L. K. Samuels

Lawrence K. Samuels (born December 7, 1951) is an American author, classical liberal, and libertarian activist. He is best known as the editor and contributing author of Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer and In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.

Quotes

 * To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war.
 * "Iraq and the Roots of War," California Freedom (June 2007).


 * The more complexity, the more unpredictability and therefore the more uncontrollability. You cannot control what you cannot predict.
 * Speech at the Libertopia Festival, San Diego, CA (August 30, 2013)


 * Without chaos there would be no creation, no structure and no existence. After all, order is merely the repetition of patterns; chaos is the process that establishes those patterns. Without this creative self-organizing force, the universe would be devoid of biological life, the birth of stars and galaxies—everything we have come to know.
 * "Chaos Gets a Bad Rap: Importance of Chaology to Liberty", Strike-The-Root  (Feb. 18, 2015)


 * The problem of complexity is at the heart of mankind’s inability to predict future events with any accuracy. Complexity science has demonstrated that the more factors found within a complex system, the more chances of unpredictable behavior. And without predictability, any meaningful control is nearly impossible. Obviously, this means that you cannot control what you cannot predict. The ability ever to predict long-term events is a pipedream. Mankind has little to do with changing climate; complexity does.
 * "The Real Science Behind Changing Climate", LewRockwell.com, August 1, 2014.


 * Why do the Progressive Big Media, Democrats, elites, and Democratic Socialists feel duty-bound to create false realities? Why must they silence, obstruct or distort any truthful voice before it can ever be heard? And why do they rush to judgement before the facts can be sorted out?  The answer is rather simple; socialists and collectivists have no other choice. By hard experience, they learned over 100 years ago that their ideology was devoid of facts and reality. They had to sacrifice truth in order to hide the inevitable failures of socialism.
 * “No Truth in Socialism: Why the ‘Crisis of Marxism’ Matters” American Thinker (Aug. 7, 2021)


 * In reality, there is no truth in socialism, because it has never worked. Still smarting from the hard lessons of history, today's Marxist socialists have learned to swiftly bury truth and any truth-seekers, before they can become entombed themselves.
 * “No Truth in Socialism: Why the ‘Crisis of Marxism’ Matters” American Thinker (Aug. 7, 2021)


 * Critical race theory (CRT) has been cited as an offshoot of Karl Marx’s theory of class struggle, which was designed to pit one class against another so as to foment worker-led revolutions. It is also widely accepted that the Marxian Frankfurt School  in Germany reworked Marx’s ‘social conflict theory’ in the 1950s by adding ‘race’ to their long list of ‘oppressed,’ minorities. But historically, the Frankfurt School theorists were latecomers to the racial theory table. They were not the originators of Critical Race Theory. A revolutionary socialist movement had already existed decades before in Germany. These racial justice warriors sought to pit one race against another and encourage the oppressed to overthrow the oppressor. They called themselves German National Socialists.
 * “The Surprising Origins of Critical Race Theory”, American Thinker (June 28, 2021)


 * The National Socialists, like the Marxian Frankfurt School leaders, dedicated themselves to fighting racial oppression imposed by other advantaged races. But in the case of the Nazis, they identified the ‘oppressed race’ as the Aryan and German people and the ‘oppressor race’ as the Jews. They believed that the Jews controlled the world as members of a wealthy and privileged race that supposedly mistreated the so-called Aryan races. To demean the so-called ‘Jewish oppressors,’ the National Socialists taught German children that the Jews, Jewish-run banks, and capitalists were persecuting the German nation and its people. This ‘oppressor versus oppressed’ narrative is pure classical Marxism, which had devastating effects across the annals of modern history. Such racist nonsense divides society, creating hostile tribalism and unending ethnic violence. Of course, this racial struggle was exactly what the Nazi propagandists intended in their effort to purge certain “oppressor” races. They wanted only one race to exist in German-controlled lands. That is why Critical Race Theory is so poisonous. Its endgame almost always results in horrific final solutions to punish so-called privileged and oppressor races.
 * “The Surprising Origins of Critical Race Theory”, American Thinker (June 28, 2021)

Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer, (1985)
L.K. Samuels, edited and contributor, Santa Ana, CA, Freeland Press, 2009


 * Freedom does not guarantee wealth or success; it guarantees only the individual’s right to pursue them. Despite political promises of personal security from hunger and poverty, government cannot lessen the plight of the poor. Rather, the welfare state prolongs poverty and nurtures people’s dependence on handouts. This is no accident. There is no better way to control members of society than to make them insecure and eager to accept any type of legislation in exchange for a so-called free lunch.
 * p. 126 (Chapter 14, “What About the Poor?”)


 * Libertarians say: what about individual rights? The question boils down to this: how many robbers must there be before robbery is no longer a crime? How many rapists must there be before it is no longer rape? We all know logic. A crime is a crime, no matter how many people are involved. If the majority of a town goes out and lynches someone, it is still murder. Majority rule often leads to mob rule, which tramples on individual rights and self–ownership.
 * p. 196 (Chapter 23, “The Libertarian Philosophy and Taxation")


 * Governments are terrorists, but they hide their actions behind the label of nationalism and patriotism: war becomes defense; theft becomes “taxation”; slavery becomes 'conscription'; terrorism becomes 'defense.' Few people question the violations; rather, if they do protest, it is because the government is oppressing the 'wrong' group of people, and not because they regard coercion itself as wrong.
 * pp. 139-140 (Chapter 17: “Who’s Afraid of No Government?”)

In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013)

 * 'How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? How do you keep a wave upon the sand?' These words from The Sound of Music bring out the elusive nature of chaos. In life, most things cannot be captured for long. It is like trying to encapsulate time itself.
 * p. vii


 * Order is not universal. In fact, many chaologists and physicists posit that universal laws are more flexible than first realized, and less rigid—operating in spurts, jumps, and leaps, instead of like clockwork. Chaos prevails over rules and systems because it has the freedom of infinite complexity over the known, unknown, and the unknowable.
 * p. 9


 * The revelation that systems organize on their own sat poorly with the apostles of social sciences—especially political scientists who base their theories on imposing external controls to achieve selected political goals. They are accustomed to thinking about government-produced certainties, not ambiguous probabilities. In their linear calculations, humanity must be physically forced to follow the guiding light of political leaders or flavor-of-the-month ideologies. The economy and human actions must march in step with legislative or dictated law, no matter what the outcome. Yet natural systems do not operate this way.
 * p. 10-11


 * The field of economics is not exempt from the consequences of chaos and complexity. Marketplaces are indeterminate; value is subjective; and outcomes are subject to interpretation. Economic forecasting is just as nebulous, being based on the probability of statistical information that may or may not be accurate.
 * p. 16


 * Because information is often biased, outdated, or inadequate, command-based systems rely on obtuse information to produce blunt solutions. Wielding force like drunken revelers, political systems gamble on the singularity of direction to fix a multiplicity of problems, woefully ignorant that one size does not fit all. Blinded by political ideologies, they rarely act to solve underlying problems. Karl Hess (1923-1994), a former presidential speech writer, noted this condition, observing, ‘Politicians occasionally do the right thing—but only after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.’
 * p. 17


 * Complexity has the propensity to overload systems, making the relevance of a particular piece of information not statistically significant. And when an array of mind-numbing factors is added into the equation, theory and models rarely conform to reality.
 * p. 28.


