Sangamon County Libertarians

Springfield, IL
sangamoncountylp@gmail.com

Challenging Quotes

We challenge the reader to confront the quotes on this page with what is going on in this country.

We look at history and find fault with the people of other nations who allowed tyranny to take hold. We tell ourselves it would never happen here in America.

Why wouldn't it? What would stop it? Politicians? Courts? Constitutions? Law? Morality? Ethics? Traditions? Shame?

Please think of Homeland Security, the Federal Reserve, The Patriot Act, Nation Building, Bankster Bail Outs, The drug war, mandatory socialized health care as well as the enormous debt and you will begin to see the making of 1984.

Are we free? Are we what the founders had envisioned? You decide!!!

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She well knows that by enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. – John Quincy Adams (1821)

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

--Thomas Jefferson

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin
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 (1886)
If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all. – Jacob Hornberger (1995)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. – George Washington
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. – Mark Twain (1866)
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him. – Robert Heinlein
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater (1964)
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. – Thomas Jefferson (1781)
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. – P.J. O'Rourke
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. – Barry Goldwater (1964)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H.L. Mencken

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. – Thomas Jefferson

Peace and prosperity with all nations; Entangling alliances with none. - Thomas Jefferson

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world. -George Washington

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises the germ of every other. - James Madison

No nation could wish to preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. - James Madison

The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress. - George Washington

"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. – C. S. Lewis

War is just one more big government program. – Joseph Sobran

"How bad do things have to get before you do something? Do they have to take away all your property? Do they have to license every activity that you want to engage in? Do they have to start throwing you on cattle cars before you say “now wait a minute, I don’t think this is a good idea.” How long is it going to be before you finally resist and say “No, I will not comply. Period!” Ask yourself now because sooner or later you are going to come to that line, and when they cross it, you’re going to say well now cross this line; ok now cross that line; ok now cross this line. Pretty soon you’re in a corner. Sooner or later you’ve got to stand your ground whether anybody else does or not. That is what liberty is all about."

M. Badnarik

God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. Jefferson

Solzhenitsyn

"There also exists another alliance -- at first glance a strange one, a surprising one -- but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders."

Solzhenitsyn

The simple step of a courageous individual
is not to take part in the lie.
One word of truth outweighs the world.

Ayn Rand

"There's no way to rule innocent men.
The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.
One declares so many things to be a crime
that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

Ayn Rand

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

Ayn Rand

"Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point,
it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution
is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals --
that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals,
only the conduct of the government --
that it is not a charter _for_ government power,
but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government."

Ayn Rand

Volumes can be and have been written about
the issue of freedom versus dictatorship,
but, in essence, it comes down to a single question:
do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals
and to rule them by physical force?

Ayn Rand

"Every government interference in the economy
consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force,
to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

"The difference between a welfare state and a totalitarian state is a matter of time."

Ayn Rand

There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men.
To be free, a man must be free of his brothers

Ayn Rand

The essential characteristic of socialism
is the denial of individual property rights

Ayn Rand

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others
is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

Bastiat

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism.

Bastiat

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the
beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would
otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified?
Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to
them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong.
See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing
what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then
abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the
principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.

Bastiat

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Bastiat

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you. – Joseph Sobran

Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today? It wouldn't even get out of committee. – F. Lee Bailey

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. – Joseph Sobran

The difference between libertarianism and socialism is that libertarians will tolerate the existence of a socialist community, but socialists can't tolerate a libertarian community. – David D. Boaz

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H.L. Mencken

Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'. It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they
are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America
cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of
people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any body of
regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United
States. – Noah Webster

Safety Anyone??

"While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be willing to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." Samuel Adams

"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."- Aesop

"Never could an increase in comfort or security be a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty."- Hillare Belloc

"No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting or reasoning as fear."-Edmond Burke

"The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience."- Albert Camus

"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for future security."-Declaration of Independence

"There is one safeguard known to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust."- Demosthenes

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force you are inevitably ruined."- Patrick Henry

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"- Patrick Henry

"The people must fight for their laws as for their walls."- Heraclitus

"Without law and order are nation cannot survive."- Adolf Hitler

"Who will watch the watchers?"- Juvenal

"The people are the ultimate guardians of liberty."- Thomas Jefferson

"The State has taken on vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a state religion; its agents a separate caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot." H.L. Mencken

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-face for the urge to rule it."- H.L. Mencken

"For when they say, "peace and safety," then sudden destruction comes upon them." - St. Paul

"The constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals."- Ayn Rand

"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere- Voltaire."

