Lew Rockwell Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It's not an inspiration; it's a threat.

Lew Rockwell
James Buchanan made a great statement on behalf of the right of revolution. Grant restored the gold standard. Harding denounced US imperialism in Haiti. But overall, my favorite president is William Henry Harrison. He keeled over shortly after his inauguration.

Lew Rockwell
From a historical point of view, the injustice against blacks was perpetrated mostly by governments. Private business does not go in for race-based policies, because it means excluding paying customers.
And this is precisely why racialists, nationalists, and hard-core bigots have always opposed liberal capitalism: it includes and excludes based on the cash nexus and without regard to features that collectivists of all sorts regard as important. In the imagined utopias of the national socialists, the champions of commerce are hanged from lampposts as race traitors and enemies of the nation.

Lew Rockwell
The presidency is presumed to be the embodiment of Rousseau's general will, with far more power than any monarch or head of state in pre-modern societies. The US presidency is the apex of the world's biggest and most powerful government and of the most expansive empire in world history. As such, the presidency represents the opposite of freedom. It is what stands between us and our goal of restoring our ancient rights.

Lew Rockwell
Everything done by the state is ultimately done by means of aggression, which is to say violence or the threat of violence against the innocent.

Lew Rockwell
What does greatness in the presidency mean? It means waging war, crushing liberties, imposing socialism, issuing dictates, browbeating and ignoring Congress, appointing despotic judges, expanding the domestic and global empire, and generally trying his best to be an all-round enemy of freedom. It means saying with Lincoln, 'I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy.'

Lew Rockwell
We live in anti-liberal times, when individual choice is highly suspect. The driving legislative ethos is toward making all actions required or forbidden, with less and less room for human volition. Simply put, we no longer trust the idea of freedom. We can't even imagine how it would work. What a distance we have traveled from the Age of Reason to our own times.

Lew Rockwell
The right path to health-care reform is the market path (no subsidies, no monopolies such as drug patents, no licensure, no anything) that tends toward universal distribution at very low prices and relentless improvement in service. The wrong path is to make health care run the same way as the post office. Obama seems to favor the latter path, even though he admits that it is the least well-performing one. This is surely the definition of fanaticism. If the mobs aren't angry, they should be.

Lew Rockwell
In the end, what is really needed is a fundamental rethinking of the notion that the state rather than private markets must monopolize the provision of justice and security. This is the fatal conceit. No power granted to the state goes unabused. This power, among all possible powers, might be the most important one to take away from the state.

Lew Rockwell
If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

Lew Rockwell