 * In sharp contrast to the modus operandi of swarm dynamics, political bodies are ill-equipped to protect the integrity of their components and lack the collective wisdom for synchronization. Instead, highly layered command-based systems invade, institutionalize, and indoctrinate society with centralized directives, straitjacket bureaucracies, and self-serving officialdom. These systems hungrily feast on what others have created, cannibalizing other people’s resources like a tribe of pragmatic headhunters.
 * p. 35


 * Under complexity science, the more interacting factors, the more unpredictable and irregular the outcome. To be succinct, the greater the complexity, the greater the unpredictability.
 * p. 40


 * What can go wrong will go wrong, because political objectives are so narrowly defined. Without a great breadth of elasticity, a system has countless ways in which to crash and burn, since only one pathway has been designated, by legislated or dictated law, as the correct flight plan. It takes no great statistician to figure out the low probability of an errant political objective landing successfully in one precise landing spot. With so many possible routes in which to fail, government programs seem to boomerang every which way.
 * p. 50


 * Despite the absence of physical equality in nature, political systems engage in grand endeavors to dictate perfection and equality in a universe devoid of both. In their egalitarian and quixotic quest to redistribute wealth, they rob Peter to pay Paul, which only creates a state of dependency, not of equality. Any attempt to impose equality can only bring about more inequality. Rev. William J. H. Boetcker expressed this same insight in 1916, writing, 'You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.'
 * p. 72


 * Various sociopolitical movements are oriented to the nostrums of ‘social justice,’ favoring entitlements for all those with economic disparity. They struggle for what is scientifically impossible: equality of outcome. They want everyone to end up with the same amount of wealth—billions of people all possessing the same numerical affluence.
 * p. 72


 * Political structures are excessively paternalistic, and to maintain them requires a high level of energy. The massive amounts of energy they consume are unsustainable and invite political meltdowns, bailouts, and fallout. On the other hand, proponents of complexity theory take the paradigm–shattering view that less is more. They understand that, paradoxically enough, the complexity of simplicity is the key to the emergence of systems, repeatable patterns and the social glue that holds community together and creates order. Anyone can make simplicity complicated; it takes a true genius to make the complicated simple.
 * p. 90


 * To the political elite, statecraft is predicated on the notion that society is theirs to put into some type of hegemonic order. It is immaterial whether this institutionalized order actually helps society or instead puts it into a chokehold that slowly squeezes the air out of life. To the authorities, supremacy is always the primary objective.
 * p. 90


 * The politics of control and manipulation can only have a degenerative effect on civilization and stability. When larger systems dominate smaller ones, society and its members must face a host of bad choices, debilitating harm, and dicey outcomes. Once the leviathan has been released, few can really control its movements. So once the damage has become visible, historians can point to the inevitable source of the criminality: the ‘structured order’ of politics, rather than an ‘unstructured order’ of the people. To the gullible, this is a shocking revelation. How could any system entrusted with maintaining order destroy the very thing it had sworn to uphold?
 * p. 91


 * Every system that has existed emerged somehow, from somewhere, at some point. Complexity science emphasizes the study of how systems evolve through their disorganized parts into an organized whole.
 * p. 118


 * Complexity has always been difficult to resolve and to understand. Evolutionary biologists were among the first scientists to recognize this problem, when they dug their way toward new theories about evolution. They discovered that matter does not lack purpose.
 * p. 129


 * Disorder is more exacting, arising when coercion is substituted for coordination—preventing members in a system from determining their own destiny. History is littered with examples of excluded parts rising up to confront those exclusive few who claim they are representing the whole.
 * p. 130


 * Chaos provides order. Chaotic agitation and motion are needed to create overall, repetitive order. This ‘order through fluctuations’ keeps dynamic markets stable and evolutionary processes robust. In essence, chaos is a phase transition that gives spontaneous energy the means to achieve repetitive and structural order.
 * p. 135


 * When it comes right down to physical war and bloodshed, governments don’t protect people; people protect governments.
 * p. 180


 * If an emerging system is born complex, there is neither leeway to abandon it when it fails, nor the means to join another, successful one. Such a system would be caught in an immovable grip, congested at the top, and prevented, by a set of confusing but locked–in precepts, from changing.
 * p. 191


 * Simplicity in a system tends to increase that system’s efficiency. Because less can go wrong with fewer parts, less will. Complexity in a system tends to increase that system’s inefficiency; the greater the number of variables, the greater the probability of those variables clashing, and in turn, the greater the potential for conflict and disarray. Because more can go wrong, more will. That is why centralized systems are inclined to break down quickly and become enmeshed in greater unintended consequences.
 * p. 191


 * Decentralized systems are the quintessential patrons of simplicity. They allow complexity to rise to a level at which it is sustainable, and no higher.
 * p. 221


 * A self–organizing system acts autonomously, as if the interconnecting components had a single mind. And as these components spontaneously march to the beat of their own drummer, they organize, adapt, and evolve toward a greater complexity than one would ever expect by just looking at the parts by themselves.
 * p. 225


 * Complexity scientists concluded that there are just too many factors—both concordant and contrarian—to understand. And with so many potential gaps in information, almost nobody can see the whole picture. Complex systems have severe limits, not only to predictability but also to measurability. Some complexity theorists argue that modelling, while useful for thinking and for studying the complexities of the world, is a particularly poor tool for predicting what will happen.
 * p. 226


 * The inherent nature of complexity is to doubt certainty and any pretense to finite and flawless data. Put another way, under uncertainty principles, any attempt by political systems to ‘impose order’ has an equal chance to instead ‘impose disorder.’
 * p. 227


 * Government succeeds by failing: the more incompetence, the greater the potential reward in the arena of the public sector.
 * p. 246


 * Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness.
 * p. 280


 * Money and generous benefits can easily alter a person’s political outlook. Ideology follows the money.
 * p. 301


 * The parity pushers fail to see the subtle grays of complexity in all of its tortured and messy manifestations. With swords held high, they ride forth and exploit every possible weapon in the political arsenal. Equality is to be imposed, unevenness and nonlinearity banished to the nether world. Science is politicalized for mass consumption, and natural laws are summarily supplanted by ideological 'correctness.'
 * p. 301


 * Paradoxes often arise because theory routinely refuses to be subordinate to reality.
 * p. 324


 * Things evolve to evolve. Evolutionary processes are the linchpin of change. These processes of discovery represent a complexity of simple systems that flux in perpetual tension as they teeter at the edge of chaos. This whirlwind of emergence is responsible for the spontaneous order and higher, organized complexity so noticeable in biological evolution—one–celled critters beefing up to become multicellular organisms.
 * p. 335


 * The hallmark of evolution is its ability to process situations and generate order without relying on the crutch of a conscious designer. Most complex systems grow organically, solutions evolving through unguided and mindless forces, never reaching any final state.
 * p. 338


 * True change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It is futile for political systems to force human beings to cooperate or construct social bonding structures. People already do that, naturally; it is evident in our evolutionary history.
 * p. 348


 * Game theory brings to the chaos–theory table the idea that generally, societies are not designed, and that most situations don’t come with a rulebook. Instead, people have their own plans and designs on how things should fit together. They want to determine how the game is played, and they see societal designers as myopic busybodies who would imprison them with their theories.
 * p. 372

The Socialist Economics of Italian Fascism (2015)

 * The economics of Italian Fascism is often ignored or trivialized because so much of it is found in today’s world economies.
 * On numerous occasions, Benito Mussolini identified his economic policies with “state capitalism”—the exact phrase that Vladimir Lenin used to usher in his New Economic Policy (NEP).
 * In essence, Mussolini’s fascism was simply an imitation of Lenin’s “third way,” which combined market-based mechanisms and socialism—similar to Red China’s “market socialism.”
 * One could argue that Lenin’s politics were the first modern-day version of fascism and state-corporatism.
 * Socialism seeks to abolish capitalism outright, while fascism gives the appearance of a market-based economy, even though it relies heavily on the central planning of all economic activities.
 * Mussolini found much of John Maynard Keynes’s economic theories consistent with fascism.
 * Italian Fascist theories of corporatism arose out of revolutionary and national syndicalism that often paralleled the activities of the trade unions, craft guilds and professional societies. Mussolini acknowledged Fascism’s socialist roots and influences. Among those whom he acknowledged as influencing Fascism were French Marxist Georges Sorel and French Revolutionary Unionist Hubert Lagardelle. Moreover, Mussolini was a union man: he decreed mandatory unionism for all Italian workers. It is true that Mussolini banned strikes, but Lenin had done the same in the Soviet Union.
 * Mussolini doubled the number of Italian bureaucrats under an enormous bureaucracy of committees. By 1934, one Italian in five worked for the government.
 * In essence, the economics of Italian Fascism was Marxist and syndicalist-inspired—and far more left-wing socialist than the economies of many current western nations that embrace a mixed economy of socialism, welfarism and unionism.

Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019)
Freeland Press, 2019


 * After the bourgeoisie, middle class, and merchants instigated the French Revolution and sat on the left side of the aisle in opposition to the authoritarians, their legacy was ignored. The  Socialist and nationalist intelligentsia sought to consciously bury the memory of original left-wing middle-class history and sitting arrangements. They mercilessly co-opted the left-wing label from the bourgeoisie revolutionary ‘Free Left,’ and denounced anyone who opposed their social revolution as reactionary or right-wing. These usurpers not only stole the left-wing designation from the bourgeoisie insurgents, but also absconded with their revolutionary ancestry. English historian William Doyle acknowledged this historical thievery, writing that after the French Revolution, the socialists were able to ‘appropriate the left-wing label and… lay exclusive claim to the revolutionary heritage.’
 * p. viii


 * To affix the poisonous label of ‘ fascism’ to Communism, depicting them under the same collective brotherhood, would have irrevocably damaged the status of socialism… To acknowledge a strong ideological and political link to Mussolini and Hitler would forever expose socialists and Marxists to their historical collaboration with fascist atrocities, racism, and genocide. Not only would socialists be seen as accomplices to some of the most horrific crimes in history, but also  communists would also face similar scrutiny over their own atrocities, that racked up over 148 million citizens murdered in the 20th century.
 * p. xiv-xv


 * International socialists found it advantageous to hide both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s socialist, labor unionist, Marxist, and atheist pasts. One reason was that Hitler and Mussolini were independent of Moscow’s direct control, and they had the audacity to oppose the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. To pay for their insolence, the Soviets and their minions felt compelled to whitewash the collectivist-socialist ideology and history behind nationalistic socialism, determined to bury Hitler and Mussolini under a falsely inscribed tombstone.
 * p. xix


 * After his arrest and internment in Munich, Hitler turned away from communism and ‘espoused the cause of Social Democracy against that of the Communists.’ He had to disown communism. If he hadn’t he would have likely been executed, imprisoned or banished from Germany.
 * p. xvii


 * International socialists found it advantageous to hide both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s socialist, labor unionist, Marxist, and atheist pasts. One reason was that Hitler and Mussolini were independent of Moscow’s direct control, and they had the audacity to oppose the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. To pay for their insolence, the Soviets and their minions felt compelled to whitewash the collectivist-socialist ideology and history behind nationalistic socialism, determined to bury Hitler and Mussolini under a falsely inscribed tombstone. That is, they threw both comrades Mussolini and Hitler under the socialist bus in a campaign to relabel their Marxist-leaning collaborators as reactionary, monarchy-loving, and religious extremists who were claimed to be duty-bound to the capitalist and land-owning class. Never was there a more beautifully executed con job designed to erase and alter history in the Soviets’ favor. But then again,  Stalin accused the Social Democrats, who originally arose out of Marxist ranks, as ‘social fascists,’ comparing Hitler’s Nazis as ‘twin’ brothers to the Social Democrats.
 * p. xvii


 * To accomplish this herculean feat, governmental bodies captured the legal power to intrude on human affairs in the hope of fixing man’s flawed nature, as though mankind were destined to live on a sterilized Planet Clorox, a land where everything could be made not only perfectly clean but free of risks. Governmental power was bulked up to launch a toxic blend of utopian and draconian measures to outlaw poverty, inequality, and injustice—supposedly. This socioeconomic jihad against liberty emerged after adherents of state-enhanced liberalism revised their ideological arsenal to include ‘positive rights.’
 * p. 4


 * Positive rights require physical force or intimidation in order to enforce these alleged ‘rights.’ In essence, they are faux rights that violate other people’s rights. Positive rights actually don’t exist; they are fictitious, a fraudulent tactic which subverts choice. Rights are not obligations. To physically force someone to give financial benefits to another makes a mockery of the principles of freedom of action, freedom of choice, and the right to be free from aggression. Rather, the license to institute compulsory practices leads to legalized and institutionalized aggression and robbery. Enabling political structures to plunder one in the name of others perverts the meaning of individual human rights.
 * p. 4


 * Rather, the license to institute compulsory practices leads to legalized and institutionalized aggression and robbery. Enabling political structures to plunder one in the name of others perverts the meaning of individual human rights. Positive rights grant governmental agencies the invasive authority to force citizens to surrender their earnings and property so that others may indulge in free or subsidized food, education, housing, medical care and so forth. Positive rights imposed obligations, a duty that must be fulfilled, or the violator would be arrested and jailed, thus nullifying the role of individual autonomy that was the inspiration for the American Revolution. In other words, positive rights make society sovereign, rather than the individual.
 * p. 4


 * What this means is that liberalism had been poisoned by a false definition of liberty, one characterized by an unethical authoritarian demeanor, cast in rigid conformity to authority, obedience to rules, and slave-like submission to the collective, making individual subservient to the group. Instead of questioning authority or challenging state power, the apostles of illiberal positive rights idealize the State as a social panacea. To them, the state is everything, and almost nothing should be outside the state’s jurisdiction. This variant of creeping fascization infected Germany, Italy, and Russia in the first half of the 20th century.
 * p. 5


 * Collectivists of all faiths—including fascists and communists—fail to understand that theft enacted by the state turns citizens into slaves. In truth, the modern left finds slavery acceptable, as long as the populace belongs to a particular class or race deemed entitled to free-but-equal services and goodies, which just so happens to make them dependent, controllable, and obedient. As Charles T. Sprading noted, ‘Mere equality does not imply equal liberty, however, for slaves are equal in their slavery.’
 * p. 6


 * There were two French Revolutions—the first stage instigated by free-Left elements imbued with toleration, anti-authoritarianism, secularism,  individualism, liberty and the revolutionary individualism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. The second stage of the French Revolution devolved into a bloody, terroristic dictatorship, an all-powerful state amidst a cult of personality, such as the so-called incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre, in a counter-revolution that was anti-liberal and antithetical to the Lumières movement, which became the Age of Enlightenment.
 * p. 33


 * If socialist regimes work together, trade together, fight together, collaborate, and have fundamentally equivalent ideologies and tactics, they are genealogically related (a sort of Communist-Nazi brotherhood), which could be regarded as a Fascist-Marxist mindset. Of course, these socialist ideologues also fight each like rival siblings.
 * p. 37


 * The statist Left’s first move was to alter the meaning of liberalism so as to keep the free Left and the public in a constant state of confusion. They diluted the original principles of liberalism while firing cheap polemical shots, arguing that John Locke’s liberalism had nothing to offer, that it contradicted itself. After all, if the statist Left could not win a fair fight on the philosophical battlefield, it had to resort to chicanery to gain an advantage. One way to accomplish this was to adulterate or falsify the liberal message to render it meaningless while advancing a new, redefined liberalism to replace the old. The deception was successful. The free-Left liberals and their allies had lost the semantic ammunition to defend liberty, and therefore became neutered, defanged, almost defenseless, deprived of the cognitive capability to defend the autonomy of the individual. As for the statist Left, they had to work diligently to ‘defascistize’ historical Fascism, because to do otherwise would force them to face an ugly image in the mirror.
 * pp. 37-38


 * Yet it was the majority-led Girondins who had spearheaded the revolution and challenged the establishment. They accomplished far more than did the Montagnards. After toppling the king, the Girondins rushed into an abolitionist spree fueled by liberty, dissolving the last vestiges of aristocratic privilege, the system of church tithes, dues owed to local landlords, and personal servitude. The radical liberals also released the peasants from the seigneurial (lord) dues, which helped tenant farmers buy their own private farmland. Next, they turned their abolitionist gun-sights on the guild system that blocked entry to markets, as well as ‘tax farming,’ where private individuals would be licensed to collect taxes for the state while taking a large share for themselves.
 * p. 38


 * The Girondin bloc also ratified laws ensuring equality in taxation, freedom of worship, and legal equality of punishment, and abolishing serfdom  outright, including a 1791 law to emancipate Jewish citizens from unequal treatment. The Girondin-led assembly also granted free people of color full French citizenship and enacted universal voting rights for all adult males, regardless of race, religion, income, property or any other qualification. They even included a pro-gun rights provision in the  French Declaration of Rights, which declared that ‘every citizen has the right to keep arms at home and to use them, either for the common defense or for his own defense, against any unlawful attack which may endanger the life, limb, or freedom of one or more citizens.’ Despite the effort, this draft did not make it into the final document.
 * p. 39


