Benjamin Franklin on trade

No nation was ever ruined by trade. 

~ Benjamin Franklin

Joe Austin on investing

If you want to invest it should be fun.  It should be something you like or love, where you think you can make money, where you can understand where you went wrong.  If you can't understand where you went wrong, you're never going to learn.

~ Joe Austin, "The Alternative Way to Invest in AI and Still Win Big," Stansberry Investor Hour, June 30, 2025

Donald Jeffries on U.S. support of Israel

Since the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the Middle East has been a tinderbox of ancient ethnic hostilities.  Israel fought four major wars against neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, in its first twenty five years alone.  Since the neocons took control of U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan administration, America has been a consistent presence there, hovering in the background like the big brother waiting to pounce on any perceived slight to the younger sibling.  We fought the Gulf “War” (really, don’t you have to have two sides for a real war?) in 1989, for no other reason than to protect Israeli interests.  U.S. envoy April Glaspie famously told former CIA asset Saddam Hussein that if he invaded the tiny artificial oil oligarchy of Kuwait, we wouldn’t interfere.  Of course, that was a lie.  The only people cheering on such lunacy were the leaders of Israel. 

I lost count of how many times we bombed Iraq in the subsequent years. Our embargo killed over a million Iraqis, including over 500,000 children.  We ventured into Afghanistan for no reason whatsoever.  Well, except that Israel requested it. And that’s all that matters in “our” defense department.  No one says “no” to Israel.  Except John F. Kennedy.  We all know what happened to him.  Obama became embroiled in Syria and Yemen because Israel wanted it.  They’re like a collective, spoiled trust fund baby.  Donald Trump, after rightly criticizing Obama for bombing Syria, did so himself when ordered to.  You know exactly who gave the orders.  And now, we may become deeply embroiled in Israel’s war with Iran, again at Israel’s request.  Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen- none of them have ever done anything to us.  We have no beef with any of them.  But Israel does.  All of this is in their interests, not ours.

~ Donald Jeffries, "The Explosion of Jewish Fatigue Syndrome," Tired of naked emperors, June 29, 2025

Stephen Kinzer on the racist roots of American imperialism

The first wave of American "regime change" operations, which lasted from 1893 to 1911, was propelled largely by the search for resources, markets, and commercial opportunities.  Not all of the early imperialists, however, were the tools of big business.  Roosevelt, Lodge, and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan were moved by what they considered to be the transcendent imperatives of history.  Expanding, they believed, was simply what great nations did.  In their minds, promoting commerce and defending national security fused into what one historian has called "an aggressive national egoism and a romantic attachment to national power."  They considered themselves nothing less than instruments of destiny and Providence.

The missionary instinct was already deeply ingrained in the American psyche.  From the time John Winthrop proclaimed his dream of building a "city upon the hill" to which the world would look for inspiration, Americans have considered themselves a special people.  At the end of the nineteenth century, many came to believe they had a duty to civilize needy savages and rescue exploited masses from oppression.  Rudyard Kipling encouraged their missionary spirit with a famous poem published in McClure's Magazine as the debate over annexing the Philippines began.

Take up the White Man's burden

Send forth the best ye breed,

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild,

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child

Americans have a profoundly compassionate side.  Many not only appreciate the freedom and prosperity with which they have been blessed but fervently wish to share their good fortune with others.  Time and again, they have proved willing to support foreign interventions that are presented as missions to rescue less fortunate people.

When President McKinley said he was going to war in Cuba to stop "oppression at our very doors," Americans cheered.  They did so again a decade later, when the Taft administration declared that it was deposing the government of Nicaragua in order to impose "republican institutions" and promote "real patriotism."  Since then, every time the United States has set out to overthrow a foreign government, its leaders have insisted that they are acting not to expand American power but to help people who are suffering.

This paternalism was often mixed with racism.  Many Americans considered Latin Americans and Pacific islanders to be "colored" natives in need of guidance from whites.  In a nation whose black population was systematically repressed, and where racial prejudice was widespread, this view helped many people accept the need for the United States to dominate foreign countries.

Speeches justifying American expansionism on the grounds of the white race's presumed superiority were staples of political discourse in the 1890s.  Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana described expansion as part of a natural process, "the disappearance of debased civilizations and decaying races before the higher civilization of the nobler and more virile types of man."  Representative Charles Cochrane of Mississippi spoke of "the onward march of the indomitable race that founded this Republic" and predicted "the conquest of the world by the Aryan races."  When he finished his speech, the House burst into applause.

~ Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, pp. 83-84

Hannah Arendt on power vs. violence

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.  Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.  This implies that it is not correct to think of the opposite of violence as non-violence; to speak of non-violent power is actually redundant.  Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

~ Hannah Arendt, On Violence (1970)

(Explained in "Hannah Arendt On Violence: The Opposite of Power," Great Books Prof, March 16, 2021.)

Hannah Arendt on political power and support of the people

Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.  Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.  When we say of somebody that he is 'in power' we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name.  The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with ... disappears, 'his power' also vanishes. 

~ Hannah Arendt, On Violence

1970

Hannah Arendt on simple narratives and truth

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality. 

~ Hannah Arendt

1977