Christopher Olson

“Of all the misapplications of the word “conservative” in recent memory, Nisbet wrote in the 1980s, the “most amusing, in an historical light, is surely the application of ‘conservative’ to…great increases in military expenditures.… For in America throughout the twentieth century, and including four substantial wars abroad, conservatives had been steadfastly the voices of non-inflationary military budgets, and of an emphasis on trade in the world instead of American nationalism. In the two World Wars, in Korea, and in Viet Nam, the leaders of American entry into war were such renowned liberal-progressives as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. In all four episodes conservatives, both in the national government and in the rank and file, were largely hostile to intervention; were isolationists indeed.”
― Thomas E. Woods Jr., Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion

“Augustine explained why a correct understanding of the relation between human and divine providence is necessary for a correct understanding of economic activity even—or especially—when it contradicts moral or religious norms.”
― John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element

“The Far Right is less interested in Burkean immunities from government power than it is in putting a maximum of governmental power in the hands of those who can be trusted. It is control of power, not diminution of power, that ranks high. Thus when Reagan was elected conservatives hoped for the quick abolition of such government ‘monstrosities’ as the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the two National Endowments of the Arts and Humanities, all creations of the political left. The Far Right in the Reagan Phenomenon saw it differently, however; they saw it as an opportunity for retaining and enjoying the powers. And the Far Right prevailed. It seeks to prevail also in the establishment of a ‘national industrial strategy,’ a government corporation structure in which the conservative dream of free private enterprise would be extinguished.”
― Thomas E. Woods Jr., Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion

“On the contrary, what is hidden from the learned and clever is often revealed to the merest children.”
― John D. Mueller, Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element