 * The Girondins’ most lasting legacy was the ratification of ‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ (August 1789), which was directly influenced by Thomas Jefferson. As a US diplomat at the time, Jefferson had worked with General Lafayette  to write a French bill of rights, which Lafayette introduced to the National Constituent Assembly.
 * p. 39


 * If people don’t have free agency, they become mere chattel to the herdsman who wields the biggest horsewhip.
 * p. 45

Kim Jong-un]] became his successor. North Korea is, no doubt, an old-fashioned hereditary monarchy, in which the crown has been passed down through three generations of a family line. Some experts see North Korea as having descended back into a pre-capitalist mode, steeped in a military hierarchical feudalism which, in historical context, resembles a ‘communist monarchy.’
 * The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is considered a ‘hereditary monarchy’ that is racist, fascist, and manages to manifest a cult following. After the death of  Kim Il-sung, founder of communist North Korea, his son  Kim Jong-il inherited the throne in 1994. On December 17, 2011, Kim Jong-il died; within a few weeks, his son [[Kim Jong-un |
 * p. 48
 * In practice, Marx-inspired despots have employed the absolutism of power once wielded by monarchies, while preaching a moralistic ethos embraced by the Catholic Church. Even Ayn Rand hinted at the same conclusion, writing in the 1960s that ‘socialism is merely democratic absolute monarchy…’
 * p. 48


 * Proclaiming to be a ‘Left Libertarian,’ [Jeff] Riggenbach pored over the original meaning behind the seating arrangement of the 1791 French Legislative Assembly and noticed that those who favored authoritarian and dictatorial rule sat together on the right side of the aisle. So, under this interpretation, all authoritarians must be recognized as right-wingers, meaning that Communists, Nazis, and Fascists must occupy the same rows of pews even if they carry on like contentious, misbehaving siblings.
 * p. 51


 * The best way to differentiate between the two left-wing antagonists is to designate the volitional contingent the ‘free Left,’ and its authoritarian horde as the statist or Fascist Left. The free Left, like the Free French during World War II, comprises anti-authoritarians who felt as though their long-established realm had become occupied by foreign invaders. A logical progression would be to simply remain faithful to the original left-right classification and lump the entire menagerie of authoritarians (Nazis, Fascists, and Communists) into the reactionary ranks of the statist Right.
 * pp. 52-53


 * [M]any historians take exception to lump fascists with communists, arguing that an absence of class distinction differentiates the left from the right. But Hitler, too, preached equality, classlessness, and social justice—though only for racially pure Aryans. The communists preached the same, except for certain impure classes.
 * p. 55


 * In the case of libertarianism, because it opposes fraud and the initiation of force, when pursuing its hereditary linkage to original liberalism it should be classified as standing on the left side of the political divide. Some might respond that legions of capitalists have taken leading roles in authoritarian productions. True, but these so-called capitalists mostly hobnob with politicians and statists, promote rent-seeking, endogenous policies to obtain state-sanctioned monopolies. As the cronies of statists, they are barely a cut above socialism, and have little interest in letting capital and goods move freely and unrestricted between buyer and seller, for whom, in turn, they have little sympathy. They are fastened to government coffers and machinations, and they downplay the value of the dynamics of competition.
 * p. 59


 * Although most religions promise paradise after death, most collectivists, especially Marxists, preach paradise on earth, but through means rarely considered heavenly.
 * p. 62


 * Because of Italian fascism’s roots in revolutionary syndicalism (labor unionism) and revised Marxism, Mussolini never thought of himself as a rightist; that label was already reserved for the reactionary forces of the monarchy and the clergy. According to the Encyclopedia Americana, Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento (combat groups) declared that they were trying to start a ‘leftist revolutionary program of action.’
 * p. 68


 * If society is confined by the chains of groupthink and top-to-bottom command structures, frustration and anger have few outlets—leading mostly to hopeless confrontation with the status quo. When confronted by a wall of complex, emotional, and politically charged rifts, a powder keg of resentment can burst into a vicious civil war of backstabbing, mistrust, and disloyalty, especially when taking political control is the only means by which to terminate domination by a particular ruling elite.
 * p. 72


 * In 1934 Engelbert Dollfuss, the ‘Austro-fascist’ chancellor of Austria and strong admirer of Mussolini, feared Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. He established a one-party dictatorship, banning both the Austrian National Socialist Party and the Communist Party. His concentration camps were packed with Nazis, Communists, and Social-Democrats. Imagine, communists and Nazis jailed together by a so-called fascist regime. This makes a complete mockery of the argument that fascism and communism were polar opposites.
 * p. 75


 * A number of die-hard Marxists have confirmed the mirroring of social totalitarian ideologies. Otto Rühle, a German Left communist and one of the founders of Second International, asserted that Bolshevism is a model for Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. In his 1939 article ‘The Struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle against Bolshevism,’ Rühle wrote that ‘Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism,’ and that it was a ‘political and administrative terror system.’
 * p. 77


 * Contrary to what is usually thought, nationalism is a type of tribal-collectivism where individual identity is subjugated to a collective group identity, making it a perfect habitat for most species of socialism and fascism.
 * p. 96


 * The belief that one cannot be fascist in any shape or form liberates the individual to behave as fascist as possible, granting him or her the illusion of anti-fascist sainthood—as has been witnessed with the wildly violent, Fascist-Marxist organizations like the ‘Antifa’ movement. These hateful gangs of revolutionary socialist and anarcho-statist militants are convinced that they are incapable of ever toting the baggage of fascism and therefore can freely be more violently fascist than the average fascist. Thinking they are free of fascist-socialist contamination, they can easily become what they oppose.
 * p. 98


 * On the antithetical side, the fascist Left, along with its German and Italian comrades, detested economic liberalism (capitalism), religion, usury and financial capital (often due to their ‘Jewishness’), the gold standard, free trade, limited government, low taxation, night-watchman government, rule of law, decentralization, state rights, gun rights, self-ownership, free individual choice and individualism. In essence, what this means for American politics is that in socioeconomic and philosophical terms, the leaders of the Democratic Party (United States) are far more predisposed to historical fascism than the Republican Party (United States) and American conservatism.
 * pp. 100-101


 * This situation has gotten to the point where it appears that the leadership of the Democratic Party is rushing headfirst towards historical fascism, embracing not only socialist interventionist ideology and collectivistic metaphysics, but encouraging uncivility that has incited mob-like violence that harkens back to Nazi street firebrands.
 * p. 116


 * By 2018, it became clear to political observers that the top tier of the Democratic Party no longer had a connection to western liberal capitalism, civility and the party of President John F. Kennedy.
 * p. 117


 * But there is more than a moral-superiority complex within the Democratic Party leadership. They have increasingly rebutted almost every important amendment of the US Bill of Rights, implying that civil liberties and free speech are reserved only for themselves. Many moderate Democrats have either been kicked out of their own party or have abandoned it.
 * p. 117


 * [S]tate-granted privileges and institutional barriers only incentivize the state to behave like madcap cabdrivers, who take unwary passengers on scary rides. And why not? Those trying to impose lofty goals always search for easy solutions while ignoring bad consequences. When a reckless state becomes ‘fascisized,’ it can begin to operate behind a facade of respectability and altruism, while treating the populace as cargo to be hauled around, boxed, categorized, and stacked in rows.
 * p. 121


 * Compliance with an authority is ingrained in the human condition. Statists of all stripes use this psychological technique to garner support for political conquests, domestic and foreign. These conquests mimic the historical policies of Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, and Russian Sovietism, which few scholars want to expose, especially when their own ideology stands in sharp accord with Fascist-Marxist mindset. Yet many political scientists go out of their way to misidentify or ignore the roots of Mussolini’s syndicalist, socialist, and Marxist ideology, perhaps because of their own closely held political beliefs. Whatever the reason, scholars have gone to great lengths to obscure Mussolini’s true Marxian intentions.
 * p. 121


