Category: Thought

The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.

You may choose to look the other way but you can never again say you did not know.

I’m sorry the Left is falling apart. It’s not my fault; I didn’t make it happen. And saying so doesn’t make me a conservative.

Tim Pool, ‘Trump Comes To The DEFENSE Of Tulsi Gabbard over Russia Smear,’ Timcast, October 20, 2019.

If censorship reigns, there cannot be sincere flattery, and only small men are afraid of small writings.

The whole of the Bill is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals. . . . It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.

The State of War is in absolute opposition to the right of free choice of nationality, of accession or secession.

Gustave de Molinari, The Society of To-morrow (1899)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

If you say ‘fascist’ it means ‘Hitler,’ although Hitler was probably more influenced by Stalin than by Mussolini — and ‘Hitler’ means ‘Auschwitz.’ So as soon as you disagree with the prevailing leftist culture or with either of our political parties and they want to call you a name, then you become a ‘fascist,’ which means you support the extermination of millions of people in a concentration camp.

Paul Gottfried, on the Tom Woods Show, April 28, 2016, a discussion of Gottfried’s book, Fascism: The Career of a Concept (2016).

Laissez faire, telle devrait être la devise de toute puissance publique, depuis que le monde est civilisé […]. Détestable principe que celui de ne vouloir grandir que par l’abaissement de nos voisins! Il n’y a que la méchanceté et la malignité du cœur de satisfaites dans ce principe, et l’intérêt y est opposé. Laissez faire, morbleu! Laissez faire!!

Leave be, which should be the motto of all public power, since the world was civilized […]. A detestable principle is that of wanting to be enlarged by the lowering of our neighbors! There is only malice and malignity of heart in it, the principle being directly opposed to the general interest. Leave us alone, gadzooks! Leave us be!!

René Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, Marqis d’Argenson, Memoir es et Journal inidit du Marquis d’Argenson (1736 diary entry; first published 1858), echoing the words of M. Le Gendre, who, when asked, in 1681, by the eager mercantilist Controller-General of Finances Jean-Baptiste Colbert how the French state could be help promote commerce, Le Gendre replied simply: “Laissez-nous faire.” In a Journal économique article in 1751, d’Argenson put the Le Gendre anecdote into print first. “Laissez faire” became a rallying cry after that, and a major feature of liberalism until its transformation by its encounter with socialism. One often sees the phrase “laissez-faire capitalism” used to distinguish free markets from protectionism and dirigisme. René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, Marquis d’ Argenson

Laissez faire et laissez passer!

Let do and let pass.

Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay popularized the phrase following either (a) an anecdote about a meeting between French Finance Minister Colbert and a group of businessmen, who protested to be “let do,” as related by René Louis de Voyer de Paulmy d’Argenson, or (b) economist François Quesnay, who translated “laissez faire” from the Chinese Taoist term “wu wei.”