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by Ron Paul – From the the Appendix to his book, Liberty Defined
- Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.
- All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.
- Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.
- Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.
- Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.
- Government may not claim the monopoly over a people’s money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.
- Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.
- Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.
- All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
- Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.
“Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality….”
–Michael Ellner
“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
~John Quincy Adams
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
-Patton
You do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.
~ Vaclav Havel
The unity of freedom has never relied on a uniformity of opinion.
- John F. Kennedy
“I have sworn upon the altar of the Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth… We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
-John Swinton, speech given while working for the New York Sun, 1880
“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
-Winston Churchill
“It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something.”
- John Wayne