 * He may be among the most notorious fascists, but Mussolini was not the first to introduce economic and political fascism to the world. After Lenin’s ‘War Communism' produced massive famine, street riots, and economic collapse, Marxist leaders searched for an alternative ‘Third Way’ between socialism and capitalism. In response, Lenin rolled out his New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which introduced a form of ‘market socialism’ or what he approvingly dubbed, ‘state capitalism.’ In fact, Lenin described this change as the ‘development of capitalism under the control and regulation of the proletarian state (in other words, ‘state’ capitalism of this peculiar kind) is advantageous and necessary…’ which was adopted by the Third Congress of the Communist International. This means that fascism was not the ‘last stage of capitalism’ as Marxist historians have maintained, but the first stage of a pullback from the economic and political failures of Marxism–Leninism. Lenin’s reactionary policies to mitigate the defects of absolute nationalization and communism not only spawned the NEP but also ushered in the world’s first modern fascist regime.
 * p. 122


 * The Nazis used pro-labor rhetoric, demanding limitations on profits and the abolition of rents. They actively limited competition and private ownership, under the guise of promoting the general welfare. Hitler expanded credit, subsidized farmers, suspended the gold standard, instituted government jobs programs, mandated unemployment insurance, decreed rent control, imposed high tariffs to protect German industry from foreign competition, nationalized education, enacted strict wage and price controls, borrowed heavily and eventually ran huge deficits almost to the point of financial collapse. Eventually, both Germany and Italy turned into vast welfare-warfare nations.
 * p. 132


 * Under National Socialism, the state plundered and killed other national groups and races and use their resources to provide Germans with an unsparing welfare-warfare society. Under the alleged international socialism of Marxism, the state plundered and killed other classes to provide comrades with a welfare-warfare society. Both systems, the German’s and the Soviet’s, believed in equality and socialism, but for different collective groups. Although Nazism preached inequality between the races, it placed great significance on equality among true-blooded Germans ̈('Völkisch equality'') and the spirit of fraternity.
 * p. 133


 * Venezuela has been especially hard hit by a Fascist-Marxist pogrom during the presidency of Hugo Chávez (1999–2013), who befriended the Marxist-Leninist government of Fidel Castro and later Raúl Castro. Chávez worked diligently to uphold the fascist tradition of combining socialism with anti-Semitism, alongside a bastion of nationalist chauvinism. Throughout the presidency of Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, who fancied himself a Marxist-influenced Trotskyite, the Jewish population was under attack.
 * p. 139


 * Chávez’s Marxist legacy continued under his successor, Nicolás Maduro, who watched Venezuela free fall into an economic abyss. The socialization of Venezuela resulted in a crisis where hospitals had no drugs or basic supplies, where the poverty rate went from 30 percent in 1999 to 87 percent in 2016, chronic food shortages erupted, and children and the sick began dying from malnutrition.
 * p. 140


 * To many in the Middle East, Nazi Germany was considered the natural ally of the Arab and Muslim world. When Amin al-Husseini finally traveled to Europe in 1941, he first met with Mussolini in Italy and declared his intentions to ally with the Axis. A number of high-level Nazi leaders learned of this encounter and invited the Palestinian leader to visit Hitler in Berlin. Hitler was interested in the Arabic nations and their rising animosity towards Jews and the British and agreed to meet with Amin al-Husseini on November 28, 1941. In that meeting, Al-Husseini pressed for Arab independence, particularly the liberation of Palestine from the British. He also sought to prevent the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, as had been proposed by the British government.
 * p. 163
 * But the Nazis did more than broadcast messages to the Middle East by Arabic National Socialists. There was a drive to give students from Arab countries German scholarships, to have business firms take in Arab apprentices, and invite Arab party leaders to ‘Nuremberg party rallies and military chiefs to Wehrmacht maneuvers.’ In fact, the Nazis established an ‘Arab Club’ in Berlin as the ‘center for Palestine-related agitation and Arabic-language broadcasting.’ Some Nazi leaders, such as Heinrich Himmler, talked about the ‘ideology closeness’ of National Socialism and Islam, coming up with the concept of Muselgermanen or ‘Muslimo-Germans.’
 * p. 163


 * This might look like normal political negotiations between nations, but al-Husseini had a darker side. He began to work for the Nazis and became involved in the Arabic-language service broadcast program. He made a series of propaganda broadcasts from Berlin in an effort to ‘foment unrest, sabotage, and insurrection against the Allies.’ Obviously, al-Husseini was a Nazi collaborator and used his influence to turn Arabs against the Jews and Western Allies. In a Nazi-sponsored radio broadcast in 1944, he asked Arabs to rise up and ‘Kill the Jews wherever you find them.’ In his supervision of pro-Nazi radio broadcasts out of Zeesen, Athens, and Rome, al-Husseini was considered more effective than any other Arab leader at ‘promoting hatred of the Jews among Muslims.’
 * p. 163


 * As for creating an Arab-Nazi army, Amin al-Husseini by 1943 helped to arrange the creation of the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division (also called the ‘Handschar’), mostly manned by Bosnian Muslims, to fight the Allies. Some 24,000 to 27,000 Arab recruits signed up to fight with the Nazis. Because of his collaboration with the Nazis, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) has described Amin al-Husseini as ‘Hitler’s henchman.’
 * p. 164


 * Others, like Israeli historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell, viewed fascism in its early years as ‘an anti-Marxist form of socialism,’ and compared fascism’s origins to revolutionary far-left French movements, creating a branch that he referred to as the ‘revolutionary right.’ Considered one of the world's leading experts on Fascism, Sternhell contended that the essence of fascism represented ‘a synthesis of organic nationalism with the antimaterialist revision of Marxism.’
 * p. 190


 * By the late 20th century, the general consensus among most historians attributed the origins of fascism to one of the numerous branches of heretical Marxism that had developed into dictatorship, nationalization, welfarism, and militarism. Later, Sternhell, in The Birth of Fascist Ideology, he took the position that the ‘origins’ of Franco-Italian fascism ideology was ‘Marxism,’ or to be more precise, from ‘a very specific revision of Marxism.’
 * p. 191


 * Most historians agree that historical Italian Fascism was a mixed bag of rightwing and left-wing socioeconomic policies. Nevertheless, recent evidence has shed new light on the underpinnings of Italian Fascism, discovering that this totalitarian state had embodied a far more collectivistic, socialist, and progressive ideology, placing it squarely on the left side of the political dichotomy, that is, only if Marxism is also considered to be on the Left.
 * pp. 194-195


 * Historically, Italian Fascism was founded as a Marxist-leaning party, which some have classified as a form of Fascist-Marxist ideology. From 1914 to at least 1921, Mussolini simultaneously proclaimed himself a Fascist while still adhering to Marxist doctrines and Marxist leaders such as Lenin. In 1914, Mussolini created the Marxist-sounding organization—the Fasci of Revolutionary Action (Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, FAR). Mussolini’s first Fascist party—the Fascist Revolutionary Party (Partito Fascista Rivoluzionario, PFR)—was founded in 1915. Two years later, Mussolini still considered himself within the Marxist camp, praising the Bolshevik’s 1917 October Revolution, boasting of his camaraderie with Lenin and violent revolution. In the Italian elections of 1919, he publicly compared himself to Lenin, bragging that he was the ‘Lenin of Italy.’
 * p. 195


 * Richard Pipes summed up fascism’s affinity with socialism by arguing that both ‘Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism.’ Sense of community and socialization were important aspects of many 20th century movements and regimes, including the theory of ‘social fascism,’ which was initiated by the Soviet government and the Comintern to stigmatize social democracy as a variant of fascism.
 * p. 198


 * By June 1919, Mussolini was criticizing Lenin’s handling of the communist revolution in Russia, concerned that he was straying from the tenets of Marxism. Distressed that Lenin was not Marxist enough, Mussolini wrote that his old comrade was ‘the very negation of socialism’ because he had not created a dictatorship of the proletariat or of the socialist party, but only of a few intellectuals who had found the secret of winning power.
 * p. 217


 * Since most of Italy’s industry was state-owned, Italian Fascism could be described as a watered-down version of Marxism, a throwback to Bernstein revisionism––in essence, a sort of Marxist-lite knockoff.
 * p. 237


