. As Mark Twain observed, 'There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.' "
"Through whatever is coming, remember that the enemy is not democrats, republicans, liberals, moderates or conservatives. The enemy is political power. It corrupts the morals and the judgment, and whoever ends up with it must be tightly controlled, which is the main purpose of the Constitution."
"Political power is the legalized privilege of using brute force or threats of brute force on persons who have not harmed anyone. Perhaps the best example is taxes. A tax is politicians and bureaucrats saying to you, buy what we are selling or people with guns will come to your home and haul you away to prison. Virtually all laws made up by politicians or bureaucrats are, in one way or another, backed by this power. It is what sets government apart from all businesses, churches, charities, and other private organizations and individuals."
"Political power corrupts the morals and the judgment."
"Socialists claim real socialism has never been tried. In a way, that's true. Every time it is established, it quickly morphs into a kleptocracy."
"Elections are won by the candidates who can most convincingly say, we will give you all you want and you won't need to pay for it."
"To me, the simple fact that a person wants political power is sufficient reason to doubt his honesty."
"America's Founders were convinced political power corrupts. John Adams said, 'Fear is the foundation of governments.' "
"From my study of 2,500 years of economic history, one thing I have concluded is that seekers of political power are all cut from the same cloth, regardless of what time or place they live in."
Praxeology
"A human mind is not economic one moment, sociological the next, financial the next, etc. It is all these things at once, a single unified package of experiences, education and emotions. Praxeology is the study of the whole package. Any time a human acts, all this comes into play, whether the human realizes it or not. All the smartest people I know are praxeologists."
Rebellion
"American founder John Adams explained that the 1776 revolution began with the ordinary people losing trust in the government. Adams said the rebellion began not when the shooting started at Lexington but earlier, when the rulers lost the hearts and minds of the people.
It looks to me like America is again near such a turning point."
"In the US and many other places, the existing political structure is rotten and everyone knows it. It's on the way out, and a new one is coming.
Our goal is to assist you through the political and economic transition that has begun, and help you profit, even flourish."
"Like a supertanker that takes miles to make a 180 degree turn, America is slowly rediscovering its 'classical liberal' or 'libertarian' roots. The System of Liberty works better than anything else, and spectacularly better than socialism."
"The godlike size and intrusiveness of government ensures that the swamp will be blamed for everything that goes wrong, including even difficulties in which it played no part."
"The hearts and minds of typical middle-class Americans are changing. These stalwarts of society have begun rising to defend themselves and their families against the swamp."
"About America, I am more optimistic than ever. In all my 75 years, and even in the Reagan-Thatcher era, I never saw so much realistic thinking about runaway government, or so much desire to defang it. Hearts and minds are definitely changing, and fast."
Schools
"The Education Department does not teach children, teachers do. Yet billions of dollars disappear into the pockets of the education bureaucrats every year.
The federal Education Department spends $176 billion per year directly or indirectly controlling education, meaning controlling children's minds."
"For a century the primary purpose of the education system, from kindergarten through graduate school, has been to create socialists and socialism, not to foster literacy, production or good incomes.
In fact, socialism teaches that profit is a dirty word.
It also teaches the solution to every problem is more government."
"Socialists of the early 20th century knew they'd never create their ideal state without reprogramming the human mind to create the new socialist man. To do this, they captured the schools and colleges."
"By the 1950s, every intellectual who did not want to be laughed out of town had gone over to socialism, and virtually every instructor in schools and colleges taught with a socialist slant."
"As an economic model, socialism is stone dead. It does not work. It's an economic Godzilla. But as an unconscious, cold-hearted knee-jerk reaction to trouble, socialism is thriving. It's how we were raised in school."
"A child's intellect should not be the property of the government. We must rescue the children's minds, and if we fail to do that, then whatever else we do won't matter."
"The only reason what's wrong and how to fix it isn't already crystal clear to everyone, including the president, is that nearly all of us were raised in government-controlled schools where we were brainwashed about the 'might and majesty' of government."
"Some of us who grew up to become teachers were easily persuaded to inculcate our students with the desire for an unlimited government to protect us: 'This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs: when he first appears he is a protector.' — Plato, circa 400 BC."
"When a government controls the schools it does not need to control the press."
"Government controlled schools are even worse than a government controlled press; both are engines of tyranny."
"In the late 1800s, socialism became the hot new fad. It halted the spread of liberty by taking control of the schools and colleges — meaning taking control of the minds of the young — all over the world."
Socialism
"Socialist 'central planning' is hordes of politicians and bureaucrats, who know nothing about you including your name, making up laws and taxes to forcibly change your business, career, investments and personal life in whatever ways they wish."
"The human world is no more irrational than the physical one. You can understand it. Facts, logic, cause and effect. If there is one idea that EWR teaches, it's this. You can see through the socialist pea soup smog."
"Under the influence of socialism, America has shifted to political law. Socialists have wiped out the idea that there is law built into human nature. They enthroned majority rule, which is mob rule. Today I doubt one American in a thousand understands what was common knowledge in 1776."
"Administrative law, which is rule by decree, is about as un-American as it is possible to get.
America's massively powerful federal administrative state was not invented to make America's government run better. It was created to make it run socialistically, according to the desires of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
At bottom, this is what administrative law is, socialist central planning, in which bureaucrats rule over our investments, businesses, careers and personal lives."
"Warning: if your tax accountant is a leftist, especially a socialist, you might as well just burn your savings. A moderate or centrist might be better, but a libertarian is the safest choice, with a staunch conservative coming in close behind."
"In socialist-environmentalist thinking what counts is not logic but good intentions"
"Socialist literature is about how to take over a country, it contains very little guidance on how to run it after you have it."
"Socialist environmentalism has swept the schools and colleges, and therefore the whole country. Its fanatical leaders are anti-civilization and anti-freedom."
War
"Jefferson rightfully referred to the Old World as 'nations of eternal war.' The idea that Americans are so good, wise and noble they can fix vendettas that have been raging for centuries is insane. It is hubris on a galactic scale."
"The biggest lie in the world is that no one likes war. War is generally viewed as something like a natural disaster. It just happens, like weather, and we must cope with it.
But it's a form of human behavior. It happens because someone, or many someones, want it."
"Since the year 3600 BC, governments have fought more than 14,000 wars against each other.
Right now, 108 wars are raging in Chaostan, some lasting more than 50 years, and seven in the Western Hemisphere, all in Latin America.
Incidentally, to those who say the benefits of government are worth the costs, I ask, are you serious? Really? What benefits could be worth 14,000 wars? Are humans really so stupid they can't come up with something better than government?
Or are they just too lazy to try?"
"War is the worst thing humans do to each other, because it embodies all evils — murder, rape, theft, torture, taxes, inflation, you name it.
It is not much of an exaggeration to say the power junkies in the swamp have never seen a war they didn't want to get into. They did it 52 times in the 19th century, and 188 in the 20th and 21st so far
."
"Governments have the same psychology as street gangs. They hate each other and they fight, and today they are again drifting toward another worldwide orgy of violence.
Globally right now, there are 42 ongoing wars, and I'd wager that overtly or covertly Washington has its fingers in every one of them."
"I wish we had a military in the Swiss tradition of heavily armed neutrality. Often surrounded by war, including both world wars, the Swiss have not participated in a foreign conflict since 1815. (They had a brief civil war in 1847.)
Compare this to the US government's record of getting into foreign wars no less than 52 times in the 19th century, and 188 in the 20th and 21st."
"War alters economies, often drastically, by changing flows of money. War is the most expensive thing humans do. This is why the old saying that war is good for the economy is daft."