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Christian Michel, self-made man, homme d’affaires et libertarien à propos de la solidarité des socialistes::

« C’est dans le vide du règlement que naît la solidarité. C’est dans le respect des Droits, et donc l’absence d’impositions légales, que peuvent se densifier les relations humaines. [...]

L’homme de gauche n’annonce la société solidaire que comme la prostituée promet l’amour. L’un et l’autre ne peuvent offrir que des simulacres (ivresse passagère et frustration). Ils instaurent le règne du faire-semblant ou, si tu préfères une image plus forte, de la pornographie généralisée. »

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Margaret Thatcher explique pourquoi l’étatisme est un ennemi de la liberté:

« We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society.

We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the State is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the State. »

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Tiré de l’opus The Constitution of Liberty de Friedrich Hayek:

« The rapid economic advance that we have come to expect seems to be in large measure a result of this inequality and to be impossible without it. Progress at such a fast rate cannot take place on a uniform front but must take place in an echelon fashion, with some far in front of the rest. »

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La gauche aime bien défendre les minorités… Citation d’Ayn Rand que la gauche devrait méditer…

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Vous souhaitez que 2012 soit une année sois le signe de la paix ? La solution de Milton Friedman:

« The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can’t do that. Politics exacerbates and magnifies differences. »

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Extrait du discours d’adieux du président Eisenhower, prononcé en 1961, dans lequel il parlait des dangers de politiser la science. Sans le savoir, il a décrit ce qu’allait devenir le climategate !

« Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. »"

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Tiré du discours mythique "A time for choosing" de Ronald Reagan:

«The full power of centralized government —this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.»

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Friedrich Hayek explique les dérives de l’égalitarisme:

« There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville described it, ‘a new form of servitude’. »

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Citation de Paul Krugman, l’économiste préféré des gauchistes, faite le 10 janvier 2010 dans un texte ayant pour titre « Learning From Europe »:

« The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works. [...] After all, while reports of Europe’s economic demise are greatly exaggerated, reports of its high taxes and generous benefits aren’t. »

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Dans son oeuvre culte, De la démocratie en Amérique écrit en 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville avait, sans le savoir, décrit le Québec de 2011…

La centralisation administrative parvient, il est vrai, à réunir à une époque donnée, et dans un certain lieu, toutes les forces disponibles de la nation, mais elle nuit à la reproduction des forces. Elle la fait triompher le jour du combat, et diminue à la longue sa puissance. Elle peut donc concourir admirablement à la grandeur passagère d’un homme, non point à la prospérité durable d’un peuple. »

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Citation de Penn Jillette, un libertarien, à propos du gouvernement et de la compassion:

« It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness. People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint. »

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Réflexion géniale du toujours géniale Thomas Sowell, à propos des politiciens et de la politique:

« Politicians can solve almost any problem — usually by creating a bigger problem. But, so long as the voters are aware of the problem that the politicians have solved, and unaware of the bigger problems they have created, political « solutions » are a political success.

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Extrait du livre Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, écrit par Ludwig von Mises en 1944:

« Turbulent mobs demand acts which are contrary to society’s and their own best interests. They return to Parliament corrupt demagogues, adventurers, and quacks who praise patent medicines and idiotic remedies. Democracy has resulted in an upheaval of the domestic barbarians against reason, sound policies, and civilization. The masses have firmly established the dictators in many European countries. They may succeed very soon in America too. »

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Citation de Steve Jobs, un homme qui doit être élevé au même rang que les Gutenberg, que devraient méditer les politiciens et tous ceux qui disent si la solution à un problème est trop simple, elle doit forcément être fausse:

« That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. »

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Extrait du roman Atlas Shrugged d’Ayn Rand qui décrit assez bien le Québec…

« When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. »

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Stephen Wynn, CEO de Wynn Resorts (20 600 employés)

« And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. »

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George Buckley, CEO de 3M (67 000 employés)