 * Despite the fact that three-fourths of Italy’s economic sector was owned by the government by the mid-1930s, most scholars routinely ignored Italian Fascism’s slide into pure Soviet-style socialism, a concentration of state ownership so large that it was only eclipsed by Stalin’s Soviet Union. The conventional definition of socialism is described as a social and economic system characterized by ‘public ownership’ of the ‘means of production.’ On the other hand, fascism is often explained as a social and economic system characterized by ‘public control’ over the ‘agents of production.’ But Mussolini’s regime eventually morphed into Fascist socialism as its means of production was placed under public ownership.
 * p. 237


 * Hitler in 1919 took a position in the Communist run Bavarian Soviet Republic, wearing in public a red armband, according to a number of historians including Thomas Weber. And a little later after the Bavarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Hitler claimed to be a ‘social democrat.’
 * p. 285


 * After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Goebbels framed the war between capitalist England and socialist Germany with this observation: ‘England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people’s state.’
 * p. 295


 * Although Karl Marx… confided that he derived many of his philosophical ideas from the French utopian socialist movement, he also knew that he was adopting an ideological movement rife with xenophobia. Anti-Semitism was so profuse in the French socialist community that historian Zosa Szajkowski concluded in an exhaustive study that he ‘could not find a single word on behalf of Jews in the whole of French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920.’
 * p. 303


 * Hitlerian socialism… was a form of socialism that resembled a combination of utopian socialism and the socialist market economy found in communist China.
 * p. 305


 * Considering their propensity for using street violence to shut down opponents, Hitler and his SA Stormtroopers might be considered as the ultimate social justice warriors of their era. From the very start, Hitler made it plain that social justice was an important attribute to a healthy state. In one of his 1920 speeches, Hitler proclaimed to thousands of Nazi party followers: ‘[W]e do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice…’
 * p. 306


 * A number of socialist theorists reframed the concept of nationalism and asserted that it was an inseparable component of socialism in which to forge a national collectivity. Werner Sombart…, the prominent Marxian historian and Marxist social theorist, who was later drawn to Nazism, argued for a type of social nationalism disposed to a sort of collective and homogeneous group identity, embodied within the Volksgeist (national spirit)
 * p. 307


 * Despite its vision of a perfect future, Marxism had moved to the dark side, corrupted by authoritarian socialism and debased with dictatorial intolerance. In this sense, Marxism could be regarded as manifesting the moral fortitude of Church while imposing the absolute authority of a monarchy, all garnished under the deceptively disguised trademark of revolutionary socialism.
 * p. 309


 * Hitler had allied with the Communist Party of Germany against the Social Democrats in support of a workers’ wage dispute. In that labor dispute, Hitler’s ‘brownshirts’ and red-flag-waving communists marched side by side through the streets of Berlin and damaged any buses whose drivers had failed to participate in the worker’s strike. Alongside the communists, Nazis ripped up tram lines, stood together, ‘shouted in unison,’ and ‘rattled their collecting tins’ to get donations for their strike funds in support of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO) for the communists and National Socialist Factory Cell Organization (NSBO) for the Nazis.
 * p. 328


 * Because of Hitler’s penchant for nationalistic Social Democracy and Marxian revolutionary violence, Nazism could be easily identified as a militant Social Democratic movement.
 * p. 331


 * It appears that Hitler’s involvement with the communist-run Bavarian Soviet Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik in German) demonstrates some type of commitment to communism. After all, Hitler held an elected position during the red Räterepublik government that was under the complete control of the Communist Party of Germany. He did not flee or resign his position.
 * p. 333


 * Furthermore, Hitler’s outward views had to endure a left-wing socialist perspective by the mere fact of the political makeup of the soldiers in Hitler’s unit, which ranged from moderate left to radical left; there were almost no conservative or monarchist elements within Hitler’s barracks. The struggle in the barracks oscillated between the moderate left Social Democrats and the radical left of the diehard Marxist revolutionaries, not between left-wing and right-wing ideology. The figures are stunning: more than 90 percent of these soldiers had voted for moderate or radical leftists in the January 1919 Bavarian elections in Hitler’s unit.
 * p. 341


 * Marxism had a lot to offer Hitler. Largely saddled with an unmovable, single-mindedness, hardcore Marxism allowed proponents to see themselves as noble crusaders saving humankind. Here too, Hitler could identify with such closed-mindedness, political messianism, and authoritarian tactics that licensed him to see himself as the savior of the world. A lover of the power of politics, Hitler’s hidebound views pushed him into the unshaded world of white and black antipodes, a battleground where you were either with him or undoubtedly against him, leaving no luxury of neutrality. Such exacting standards of political absolutism likely blinded him to other alternatives, or at least to the possibility of subjective objectivity that would allow the people to freely display their own diversity of opinions.
 * p. 341-342


 * Noam Chomsky treated his version of the left-right continuum in a similar light, claiming that even Lenin and his Bolshevik allies were actually right-wing extremists because they did not adhere to classical Marxism. Exposing this insight in a 1989 speech, Chomsky said, ‘Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded…by the mainstream Marxists… Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.’ In that same speech, Chomsky claimed that Lenin was not socialist at all, and had forged an oppressive and anti-worker totalitarian state that could lead many to visualize Lenin as a right-wing fascist.
 * p. 342


 * Marxists have always displayed a doctrinaire and opinionated mindset of moral superiority. To Marxists and Leninists, the unaligned, such as Social Democrats, German Nazis, Italian Fascists, or any other deviant political organization, were branded as adversaries and were repeatedly accused of lining up with other right-wing teammates. According to this logic, if one did not get pre-approved by the monolithic praxis of the Communist Party in Russia, due to a different interpretation of socialism, one had to be subjected to charges of blasphemy, betrayal or counter-revolutionary activities. This lack of Marxist-Leninist certification has driven many faithful socialists into the ranks of heretical or adversarial socialist movements. In this sense, these heretical deviants might be better classified as ‘socialist-lite,’ ‘moderate socialists,’ or as economist Murray Rothbard dubbed fascists and Nazis, ‘right-wing socialists.’
 * p. 342


 * Hitler not only supported Germany’s communist regime during this brief time period, but also bestowed his blessings to a government that had pledged allegiance to Lenin’s Soviet Russia in Moscow. Hitler apparently displayed few qualms over the international (or supposedly Jewish) aspects of Marxism. The significance of Hitler’s elected posts cannot be overstated. By serving under both the socialist, and later communist, governments, Hitler ‘held a position that existed to serve, support and sustain the left-wing revolutionary regime.’ One wonders, given this, why Hitler would be regarded as more of a right-wing socialist or revolutionary conservative than a left-wing socialist. Social Democrats have considered themselves left-wing and favored similar socialist policies that corresponded well to Hitler’s own collectivist visions and socioeconomic ideology.
 * p. 344


 * At an early meeting of a political group that eventually turned into the Nazi Party, Hitler told Friedrich Krohn, an early supporter of the party, that he preferred a type of ‘socialism’ he referred to as ‘national Social Democracy’ that was not dissimilar to nations like Scandinavia, England, and prewar Bavaria.
 * p. 344


 * *Racial intolerance against Jews plays little part in the question of whether Hitler’s own beliefs were more right-wing or left-wing, since historically the socialist movement from day one has been hostile to the Jews and their capitalist-merchant culture. According to Thomas Weber, ‘The question is not whether Hitler supported the left during the revolution, which he clearly did, but what kind of left-wing ideas and groups he supported or at least accepted.’
 * p. 344


 * Despite his subsequent reputation for anti-Marxist tirades, Hitler did not fight or oppose the communists during this time, as some might presume. He was serving them, although he later shared few details about this period in his life. One thing seems certain: Hitler did not try to escape from the political thicket in Munich, nor did he join the anti-Bolshevik armed forces of General Franz Ritter von Epp.
 * p. 345


