They Said It… Rand Paul, John Hickenlooper, And More!
(From the They Said It section in Volume 19, No. 14 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)
AMERICANS MAD AT GOV’T, WANT LESS OF IT: “It is difficult to overstate the depth of the anger and alienation that a majority of all Americans feel toward the federal government. A June 30, 2014, Gallup poll found that Americans’ level of confidence has dropped to near record lows for all three branches — the presidency (30 percent), Congress (7 percent) and the U.S. Supreme Court (29 percent). …the country’s diminishing faith in its institutions has translated into a desire for less government, not more.” — Democratic political strategist Doug Sosnik, former political director for President Clinton, “Blue Crush: How the Left Took Over the Democratic Party,” Politico Magazine, July 24, 2014.
ANGRY AMERICANS PART 2:
“People are mad at Democrats. But they’re certainly not happy with Republicans. They’re mad at everything.” — Democratic governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, quoted in the New York Times, August 26, 2014.
BURGER KING HAS IT THEIR WAY: “Three cheers for Burger King, I say! All of the whiny liberals racing to call them ‘unpatriotic’ for pursuing a deal to merge with the Canadian coffee shop Tim Horton and reincorporate north of the border, thus escaping the deranged American corporate tax system, are completely missing the point. Nothing is more patriotic, more quintessentially American, than voting with your feet and withdrawing your consent from an unhinged government. When CEOs start climbing over the walls to escape from greedy left-wing government, the problem is not insufficiently high walls.” — conservative writer John Hayward, “Burger King to escape U.S. corporate tax system,” Human Events, August 26, 2014.
RAND PAUL ON THE INTERVENTIONISTS:
“The let’s-intervene-and-consider-the-consequences-later crowd left us with more than 4,000 Americans dead, over 2 million refugees and trillions of dollars in debt. Anytime someone advocates sending our sons and daughters to war, questions about precise objectives, effective methods and an exit strategy must be thoughtfully answered. America deserves this.” — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), “Rick Perry Is Dead Wrong,” Politico.com, July 14, 2014.
RON PAUL ON HELPING ISIS RECRUIT: “A new U.S. military incursion will not end ISIS; it will provide them with the recruiting tool they most crave, while draining the U.S. treasury. Just what Osama bin Laden wanted!” — Ron Paul, “Obama Has No Middle East Strategy? Good!” Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, August 31, 2014.
FREEDOM OR EMPIRE:
“If Americans want a free society at home, then they must convince the U.S. government to give up its global empire. The militarized police recently on display in Ferguson was no freak coincidence: Antiwar activists and other civil libertarians have been warning for decades that an aggressive U.S. foreign policy would eventually destroy domestic liberties. Americans can’t ask their government to subjugate foreigners with bombs but bow to their own wishes at the ballot box.” — Robert P. Murphy, “A free society must give up empire,” Antiwar.com, August. 30, 2014.
LABOR DAY, OBAMA ERA: “It’s Labor Day weekend. Labor Day, of course, is a 
holiday where people take three days off from being unemployed.” — David Letterman, August 28, 2014.
AMERICANS MAD AT GOV’T, WANT LESS OF IT: “It is difficult to overstate the depth of the anger and alienation that a majority of all Americans feel toward the federal government. A June 30, 2014, Gallup poll found that Americans’ level of confidence has dropped to near record lows for all three branches — the presidency (30 percent), Congress (7 percent) and the U.S. Supreme Court (29 percent). …the country’s diminishing faith in its institutions has translated into a desire for less government, not more.” — Democratic political strategist Doug Sosnik, former political director for President Clinton, “Blue Crush: How the Left Took Over the Democratic Party,” Politico Magazine, July 24, 2014.
ANGRY AMERICANS PART 2:
“People are mad at Democrats. But they’re certainly not happy with Republicans. They’re mad at everything.” — Democratic governor of Colorado John Hickenlooper, quoted in the New York Times, August 26, 2014.
BURGER KING HAS IT THEIR WAY: “Three cheers for Burger King, I say! All of the whiny liberals racing to call them ‘unpatriotic’ for pursuing a deal to merge with the Canadian coffee shop Tim Horton and reincorporate north of the border, thus escaping the deranged American corporate tax system, are completely missing the point. Nothing is more patriotic, more quintessentially American, than voting with your feet and withdrawing your consent from an unhinged government. When CEOs start climbing over the walls to escape from greedy left-wing government, the problem is not insufficiently high walls.” — conservative writer John Hayward, “Burger King to escape U.S. corporate tax system,” Human Events, August 26, 2014.