« We know what [Obama’s] instincts are — they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business. There is a sense among companies that this is a difficult place to do business. It is about regulation, taxation, seemingly anti-business policies in Washington, attitudes towards science. Politicians forget that business has choice. We’re not indentured servants and we will do business where it’s good and friendly. If it’s hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico – which tend to be pro-business – or America. »

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Jim McNerney, CEO de Boeing (164 495 employés)

« Its action [Obama's handpicked National Labor Relations Board's] is a fundamental assault on the capitalist principles that have sustained America’s competitiveness since it became the world’s largest economy nearly 140 years ago. U.S. tax and regulatory policies already make it more attractive for many companies to build new manufacturing capacity overseas. »

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Paul Otellini, CEO d’Intel (82 500 employés)

« The next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here. The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business that there is likely to be an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth. I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working. If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here. But instead, it’s the second highest in the industrialized world. »

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Bernie Marcus, co-fondateur d’Home Depot (321 000 employés)

« Home Depot would never have succeeded if we’d tried to start it today. Every day you see rules and regulations from a group of Washington bureaucrats who know nothing about running a business. With just ObamaCare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that’s probably going to end up being 150,000 pages of regulations. If we don’t lower spending and if we don’t deal with paying down the debt, we are going to have to raise taxes. Even brain-dead economists understand that when you raise taxes, you cost jobs. He’s [Obama] never really worked a day outside the political or legal area. He doesn’t understand the problems businesses face. »

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La réponse de Charles Koch, capitalisme et milliardaire, à Warren Buffet, crony-capitaliste et milliardaire:

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Une petite réflexion de l’immortel Frédéric Bastiat, que Jean François Lisée devrait méditer…

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Il n’y a rien de plus comique que d’entendre des chroniqueurs québécois, qui seraient incapables d’expliquer les mécanismes associés à l’inflation, dénoncer la critique que Rick Perry envers la réserve fédérale américaine. À ces illettrés économiques qui pullulent dans nos médias, je dédie la citation suivante de FA Hayek (prix Nobel d’économie):

« Inflation is probably the most important single factor in that vicious circle wherein one kind of government action makes more and more government control necessary. For this reason all those who wish to stop the drift toward increasing government control should concentrate their effort on monetary policy. »

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Les 10 commandements de William J. H. Boetcker, un penseur conservateur influant du début du 20^e sicècle:

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Écrite durant la grande dépression (1933), une citation du journaliste et satirise Américain H. L. Mencken, alias « le sage de Baltimore », qui résume assez bien pourquoi les États-Unis ont été décotés cette semaine:

« There is, indeed, no genuine disposition among American public officials, or indeed among public officials anywhere, to reduce public expenses. As I have pointed out in this place a hundred times, they always try to lay on at least $2 every time they save $1. The saving gets brilliant headlines in the newspapers, but the new waste is disguised as a scheme to end the Depression, or even as a scheme to reduce taxes. This last dodge is now being worked again, and before our very eyes. »

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Une excellente question de l’économiste Thomas Sowell à propos de le cupidité…

« I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not ‘greed’ to want to take somebody else’s money. »

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Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953), écrivain franco-britannique, à propos du nationalisme. Sans le savoir, il a décrit le Québec avec une précision remarquable…

« Nationalism has, among other evils, bred that of a powerful bureaucracy in each state: a rigid centralization, and a deplorable uniformity within each frontier exactly corresponding to the violent contrast between either side of that frontier.

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Frédéric Bastiat à propos du gouvermanman:

« Eh quoi ! est-il donc si difficile de laisser les hommes essayer, tâtonner, choisir, se tromper, se rectifier, apprendre, se concerter, gouverner leurs propriétés et leurs intérêts, agir pour eux-mêmes, à leurs périls et risques, sous leur propre responsabilité ; et ne voit-on pas que c’est ce qui les fait hommes ? Partira-t-on toujours de cette fatale hypothèse, que tous les gouvernants sont des tuteurs et tous les gouvernés des pupilles ? »