 * Marx also manifested chauvinistic and racial-nationalist sentiments in his disparagement of Slavic Russians,… According to Christopher Hollis, a British university teacher and politician, Marx had no faith in the equality of nations, and was instead a ‘through and through… pan-German nationalist’ where discourse ‘about the higher and the lower races was language that came most naturally to his pen.’ Instead of standing up for internationalism, in 1848, both Marx and Engels campaigned for the unification of Germany, publishing a short Communist Party of Germany pamphlet demanding that the ‘whole of Germany shall be declared a united, indivisible republic.’
 * p. 357


 * Summarizing his deficiencies, Karl Marx was neither progressive nor enlightened; he was a racist, anti-Semite, a German nationalist, a warmonger, autocratic, anti-freedom proponent, Machiavellian, pro-Black slavery, petty, homophobic, megalomaniac, a bully and slanderer, anti-choice, and a reactionary against liberalism and industrial capitalism. In almost every sense, Marx fit the quintessential image of Hitler like a tight glove, both appearing almost indistinguishable. Like father and son, Marx and Hitler were two social justice warriors, determined to weaponize intolerance, racism, and nationalism for what they call the greater good. In so many ways, considering their almost identical political and social makeup, metaphorically speaking, Hitler could easily be regarded as the son of Marx.
 * p. 361


 * The ideology of Nazism included many of the same tenets of the social democrat and socialist democratic gradualists, today and in the past. The Nazis took gradualist positions to bring about socialism, social welfare measures, socioeconomic equality (known as Völkisch equality), classless society, public work projects, mandatory labor union membership, and class cooperation previously found appealing to Marxist heretics and reformers.
 * p. 369


 * Prior to World War II, most socialists and socialist parties of Europe held strong anti-Semitic opinions and railed against the capitalistic middle class and wealthy, especially money-lending Jews who engaged in usury. Their schemes called for wealth-confiscation and redistribution to create a truly equal society.
 * p. 369


 * As Germany’s new chancellor in 1933, Hitler inherited a welfare state, which he strengthened, fundamentally transforming Germany into a utopian-style welfare-warfare state that imposed price and wage controls, rent controls, progressive income taxes, corporate taxes, redistribution of wealth, onerous regulations, and deficit spending, which led to shortages and rationing under the disincentive effects of ‘high taxes.’ Hitler and the National Socialists were able to ramp up Germany’s welfare system to the point where it became the largest, most massive, all-encompassing social service system of its time, even, according to some, rivaling the Soviet Union’s inadequate socialist safety net. And in an effort to provide more healthcare services, the Nazi regime enhanced what was essentially a universal single-payer healthcare system fully owned and operated by the Third Reich.
 * p. 370


 * By 1934, Hitler’s administration had ‘transferred many functions of individual state (Länder) to the Reich,’ destroying the semi-autonomous federalism of the German states and turning Nazism into the quintessential anti-state rights ideology. Not only were German state governments ‘being overthrown’ by Hitler’s Nazification’ policies, but so were local governments, in accordance with a January 30, 1934, law that ‘abolishes all states’ rights.’ With the support of armed SA Stormtroopers and SS units, local Nazis occupied town halls, ‘terrorizing mayors and councils into resigning’ and replacing them with Nazi-loyal selections.
 * pp. 374-375


 * Joseph Goebbels once applauded the generosity of Hitler’s welfare state, boasting in a 1944 editorial, ‘Our Socialism,’ that ‘We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation… the Jews are the incarnation of capitalism.’ After all, in addition to old age insurance (social security) and universal socialized single-payer healthcare, the Nazi administration provided a plethora of social safety net benefits: rent supplements, holiday homes for mothers, extra food for larger families, over 8,000 day-nurseries, unemployment and disability benefits, old-age homes, and interest-free loans for married couples, to name just a few. But there was more: under the Third Reich’s redistributive-like policies, the main social welfare organization—the ‘National Socialist People’s Welfare’ (NSV)—was not only in charge of doling out social relief but ‘intended to realize the vision of society by means of social engineering.’ In other words, the Nazi welfare system ushered in a menagerie of welfare programs: aid to poor families and pregnant women, nutrition programs, welfare for children, ad nauseam. The Nazis also put energy into cleansing of their cities of ‘asocials,’ which ushered in a no-welfare-benefits-for-the-unfit program, based on a welfarism that was committed to a sort of social Darwinist collectivism.
 * pp. 389-390


 * By almost all measures, the Hitler’s German Labor Front carried out most of their pro-labor promises while Lenin and Stalin ran roughshod over their proletariat subjects. Conditions for workers and peasants alike plunged after Lenin nationalized independent labor unions and the economy. Violent labor strikes paralyzed Russian cities while, in the countryside, over one hundred peasant revolts erupted during early 1921 alone. Unlike Hitler’s Germany, thousands of striking Russian workers were shot, imprisoned, or executed, particularly during the blood-soaked saga of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921.
 * p. 404


 * The adherents of the German Nazi movement reflected a profoundly left-wing footprint not only as social revolutionaries, secularists of political theodicy, and diehard collectivists, but as brothers posturing and fighting for alpha-male dominance. As Nazism developed, it was heavily influenced by the early Utopian socialists, the neo-socialists, and various movements to reform Marxism, opposing any independent political or religious movement that might eclipse its own authority. Extremely hostile towards the aristocracy, Christianity, and capitalism, Nazis considered themselves revolutionaries—radicals determined to bring about a classless society of superior racial egalitarianism bathed in volk socialism. There was nothing traditionally conservative about their movement.
 * p. 411


 * The US Democratic Party increasingly emulates the economic and metaphysical collectivism of Nazism and fascism, while the Republican Party echoes the fascistic militarism and expansionism of the Third Reich.
 * p. 412


 * Once this proslavery link to socialism was detected in recent years, scholars began to piece together the modern-statist Left’s nefarious past. As it turns out, historically, the roots of the slavocracy Left are traceable to the forbears of the Democratic Party, who actively supported enslavement, lynching, segregation,  racism,  welfarism, proto-socialism, paternalism, and white supremacy before and after the American Civil War. In this sense, the beginning of the Democratic Party in the late 1820s represents the start of an anti-Founders movement initiated to invalidate the original intent of the creators of liberal capitalism and self-ownership.
 * p. 443


 * Some scholars now refer to the Democratic Party’s long-time support of slavery and supremacy as the epitome of a ‘thievery society,’ where the societal collectives own and control everything, even people. Such a thievery polity would bestow on governing bodies the authority to steal anything with immunity, for whatever noble or ignoble purpose. Perhaps this is why William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), the most prominent abolitionist in the United States, denounced slavery as an institution of ‘man-stealing,’ writing: ‘Every slave is a stolen man; every slaveholder is a man-stealer.’ The concept of self-ownership, which dates from John Locke, opposes slavery, socialism, and authoritarianism, because they would inhibit or prohibit individuals from pursuing ownership of property. In this way, any Borg-like collective would have the authority, often over the wishes of individual citizens, to bar people from running their own lives as they see fit—literally making slaves of the populace.
 * p. 443-444


 * After the Confederate States of America lost the Civil War in 1865, it was the Democratic Party which took center stage in opposing any civil rights protections for blacks. They opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which the Republican Congress passed, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto. The law was simple and pertinent; it was ‘designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.’
 * p. 447


 * Southerners like Fitzhugh pushed the Democratic Party towards a socialist-slavery plantation society that would impose a dependency on government largesse under the shadow of paternalistic racism. His was a popular voice in justifying slavery, finding support among many southern politicians, slaveholders, and newspapers.
 * p. 452


 * In 2017 a movement emerged to demand the removal of all Confederate statues and monuments across the South, which many contend symbolize the evils of slavery, racism and white supremacy. Good enough, but something was forgotten. Ironically, where was the outcry to sweep away the Confederate perpetrators who established, financed and fought to preserve those iron shackles of slavery? Where was the demand to depose the political party that has been synonymous with such racist, antiquated views for so long—the Democratic Party? Why aren’t the Democrats included in this noble campaign to consign race-based subjugation to the dustbin of history? This is the real atrocity: toppling the statues of racists, but not those who built them.
 * p. 456


