Astonishingly, American taxpayers now will be forced to finance a multi-billion dollar jobs program in Iraq. Suddenly the war is about jobs. We export our manufacturing jobs to Asia, and now we plan to export our welfare jobs to Iraq, all at the expense of the poor and the middle class here at home.

They've been taught by too many that this war was necessary when it isn't.

I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation. ...I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades.

If Iran invaded Israel, it's up to Congress to declare war.

In the American political lexicon, 'change' always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.

Under the constitution, there was never meant to be a federal police force. Even an FBI limited only to investigations was not accepted until this century. Yet today, fueled by the federal government's misdirected war on drugs, radical environmentalism, and the aggressive behavior of the nanny state, we have witnessed the massive buildup of a virtual army of armed regulators prowling the States where they have no legal authority. The sacrifice of individual responsibility and the concept of local government by the majority of American citizens has permitted the army of bureaucrats to thrive.

Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat.

Failure of government programs prompts more determined effort, while the loss of liberty is ignored or rationalized away...whether is it is the war on poverty, drugs, terrorism...or the current Hitler of the day, an appeal to patriotism is used to convince the people that a little sacrifice of liberty, here or there, is a small price to pay...The results, though, are frightening and will soon become even more so.

The federal war on drugs is a total failure... The federal government's going in there and overriding state laws... Why don't we handle the drugs like we handle alcohol? ... I fear the drug war because it undermines our civil liberties. It magnifies our problems on the borders. We've spent over the last 40 years a trillion dollars on this war and - believe me - the kids can still get the drugs. It just hasn't worked.

Times of tragedy and war naturally bring out strong emotions... Sometimes people are only too anxious to sacrifice their constitutional liberties during a crisis, hoping to gain some measure of security. Yet nothing would please terrorists more than if we willingly gave up our cherished liberties because of their actions.

It would be virtually impossible to finance wars without taxing the people, and the welfare system would be limited because there wouldn't be enough money in the bank to sustain it as it is, and that would help prices stay under control.

Demanding domestic security in times of war invites carelessness in preserving civil liberties and the right of privacy. Frequently the people are only too anxious for their freedoms to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarianism thought to be necessary to remain safe and secure.

Terror is a tactic. We can not wage "war" against a tactic.

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.

The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home. U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.

Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us?

We can achieve much more in peace than we can ever achieve in these needless, unconstitutional, undeclared wars.

Sanctions are not diplomacy. They are a precursor to war and an embarrassment to a country that pays lip service to free trade.

The federal government overrules state laws where state laws permit medicinal marijuana for people dying of cancer. The federal government goes in and arrests these people, put them in prison with mandatory, sometimes life sentences. This war on drugs is totally out of control. If you want to regulate cigarettes and alcohol and drugs, it should be at the state level.

The catch-all phrase "the war on terrorism", in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against "criminal gangsterism". Terrorism is a tactic. You can't have a war against a tactic. It's deliberately vague and non-definable in order to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere and under any circumstance.

I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government.

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.

Republican control of the Senate = expanded neocon wars in Syria and Iraq. Boots on the ground are coming!

When you have war, whether it's a war against drugs, war against terrorism, war overseas, the mentality of the people change and they're more willing to sacrifice their liberties in order to be safe and secure.

What if the American people woke up and understood that the official reasons for going to war are almost always based on lies and promoted by war propaganda in order to serve special interests?

If you sacrifice liberty for security, you will lose both.

Why is it is claimed that if people won't or can't take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

What you are inferring is, If we were to legalise heroin tomorrow everybody would use heroin. How many people here would start using heroin? I bet nobody would. Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don't want to use heroin, so I need these laws.

The last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of the dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.

If you're really serious about protecting people's incomes, you've got to consider how you're going to protect the dollar. If you don't have the dollar maintaining its value, no matter where you put the money you're not going to have any value.

Quantitative easing is just the latest chapter in the Federal Reserve’s hundred-year history of failure. (...) The American people have suffered long enough under a monetary policy controlled by an unaccountable, secretive central bank. It is time to finally audit - and then end - the Fed.

I believe only a free society can ever be truly secure. The goal should be to make terrorists feel threatened, not the American people.

The World's Smallest Political Quiz is responsible for many Americans' first contact with libertarian ideas. While traveling around the country, I have often heard people say, 'I never knew I was a libertarian until I took the Quiz!'

Without precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language.

Government spending is always a “tax” burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.

In wartime, people willing to sacrifice liberty for security.

There's capital controls and there's people control. So every time you think of a fence keeping all those bad people out, think about those fences maybe being used against us, keeping us in.

You know, freedom is a very popular idea, and young people love it, and they're open to ideas. And they like principled answers to our problems.

Who's married and who isn't married. I have my standards but I shouldn't have to impose my standards on others. Other people have their standards and they have no right to impose their marriage standards on me.

The Federal Reserve and Congress have systematically taught the American people to trust the government and that caution in spending is harmful to the economy.

What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That's why you have more billionaires than ever before.

It’s amazing that people don’t understand that the more the market is involved and the smaller the government, the lower the price, the better the distribution, and the higher the quality.

It would help the poor people who need jobs. Minimum wage is a mandate. We're against mandates so why should we have it? It would be very beneficial.

It would be virtually impossible to finance wars without taxing the people, and the welfare system would be limited because there wouldn't be enough money in the bank to sustain it as it is, and that would help prices stay under control.

Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.

Demanding domestic security in times of war invites carelessness in preserving civil liberties and the right of privacy. Frequently the people are only too anxious for their freedoms to be sacrificed on the altar of authoritarianism thought to be necessary to remain safe and secure.

People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.

We have a lot of goodness in this country. And we should promote it, but never through the barrel of a gun. We should do it by setting good standards, motivating people and have them want to emulate us. But you can't enforce our goodness, like the neocons preach, with an armed force. It doesn't work.

General welfare is a general condition - maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state - the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession.

Sexually-transmitted diseases is caused by sexual activity and promiscuity it spreads diseases. That's been known, you know, about 400 or 500 years, that somehow these diseases are spread. If fault comes with people because of their personal behavior but it isn't to be placed on a burden on other people, innocent people, why should they have to pay for the consequences?