Sheldon Richman > Quotes

“If government played by the same rules as the rest of us, it would cease to be government.”
― Sheldon Richman

“By portraying war as an opportunity for virtuous acts, the politicians romanticize evil.”
― Sheldon Richman

“No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.”
― Sheldon Richman

“Progressives did not like the antiquated thinking that saw the Constitution as a barrier to government expansion. The "living Constitution" was born. That benign-sounding phrase (coined later) was conjured up to justify changing the Constitution, without formal amendment, from a limit on power to a blank check. What was impermissible to the federal government by an earlier interpretation became permissible once the Constitution was construed as a evolving document. But by that philosophy, the Constitution is no limit on government power at all. A constitutional government that defines its own powers is a contradiction in terms.”
― Sheldon Richman, Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax

“Tax relief through deductions is very precarious. It is a way for the government to let you keep a little cash without conceding that it is your money. Tax deductions can be taken away. . . "An income tax deduction is a matter of legislative grace," the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1943. In other words, all income belongs to the state. If it allows you to use some of it for purposes it chooses, be grateful. But don't think it is yours as a matter of right. That is where the Sixteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution has delivered us.”
― Sheldon Richman, Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax

“If people give up their attachment to expansive government, they will feel free to fight the income tax.”
― Sheldon Richman, Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax

“To appreciate how income taxation reduces prosperity form what it could be, imagine a 100 percent tax on incomes. We wouldn't expect much prosperity in such a society. People would have no incentive to earn money. They would devote resources to hiding the little they did earn. No investments would be made. No savings would exist to increase living standards. People's activities would be grossly influenced by the tax.
If we lower the rate from 100 percent, the principle does not change. . . If you want less of something, tax it.”
― Sheldon Richman, Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax

“His Orthodox belief held that the re-establishment of Israel was a matter for God in the messianic future. He would have agreed with Yehoshofat Harkabi, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, who said “The Jews always considered that the land belonged to them, but in fact it belonged to the Arabs. I would go further: I would say the original source of this conflict lies with Israel.”
― Sheldon Richman, Coming to Palestine

“An open and (semi-) free society cannot realistically expect to eliminate the risk of indiscriminate violence. The cost in liberty and dignity would be way too high — and the attempt would fail. Moreover, the risk of violence perpetrated by our guardians would not be eliminated but augmented.”
― Sheldon Richman

“The ongoing falsification of history has greater objectives than erasing the Palestinian people and their collective claim to human rights and dignity. It also aims at normalizing Israeli military occupation, apartheid, and colonialism. It provides a historical amnesty for all the crimes that Israel has committed and will continue to commit.”
― Sheldon Richman, Coming to Palestine

“Since my libertarianism puts me on the side of the victims of the state, I began to understand that the Palestinians were the latest in a long line of groups oppressed by political power. Jews, of course, have been similarly oppressed in many places; now some Jews, the Zionists, were in the role of oppressor. My childhood view of Israel was unraveling.”
― Sheldon Richman, Coming to Palestine

“The Jews in Israel are causing all the trouble,” he would say repeatedly. “The Arabs want peace.”
― Sheldon Richman, Coming to Palestine

“Anyone who protested the callous treatment of the Arabs and others was dismissed or ignored as naïve.”
― Sheldon Richman, Coming to Palestine

“have other memories as well. I recall the days after the 1967 war, when American Jews (myself included; I was 17) celebrated Israel’s military victory (in what was not a war of defense, as the state’s political and military leaders well understood). I recall being at a rally of United Synagogue Youth, of which I was a member in those days, when the exuberant crowd sang the song “David Melech Yisroel” (“David, the King of Israel, lives and endures”). At the end of the song, the rally leader began shouting the names of cities in Israel, with the crowd responding each time, “Yisroel!”: “Yerushalayim [Jerusalem]!” “Yisroel!” “Tel Aviv!” “Yisroel!” “Jaffa!” “Yisroel!” Then things became more eerily revealing. “Amman!” “Yisroel!” “Damascus!” “Yisroel!” “Baghdad!” “Yisroel!” “Cairo!” “Yisroel!” I’ll never forget it. Maybe that is why I can’t remain silent.”
― Sheldon Richman, Coming to Palestine