 * The Democratic Party began to tone down their supremacy-of-race ideology since the Civil Rights movement gained ground in the mid-1950s. As the belief in white people’s superiority continued to grow unpopular, the Democratic Party leadership realized that they were going to lose a huge influx of newly registered black voters. Embracing the superiority of white people became a dead end in the battle for power, which they saw as political suicide. The Democratic leaders had to devise another scheme to obtain votes from both white and black citizens while still subjecting them to the plantation bullwhip of paternalism and socialism. To accomplish this, the Democrats had to replace white supremacy with ‘state supremacy,’ which recast the state as the new slave master and societal overlord, regardless of race. This should not be surprising since Democrat Party ideological foundations were originally based on the ‘man-stealing’ premise of domination and submission.
 * p. 465


 * According to the American historian Eric Foner, ‘Essentially what  Lincoln said is slavery is a form of theft, the theft of labor, one person stealing another person’s labor without that person’s permission.’ This point cannot be overstated. Broken down to its simplest core element, autocratic socialism is based on the ‘sanctity of theft,’ whereby societal elites are licensed to steal anything from anybody and then redistribute the loot to the politically deserving. Nothing is private, nothing can be owned by individuals, nobody owns themselves, and all things are controlled and owned by the politically powerful. Collectivized theft and aggression is the perfection of a slave state.
 * pp. 483-484
 * The old parable about trapping wild pigs in the forest is prophetic. To capture and control the wild and free, one needs only to lay out a spread of free food while secretly constructing a sturdy fence around the perimeter. Every day, as the animals munch on freebies, the fence’s length expands until it has surrounded the oblivious victims. Once the trap is sprung, it is the trapper who feasts on the foolish. This anecdote illustrates how coercive socialism works to enslave a populace through perennial promises of ‘free stuff.’
 * p. 484


 * A state of thievocracy is promoted because it permits politically connected taskmasters to redirect wealth to those deemed worthier by the state. In this sense, slavery is the socialization of labor and property, imposed to make the populace subservient to an institutionalized authority that often preaches equalitarianism and altruism but practices a slavery-enriched militarism. To the far statist Left and their slavocracy comrades, individuals have no ownership rights—so humans can be beasts of burden or simply be exterminated in cleansing bouts of genocide. Many leaders of the Democratic Party are still tied to this slavocracy-socialist tradition as a means to steal wages and assets from the citizenry as well as corrode free speech, due process and the presumption of innocence.
 * p 484

Ferret: The Reluctant King (2020)
Freeland Press, 2020
 * Every man creates his own private hell,… Brutal men believe they may challenge the mighty, and when they fall, they become embittered or befriend a shallow grave.
 * p. 138
 * To harm another human releases your inner beast, allowing him to devour you in an orgy of hate. It will lead to a frenzy of butchery and bloodshed. And it will enslave your soul until a larger beast feasts on your corruptible flesh.
 * p. 139
 * The truth will always be innately painful,… Like dry, crusty bread, it can be hard to swallow. But mankind has an affinity for evil. ’Tis a distemper that burrows deep under the skin like an abscess. We all wish to make slaves of others: one man over another, one clan over another, one kingdom over another. Never ending, never ceasing. A world of battle to conquer one’s fellow man before he conquers you.
 * p. 139
 * Your father reminded me of Lord Oliver Cromwell some fifty years ago in London. Lord Cromwell spoke of liberty. He fought the king to free England of tyranny. But after Lord Cromwell’s Ironsides had defeated the monarch, he turned ruthless. It was as if the monarchy had never been destroyed. Indeed, nothing had changed.
 * p. 140
 * But after his victory over Scotland’s militia, I asked [Cromwell] whether England now blossomed with freedom. He hesitated. We both knew that he had arrested his opponents and censored his critics. I asked the question again. Finally, he said, ‘Aye, there be freedom in England. I may do whatever I wish.’
 * p. 140
 * ’Tis like a child playing in the dirt; he cannot help but besoil his garments. As Cromwell associated with England’s powermongers and elite, his temperament became more like them—muddier and corrupt.
 * p. 141
 * Flesh has this awful habit of decaying. It seems that the more we live, the more we die. I disapprove of the situation, of course. But does anyone listen to me? Mayhap we should get the Queen to outlaw death. That would do it… She has outlawed everything else.
 * pp. 215-216
 * Man came from the bowels of the earth, naked and primitive. So clever he thinks he has become. But I ask, if you put a naked savage in the same room with any lord of England in his finest silk breeches, what do you suppose is the difference?... Only the silk breeches.
 * p. 216
 * Primitive men kill with wooden clubs. We have finely tempered steel and lead shot. No difference. Killing is killing, cruelty is cruelty, aggression is aggression. Man’s weapons have improved, but not his disposition. This is the beast that we must all fight. No man must rule over another for any reason whatsoever.
 * p. 216

We Are Them: The War Years, (2022)
Freeland Press, 2022


 * I would have turned my mother into the authorities had they promised enough goodies. But then again, the authorities often failed to deliver the promised goods. The liars were always lying.
 * p. 91


 * Our long-standing standards of capacity to deceive others were being subverted. The virtue of lying had lost its connection to advancing the common good. Noble deceptions were evolving into inferior falsehoods. That our virtuous lies were being distorted to conceal all manner of misdeeds tore at my newly discovered conscience. These lies served only a selected few. That seemed so wrong.
 * p. 114


 * I pulled my jacket’s front pockets inside out and dangled them, utterly empty, in front of Ellen. ‘I’ve got so much of nothing that I don’t know where to keep it all.’
 * p. 116


 * They should issue ration coupons for information since it was always in short supply. The enemy could be rattling the gates of California or poised to ring my doorbell, and I would never know until it was too late.
 * p. 159


 * In the absence of truth, there is no penalty for failure. We seem destined to live in a failure-prone society.
 * p. 164


 * I no longer have a desire to defend the indefensible. I no longer trust the trustless. ‘As it looks now,’ she said, ‘it seems we have become accustomed to harming our people.’
 * p. 166


 * I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. Ellen had more than a relevant point. Why was I so defensive about our debased government? Why jump headlong into a meat grinder to defend those who would toss us on a flaming broiler without a second thought?
 * p. 166


 * The notion of miracles had a nice ring. But we were all alone… The natural laws of cruel reality were going to win out. Not only would the cavalry fail to save the day, but they also probably never got their marching orders. If goodness existed somewhere on the planet, it was probably on an extended sick leave.
 * p. 200


 * I had always subscribed to the cockroach theory: if you find one, there are bound to be far more. That meant that Dylan’s mission stank with a hoard of dirty-crawling secrets.
 * p. 262


 * Hah, try conducting yourself with coltish munchkins on the playground. Children were our argotic nemesis. They had no sense of propriety. Without any approval whatsoever, they would cobble together words of unknown meaning. They would make up idioms laced with sexual contexts, bathroom humor, and secret signals. Most were unintelligible, seductively cryptic. Every time we erased one slang anathema, the children would create two more. Sometimes I think they were poking fun at us.
 * p. 280


 * Almost everyone in private confessed their desire for buckets of money, but they usually swore the opposite in public. They bad-mouthed the rich as low-life scumbags. I could never understand why people despised something they wanted to be.
 * p. 287


 * Whenever I came across bits and pieces of my alleged past, I wanted to puke. Apparently, I had once had an unknown life with a family. What is the point of being alive unless you can remember living it, I wondered?
 * p. 296


 * It was amazing how fast the shiny luster of fame could tarnish.
 * p. 327


 * That’s the horrible paradox. In essence, we were burning down our own houses to keep warm. Most intentions are noble, but when people started cranking up the wattage to impose order, we also generated a lethal voltage of disorder. Everything began to backfire. Like every great civilization of the past, we atrophy and finally cannibalize. We triggered our innate self-destruction mechanism that bore Frankenstein monsters.
 * p. 334


 * Each of us must live within that reality. Forecasting is not an exact science—the future leaves no footprints. We cannot predict the future because we cannot precisely measure the present. Quantum mechanics proved that. We live in a probability-based world. We all know that the sun will rise in the morning. But even that’s just a high probability. Nothing is assured—nothing.
 * pp. 335-336


 * Humanity is plagued with monsters. No matter where you run, they will always follow you. My demons are also relentless. A whole team of exorcists could never expel my tormentors.
 * p. 348