Mary Ruwart Quotes

Indeed, taxation and other forms of aggression-through-government are so taken for granted in our culture that one of our most popular sayings is that ‘nothing is certain except death and taxes.’ Yet slavery was once as universal. Taxation is thought to be indispensable to civilization today, just as slavery once was. Advocates of taxation claim that since most people pay assigned taxes before the guns show up, they have implicitly agreed to it as the price of living in ‘society.’ Most slaves obeyed their master before he got out the whip, yet we would hardly argue that this constituted agreement to their servitude. Today, we have an enlightened perspective on slavery, just as one day we will have an enlightened perspective on taxes and other forms of aggression we now think of as ‘the only way.’

When the Statue of Liberty was erected, government was the acknowledged enemy of the poor. Lady Liberty asked for the poor, the wretched refuse, the masses, not the wealthy or skilled. Why? Because everyone understood that the poor prospered best when government didn’t put them out of their jobs with excessive regulations. In the 1880s, for example, guild membership was required in Europe to work in certain occupations and the poor had a difficult time qualifying.

By the late 1970s, armed citizens were killing more criminals in self-defense than the police. Many more would-be attackers and robbers are deterred from their crime when their intended victim simply brandishes a firearm.

One way to eliminate the Federal Communications Commission would be to auction off all of the frequencies and allow them to be bought and sold like other property. Trespass by other stations would be handled just like trespass on land. Bandwidths useful for new applications could be ‘homesteaded’ just as land once was.

The Swiss people are the best practitioners of the ideals of non-aggression. The Swiss national government posts are parttime positions. Most decisions are made at the canton (state) level. Swiss per capita income is the highest in the world, showing that non-aggression pays. How did the Swiss come to adopt a relatively non-aggressive constitution in an aggressive world? In the mid-1800s, they imitated our constitution and stuck with it!

Government is, in essence, the privileged class dominating the disadvantage. The Big Lie is that government is the friend of the poor and the foe of the well-to-do.

In a libertarian society, big business wouldn’t be so big, since they couldn’t destroy their competition through government regulation. Without government control of the airways, more radio and television stations would be available and could not be shut down on political whim.

An armed society is a polite society, and the not-so-wild West was rather peaceful, in spite of Hollywood’s violent portrayal. As a legacy, in the rural West where every household still has firearms, crime is less than in eastern cities.

In spite of the additional financial burden, struggling immigrants made great sacrifices to educate their children as they saw fit rather than send them to inexpensive or even free public schools. Catholics saw the public schools as vehicles for Protestant propaganda and established parochial schools. German immigrants sent their children to private institutions when the public ones refused to teach them in German as well as in English. Immigrants who wanted their children to learn their native tongue and their Old World history opted for private or parochial schools that catered to their preferences.

As for charitable giving, Alexis de Tocqueville commented on the high level of generosity he observed during his travels in the early days of the United States. People who are free and prosperous are more likely to share with those who have less.

When tariffs are eliminated, consumers pay less for foreign goods. They therefore have more money to spend on other things. Their spending creates more new jobs than those that are lost.

Most economists believe that the Great Depression was primarily a result of the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the national currency. Had the government not interfered with the banking industry by giving the Fed a monopoly on money, the Depression might have never occurred. Too much government, not too little, was the culprit.

Wealth is created when we use existing resources in new ways. Since such creativity is virtually limitless, wealth is too.

Even when the FDA agrees to expanded access, pharmaceutical companies are often reluctant to give terminal patients a drug that is still in development. If patients die from organ failure related to their disease, the FDA may require additional studies from the manufacturer to make sure that the death was not hurried along by the drug. Naturally, the extra studies increase the development timeline and overall cost.

Most non-Western governments make it difficult to get clear land titles. Approximately 60-80% of such property is ‘extralegal,’ making it difficult to borrow against or transfer. As a result, while the poor in these countries ‘hold’ a great deal of land, they cannot easily use its full potential.