L. Neil Smith citations (99 citations, Page 3)

“It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.”

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L. Neil Smith

"How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?" Presented to the Second Annual Freedom Summit, Phoenix, Arizona, 12 & 13 October 2002 http://www.lneilsmith.org/freedomsummit2.html.

“Violent crime is a solved problem - all they have to do is repeal the laws that keep those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women from arming themselves, and violent crime evaporates like dry ice on a hot summer day.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Merchants of Fear".

“People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single-issue thinker, and a single-issue voter, but it isn't true. What I've chosen, in a world where there's never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician — or political philosophy — is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.
Make no mistake: all politicians — even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership — hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician — or political philosophy — can be put.
If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash — for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything”

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L. Neil Smith

without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.
"Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?" (3 August 1999) http://www.lneilsmith.org/.

“Like the government, corporations must be bound with the chains of the Constitution, and especially of the Bill of Rights.”

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L. Neil Smith

"How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?"

“There's nothing noble or selfless about politicians and there never has been. Putting it charitably, Profiles in Courage is a compendium of Democratic mythology, ghostwritten for an ambitious young Massachusetts Senator who never did a thing for himself if he could pay to have it done by others.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Pursuing Invariably the Same Object" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle566-20100418-02.html 18 April 2010.

“Our early ancestors in Africa were arboreal troop-monkeys, living on a diet of fruit (to quote Yogi Bear, 'Nuts and berries! Nuts and berries! Yech!') and insects. When you wander around the house, not particularly hungry, but looking for something to munch on idly, what you are most likely seeking unconsciously are bugs. Most of our most popular snack foods (Fiddle-Faddle comes to mind, and small pretzels) resemble and have the same 'mouth feel' as bugs. You can take the monkey out of the trees, but you can't take the tree monkey out of humanity.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Back to the Trees!" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle565-20100411-02.html 11 April 2010.

“The Bill of Rights must be subjected to no 'interpretation' of any kind except in terms of the original intent of the Founding Fathers, a group of individuals who had just barely defeated the most overbearing, ruthless, and dangerously violent government in the history of the world. Even the British people were having trouble with it at the time.
The Bill of Rights represents an historic bargain between those who advocated a strong central government — and whose political ideas and wishes are expressed in the main body of the Constitution — and those who did not. Without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution ceases to be valid; any legitimate authority that derives from it ceases to exist.”

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"Toward an International Bill of Rights Union," http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?p=36 31 August 2007.

“Despite the Internet's origin in the late 1960s as a government sponsored means of communication between the Department of Defense, private industry, and academia, it has been at its best — and generated the greatest economic, social, and technological benefits — since it was 'liberated' by the hordes of 'geeks' who were originally hired to run it by employers who were not themselves conversant with computers, and couldn't tell when their employees were exchanging official traffic or trading dirty jokes and recipes for marijuana brownies.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Keep Your Filthy Hands Off The Internet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle575-20100620-02.html 20 June 2010.

“I grew up in the Bible Belt — not the buckle end, as the cliche goes, but the other end where all the holes are. You know what kind of holes. I don't mean to underestimate them, but if you laugh at these idiots enough — show them up as the phonies most of them are — they'll go away.
I'm concerned about another kind of religious fundamentalism: environmentalism. The Greenies have no more respect for scientific truth and individual liberty than the Goddies do. Both operate on faith, rather than fact. And neither of them has any qualms about dusting off the rack, the pincers, the Iron Maiden, and the red hot branding irons in order to see their mythology ensconced as beyond question.”

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Interview, Ari Armstrong, "Catching Up with L. Neil Smith," http://www.freecolorado.com/2006/12/lneil.html 7 December 2006.

“Once you've taken a public stand you know is right, never back down; anything less than a rock-hard stance will let your enemies nibble you to death.”

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"Some New Tactical Reflections".

“Socialism, whether it's the 'soft tyranny' of the EuroAmerican management state or the murderously repressive forms taken by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, is all about disindividuation, a steady, relentless erasure of the individual differences among us, everything that makes us who we are. 'Everybody in, nobody out!' is the marching mantra of militant collectivized medicine, but it accurately describes all other aspects of collectivism, as well. No alternatives allowed, no choices, no individualism, no individuality, and ultimately, no individuation.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Back to the Trees!"

“Conventional politicians almost never think their philosophy through and set it down for everyone to examine. In most cases, they don't dare. Republicans would soon discover that they're actually socialists. Democrats would discover that they're actually fascists.”

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(with Rylla Cathryn Smith) What Libertarians Believe, "Introduction: The Zero Aggression Principle".

“I do know enough about economics — and so do you — to understand that the 'stimulus program' of Barack Obama and his ravenous parasitic hordes, supposedly designed to 'repair' America's broken economy, reveals him to be unimaginably stupid, gibberingly insane, or simply the biggest, most barefaced criminal thug ever to occupy the White House.
And that's saying a lot.”

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"A Little Austrian Flea," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle508-20090301-04.html 1 March 2009.

“Try never to speak of your enemies by name. Any publicity is still publicity — and there are those for whom your disapproval constitutes a recommendation.”

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"Some New Tactical Reflections".

“We live in times of wonderful technology and crappy politics. The task before us now is not to let the latter destroy the former.”

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"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Des Moines," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle474-20080629-02.html 29 June 2008.

“Choose your allies carefully: it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be held morally, legally, or historically accountable for the actions of your enemies.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Some New Tactical Reflections".

“The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will exist — is a kleptocracy, meaning 'rule by thieves'. Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won't willingly fork over to end poverty, then maybe they'll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a cover for what's really going on, like the colors of competing gangs.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Why Aren't We There Yet?"

“America didn't have a drug problem before it passed drug laws.”

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L. Neil Smith

"Some Random Thoughts About the War On Drugs".

“The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism is a mindset that regards the individual — and his rights — as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.”

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"Cambodian Road Trip," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle510-20090315-02.html 15 March 2009.

“Worse than thieves, murderers, or cannibals, those who offer compromise slow you and sap your vitality while pretending to be your friends. They are not your friends. Compromisers are the enemies of all humanity, the enemies of life itself. Compromisers are the enemies of everything important, sacred, and true.”

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"Am I the NRA?" collected in Lever Action (2001) and republished online in 2007 http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2007/tle401-20070114-03.html.

“There’s a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether.”

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Ceres, Chapter Fourteen http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/?page_id=202, 2009.

“I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.”

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"I'm Tired (With Apologies to Pearl Bailey and Madeleine Kahn) Presented to the second annual Liberty Round Table Conclave near Estes Park, Colorado, 2 July 1998 http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle1998/libe40-19980709-01.html.