"The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions."- Daniel Webster

Be Not Afraid?

By their fruits you will know them - Matthew 7:16

I will give you quotes from V.I. Lenin. Please contemplate the policy of the American Government which follows directly after the quote:

The surest way to destroy a nation is to debauch its currency -

Federal Reserve

First ascertain exactly the position of various capitalists, than control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate -

Federal Reserve?

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation -

Federal Reserve?

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted -

Public Education?

Destroy the family and you destroy the country -

Public Education and the Federal Reserve?

A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership -

Federal Gun Laws?

Only an armed people can be the bulwark of popular liberty -

Federal Gun Laws?

One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the communists and the disarming of the bourgeoisie -

Armed Military and Police / Disarmed population (Hurricane Katrina)?

I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only a road to world revolution -

Years of De-industrialization / Record debt / Cultural De-stabilization / multiple wars?

The aim of socialism is not to abolish the present division of mankind into small states but to merge them -

U.N.?

It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new kind of war -

Many well meaning Americans do not focus on their government. They worry more about the foreign dictator across the ocean. They do not think the problems of the U.S. Government are institutional. They think the next election cycle will finally be the one where the right decider or changer will fix the nation.

Besides, the corporate media fills them with fear. Be afraid! We may have to go to war with those that might steal our freedom. Countries like North Korea, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan and Somalia pose vital national threats to your freedom. Are you afraid?

Which government currently should you fear most?

A foreign government across the ocean, or the government here at home? The one that taxes your income? The one that can take away your right to free speech? The one that is taking away your right to bear arms? The one that has signed you into debt slavery? The one that can draft you against your will? The one that has seized and is in the process of seizing a substantial part of the economy? The one that can take your home? The one that regulates your business? The one that licenses you? The one that fines and fees you? The one that can wiretap and monitor you? The one that investigates you for your thoughts and political beliefs? The one that can audit you? The one that will entangle itself into military alliances all over the planet? The one that educates you? The one that is willing to tell you what portion of your income it will allow you to keep? The one that will tell you what Doctor, what treatment, what food, what idea, what drug, what school, what show, what party, what speech zone, what vehicle etc. etc etc. etc.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague." -- Cicero

For other articles go to our press release page.

Mussolini

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power.

Mussolini

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.

Mussolini

At every hour of every day, I can tell you on which page of which book each school child in Italy is studying.

Mussolini

Karl Marx

"Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive,
for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice
in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote
for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation.

Karl Marx

"My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism."

Karl Marx

"The education of all children,
from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care,
shall be in state institutions at state expense."

Karl Marx

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded. – Karl Marx

Khrushchev

We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.

Khrushchev

Goebbels

The war made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times.

Goebbels

Goering

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Albert Speer

Hitler’s dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man.

Hitler

This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!

Hitler

Gold is not neccesary. I have no interest in gold. We will build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration camp. That's the bastion of money.

Hitler

What luck for the rulers that men do not think

Hitler

All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

Hitler

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.

Hitler

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death

Hitler

In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation’s moral and material health. The whole educational system, theater, film, literature, the press and broadcasting – all these will be used as a means to this end.

Hitler

The efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of the attention of a people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy.

Hitler

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies.

Hitler

Lenin

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

Lenin

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation

Lenin

Democracy is indispensable to socialism

Lenin

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

Lenin

Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever

Lenin

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

Lenin

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

Lenin

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

Lenin

The goal of socialism is communism

Lenin

The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses

Lenin

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Lenin

A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie.

Lenin

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.

Lenin

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel

Lenin

First ascertain exactly the position of the various capitalists, then control them, influence them by restricting or enlarging, facilitating or hindering their credits, and finally they can entirely determine their fate.

Behind the October Revolution there are more influential personalities than the thinkers and executors of Marxism.

Lenin

The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. [...] They were elements of disorder and subversion. On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind. This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.

Mussolini

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State -- a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values -- interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.

Mussolini

rather be expected that this will be a century of authority ... a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the century of the State.

Mussolini

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organized in their respective associations, circulate within the State.

Mussolini

People are tired of liberty. They have had a surfeit of it. Liberty is no longer a chaste and austere virgin…. Today’s youth are moved by other slogans…Order, Hierarchy, Discipline.

Mussolini

Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.

Mussolini

Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.

Mussolini

Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put men into the position where they have to make the great decision -- the alternative of life or death...

Mussolini

The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in
their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of
arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection
of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. – Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558

Karl Marx 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. Karl Marx

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