Liberty's Last Stand Quotes

“I didn't join the army to shoot Americans. If I wanted to shoot Americans I'd have joined the police.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Medicine often tastes bad, but until we fix the government policies that breed poverty, we have condemned the poor, black, white, and brown to a life of economic slavery.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Long ago, when I was very young, I learned that all political points of view were valid for the people who held them, except for the fanatics on the fringes who are usually incapable of rational thought. Think about the blind men and the elephant. Honorable people can hold very different opinions because they have very different life experiences. Liberals, conservatives, middle-of-the-roaders, big-government types, libertarians, old, young, middle-aged, highly educated or average or uneducated, skilled or unskilled, stupid, average smarts, or genius, they all see a little bit of how the world works and process it into a worldview, and they are all correct. The genius of representative democracy is that it takes all these viewpoints and grinds them up and arrives at some kind of resolution, most of the time. Look at the federal tax code: government policy has tried to accommodate all major and many minor concerns and still raise revenue. Any dictator with half a brain could put a tax code together that is simpler and more efficient and raises more revenue. But the United States still has one of the highest, if not the highest, rate of voluntary tax compliance of any country in the world. So something must be working right.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Another delegate in the House had this to say: “Oklahomans are tired of being ruled by federal bureaucrats and judges, none of them elected. They decide everything from what can be taught in the public schools to what can be served to kids for lunch and whether the kids can have a prayer. They decree that welfare recipients are entitled to a color television and cell phone, all paid for by the working families of Oklahoma, some of whom can afford neither. They claim they have the right to regulate every creek, farm pond, mudhole, and wet spot in America, including here in Oklahoma. We have to pay for their crackpot regulations based on crackpot science, or no science at all. We have to pay the salaries of the bureaucrats and put up with the endless delays and mountainous paperwork. It’s high time to put a stop to bureaucrats and judges running our lives. Let’s take back control. Independence today, tomorrow, and forever.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Abortions, gay marriage, legalized pot, all of that should be decided by the states. Whatever happened to the governmental powers reserved to the states? Let’s declare ourselves independent, give the people of Oklahoma the right to decide which laws they want to live under, and tell Barry Soetoro where to go and what to do to himself when he gets there.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The criticism of the Soetoro administration kept rolling, mixing with a broad criticism of liberalism and federal judges. “I am sick of federal judges deciding that the United States Constitution requires abortion and same-sex marriage,” a state senator from Enid said. “I challenge you to read that document from end to end, and if you can find the word ‘abortion’ in it I will kiss your ass tomorrow at high noon on the capitol steps. Ditto gay marriage. What’s next? Plural marriages? Legalizing infanticide? We’re practically there now. I say it’s time we seized control of our own lives here in Oklahoma. Anyone wanting an abortion or to marry a homosexual partner can move to California or New York. We shouldn’t be forced to put up with it, and my constituents don’t want to. The real problem here is federal judges who enshrine their liberal philosophies in federal decisions instead of letting individual states vote their consciences in open, fair elections.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The president’s chief of staff, Al Grantham, blew up. By reputation, he was one of the most aggressive leftists on the president’s staff, and, although he was white, was of the opinion that white America would have to be conquered. He thought most whites were racists and Nazis.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“I am reminded of the words of that great American patriot Thomas Paine: ‘If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“When Lyndon Johnson was lobbying Congress to pass his Great Society programs, he reportedly said, ‘If we pass this the niggers will all vote Democratic for the next two centuries.’ I don’t know if he said that, but that has been the consequence. People do whatever it takes to get free money, because without an education and job opportunity they can’t make it in America. We have to change that or we won’t want to live in the poor socialist empire that will result.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“As the governor scanned it, Swim explained. “Liberal progressive policies for the last fifty years or so have devastated the poor people of America. Welfare; aid to dependent families; food stamps; essentially free medical care; schools that try to prepare everyone for a four-year college degree, when only a fraction of the poor people will ever want or get one; lack of technical training; the breakdown of the black family—all those things have led us to where we are.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The desire of Barry Soetoro to drastically increase the number of non-white voters in America as quickly as possible to enhance the political power of blacks and Hispanics and Muslims and dilute the power of the whites is another.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“I sat there driving through America wondering about Barry Soetoro and his disciples. I have never trusted people who think they know how everyone else should live, and demand those other people obey. I am not a good follower. Aaugh!”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Charlie Swim wasn’t finished, and his voice was rising. “The black people in America were doing all right, working their way up the ladder, until drugs came along. Then welfare, and payments to single mothers—when you pay poor people not to work and not to marry they are going to take the money. Barry Soetoro had a real chance to do something about what’s taken black America down—drugs, welfare rather than work, kids without wedlock—but he didn’t bother.” Swim’s voice became sarcastic. “Climate change is his cause, and discrimination against Muslims. And expensive golf vacations.” His voice rose to a roar. “I’m sick of this self-proclaimed black messiah!”