RAND PAUL ON THE INTERVENTIONISTS:
“The let’s-intervene-and-consider-the-consequences-later crowd left us with more than 4,000 Americans dead, over 2 million refugees and trillions of dollars in debt. Anytime someone advocates sending our sons and daughters to war, questions about precise objectives, effective methods and an exit strategy must be thoughtfully answered. America deserves this.” — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), “Rick Perry Is Dead Wrong,” Politico.com, July 14, 2014.
RON PAUL ON HELPING ISIS RECRUIT: “A new U.S. military incursion will not end ISIS; it will provide them with the recruiting tool they most crave, while draining the U.S. treasury. Just what Osama bin Laden wanted!” — Ron Paul, “Obama Has No Middle East Strategy? Good!” Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, August 31, 2014.“If Americans want a free society at home, then they must convince the U.S. government to give up its global empire. The militarized police recently on display in Ferguson was no freak coincidence: Antiwar activists and other civil libertarians have been warning for decades that an aggressive U.S. foreign policy would eventually destroy domestic liberties. Americans can’t ask their government to subjugate foreigners with bombs but bow to their own wishes at the ballot box.” — Robert P. Murphy, “A free society must give up empire,” Antiwar.com, August. 30, 2014.
LABOR DAY, OBAMA ERA: “It’s Labor Day weekend. Labor Day, of course, is a holiday where people take three days off from being unemployed.” — David Letterman, August 28, 2014.
NOTED AND REQUOTED
CANDIDATE OBAMA VS PRESIDENT OBAMA:
“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” — Sen. Barack Obama, interviewed by the Boston Globe while running for president in 2008, quoted by Conor Friedersdorf at Atlantic.com.
RAND PAUL ON WHY WE SHOULD MINIMIZE GOV’T:
“You want to minimize how much government we have because government frankly isn’t good at anything.” — Sen. 
BACK TO IRAQ:
“[T]roops — well, advisers — are going back to Iraq, six years after this president was elected on a promise to get us out of there.” — 
“How do states harm poor people? Oh let me count the ways… patent and copyright laws, which impede competition, immigration restrictions, which lock people out of opportunities, licenses, which prevent people from entering the market, regulation that is often originated in rent seeking, the money monopoly, which helps large banks and currency manipulators, credit laws, which crush small banks through capitalization requirements, tariffs, which protect large companies from foreign competition, transportation, which helps big box corporations through highway subsidies, urban sprawl policies, which enrich construction companies, research subsidies, which hook the public on risky investments, limited liability laws that protect large corporations from lawsuits, labor laws that restrict the ability of unions to defend their workers, bailouts that directly redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, eminent domain, which rewards land to political donors, a tax code that can be gamed by the wealthy, the military industrial complex that enriches weapons manufacturers, and more.” — 
“According to a new study, the largest producer of oil is now the United States. So you know what that means — any day now we’ll be invading ourselves.” — David Letterman, July 11, 2014.
interrupt TV broadcasts whenever there’s breaking news. Then Obama said, ‘And I mean REAL breaking news, not that CNN stuff.'” — Jimmy Fallon, July 15, 2014.
POWER OF THE PEN:
“House Speaker John Boehner is threatening to sue President Obama for using executive actions to create laws, instead of going through Congress first. Then Obama shrugged and made a new law that you can’t sue the president.” — Jimmy Fallon, July 7, 2014.
“The fundamental axiom of libertarian theory is that no one may threaten or commit violence (‘aggress’) against another man’s person or property. Violence may be employed only against the man who commits such violence; that is, only defensively against the aggressive violence of another. In short, no violence may be employed against a non-aggressor. Here is the fundamental rule from which can be deduced the entire corpus of libertarian theory.” — 
needs a 15-round ammunition magazine unless they are a domestic terrorist or a gangster.” — New Jersey gun control activist 
LETTERMAN ON TAX SLAVES: “The average American citizen — you hear the statistic all the time — works six months out of the year for the government. That’s how difficult the taxes are in this country. We work six months out of the year. Government employees don’t even do that.” — David Letterman, March 14, 2014.
NOT RIGHT AWAY:
“Yesterday Edward Snowden urged technology companies to improve their encryption techniques in order to prevent hacking. Then he said, ‘But not right away. I’m still using Obama’s Netflix password to watch ‘House of Cards.'”— Jimmy Fallon, March 11, 2014.