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Barry Soetoro’s declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason—the need to protect the nation from terrorism—met with widespread skepticism. After all, at least three of the Saturday jihadists had entered with Soetoro’s blessing, over the objections of many politicians and the outraged cries of all those little people out there in the heartland, all those potential victims no one really gave a damn about. His suspension of the writ of habeas corpus went over the heads of most of the millions of people in his audience, since they didn’t know what the writ was or signified. He didn’t stop there. He adjourned Congress until he called it back into session, and announced an indefinite stay on all cases before the courts in which the government was a defendant. His announcement of press and media censorship “until the crisis is past” met with outrage, especially among the talking heads on television, who went ballistic. Within thirty minutes, the listening audience found out what the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus meant: FBI agents arrested select television personalities, including some who were literally on camera, and took them away. Fox News went off the air. Most of the other networks contented themselves with running the tape of Soetoro behind the podium making his announcement, over and over, without comment. During the day FBI agents arrested dozens of prominent conservative commentators and administration critics across the nation, including Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ralph Peters, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Matt Drudge, Thomas Sowell, Howard Stern, and Charles Krauthammer, among others. They weren’t given a chance to remain silent in the future, but were arrested and taken away to be held in an unknown location until Soetoro decided to release them.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Martial law! Rule by decree from the White House! Barry Soetoro, emperor of the United States. People had been whispering for years about the possibility, but like most folks, I dismissed the whisperers as alarmist crackpots. Now, according to Sal Molina, the president’s longtime guru, the crackpots were oracles.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The president is declaring martial law tomorrow. He wants you standing behind him tomorrow at ten o’clock in the press room when he announces it.” Jake Grafton didn’t look surprised. I was flabbergasted, but since I was sitting on the couch against the wall Sal Molina couldn’t see the stunned look on my face unless he turned his head, and he didn’t. “Why?” said Grafton. “These terrorist conspiracies need to be rooted out. We must make sure the American people are safe, and feel safe.” “Horseshit,” Grafton roared, and smacked the desk with both fists. “Pure fucking horseshit! Oh, a million or two jihadists would love to murder Americans, including Soetoro, if they could get here, but if they were a credible threat we’d have heard about it. This is just an excuse for Soetoro to suspend the Constitution and declare himself dictator.” “The American people must be protected, Admiral. The president is taking no chances. No one wants to be the next victim of Islamic terrorists.” “So he is going to rule by decree.” “We face a national emergency.” “And he is going to postpone or cancel the election in November. Isn’t that the real reason for martial law?”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“They found seats. The train was crowded, as usual. The young men looked around and were pleased to see that there were no uniformed police, no armed guards of any type, not that they expected any. This was America, the most under-policed nation on earth.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“American politicians had done little through the years to stem the flood. Hispanic voters wanted their kinsmen to be able to enter the United States regardless of their ability to contribute to the economy or pay their own bills, yet this wasn’t the decisive factor. Farmers and small-business men wanted a source of cheap labor, and were content to pass the true costs, the social costs, on to the taxpayers. Generous public welfare programs also drew millions of Mexicans, more than small business or agriculture could possibly use. Even draining off an eighth of the population didn’t really help Mexico, which found itself racked by turf wars between vicious criminal gangs that smuggled drugs into the United States to supply the richest narcotics market in the world.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“His ranch adjoined the Rio Grande, the river that formed the boundary between the United States and Mexico, with its poverty, caste system, and systemic corruption. So the poor Mexicans migrated. Over thirteen million of them, over a fifth of the Mexican population, had crossed that border illegally in the last fifty years and were grubbing for work in the United States, usually for minimum wage, or living on welfare and food stamps. Illiterate, unskilled, and usually unable to speak English, they flooded the schools with their children, kept blue-collar wages low, and formed an underclass that resisted assimilation and required huge amounts of public assistance dollars.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“A government that loses, or forfeits, the consent of the governed is doomed. Invariably. Inevitably. Irreversibly”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“but until we fix the government policies that breed poverty, we have condemned the poor, black, white, and brown to a life of economic slavery”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Blood is the fertilizer of freedom. Maybe yours and mine.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The hubbub subsided somewhat. Everyone wanted to know what Charlie Swim thought. “The problem here is that Washington politicians haven’t had the guts to impeach Soetoro. And I’ll tell you why. He’s black. They’re afraid of being called racists. If Soetoro had been white, he’d have been thrown out of office years ago. Rewriting the immigration laws; refusing to enforce the drug laws; siccing the IRS on conservatives; having his spokespeople lie to the press, lie to Congress, lie to the UN; rewriting the healthcare law all by himself; thumbing his nose at the courts; having the EPA dump on industry regardless of the costs; admitting hordes of Middle Eastern Muslims without a clue who they were. . . . Race in America—it’s a toxic poison that prevents any real discussion of the issues. It’s the monkey wrench Soetoro and his disciples have thrown into the gears that make the republic’s wheel turn. And now this! Already the liberals are screaming that if you are against martial law, you’re a racist; if anyone calls me a racist, he’s going to be spitting teeth.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“Grafton was silent, looking at nothing for a moment or two. Finally, he said, “Soetoro has been waiting for a terror strike so he could declare martial law, become a dictator, and fix all the things he doesn’t like about America.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand

“The admiral tossed the report at Molina and said to me, “Tell us about it.” “Jade Helm is an exercise about how the government will put down a right-wing uprising, or rebellion, and arrest everyone they think might be sympathetic with the rebels. They’ll use these paramilitary police they have tucked into every government alphabet agency as storm troopers and SS troops—” That was as far as I got. Molina exploded. “Comparing the federal government to Nazis is unacceptable. I am not going to sit here listening to that kind of shit, Carmellini.” I didn’t say anything. Sal Molina couldn’t fire me, and if Grafton did, I was ready to be on my way. Truth was, I had been in the belly of the beast for far too long. “Go on, Tommy,” Grafton prompted, ignoring Molina. “They’ll arrest every prominent Republican they can find and hold them in guarded camps, mainly at military bases. They have computer-generated lists. Gun owners, people who run their mouths on Facebook and Twitter, radio talk-show hosts, editors and publishers of Republican newspapers. . .you know, dangerous enemies of society.”
― Stephen Coonts, Liberty's Last Stand