Alan Charles Kors quotes - page 2

The pathology of Western intellectuals has committed them to an adversarial relationship with the culture - free markets and individual rights - that has produced the greatest alleviation of suffering; the greatest liberation from want, ignorance, and superstition; and the greatest increase of bounty and opportunity in the history of all human life. This pathology allows Western intellectuals to step around the Everest of bodies of the victims of Communism without a tear, a scruple, a regret, an act of contrition, or a reevaluation of self, soul, and mind. (Alan Charles Kors)
Let the dead bury the dead? But, the dead can bury no one. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
We are either all equally free, or we are not free. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
How mute we were in 1989 during what should have been at the least the celebration of the fall of the world's most powerful hammer and sickle, symbol of the ultimate human slaughter. If it had been the Third Reich Swastika that had fallen after two generations of Cold War, the joy and catharsis would have lit our cities. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
[F]reedom depended ultimately on the outcome struggle between private property, voluntary production, and voluntary exchange on the one hand, and central planning on the other. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
Socialism almost never has been judged as a goal in value by the experience of communism in power. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
The critical thing, I mean, what I would keep my eye on, is private property. If the state can take away property that you owned, that you've lived on, and give it to a developer because that's good for economic development, not to mention the developer gives lots of money to the local politicians, if private property goes, then in my view there is no safeguard whatsoever, and I would always keep my eye on the relationship with government to private property. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
[S]ocialism with authentic, political power must lead to tyranny and cruelty. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
Socialism, wherever it actually had the means to plan a society, to pursue efficaciously its vision of the abolition of private property, economic inequality, and the allocation of capital and goods by free markets, culminated in the crushing of individual, economic, religious, associational, and political liberty. Its collectivization of agriculture alone led to untold suffering, scarcity, and contempt for property as the fruit of labor. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
[S]ocialism was to reap the cultural, scientific, creative, and communal rewards of abolishing private property and free markets, and to end human tyranny. Using the command of the state, Communism sought to create this socialist society. What in fact occurred was the achievement of power by a group of inhumane despots: Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Castro, Mengistu, Ceausescu, Hoxha, and so on, and so on. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
Socialism is easily understood by any child; it is taking other people's stuff. (Alan Charles Kors)
Kids, who in the 1960s had portraits of Mao and Che on their college walls, the moral equivalent of having hung portrait of Hitler or Goebbels in one's dorm, now teach our children about the moral superiority of their generation. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
Students once asked me, if being a historian, I could predict the future and I said "No, I can't. But, I can tell what you what won't happen.", and someone said "What won't happen? What do you know what won't happen?" and I gave two answers. I said "Russia will never allow the reunification of Germany" and "whites in South Africa will never give up their tyranny without a bloodbath." So, let's not take me as a prophet. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
I think it's almost impossible to impose a free and liberal society from the outside. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
The crucial moment of the end of the Cold War for me was the meeting between Gorbachev and Honecker, tyrant of East Germany, and Honecker said to him, and I'm sure Gorbachev is accurately conveying it, Honecker said to him if you don't send the tanks, "If you don't let us send out the tanks, it will be the fall of communism", and Gorbachev said "I wont send out the tanks, you may not send out the tanks." and I believe in China they will send out the tanks. View quote
Alan Charles Kors
Government programs once established never end, they just never end. The logic is evermore decision made by government and ever fewer decisions made by individuals. Democracy is an extraordinary thing, but Hitler could've been elected democratically. Democracy is not the same as liberty. It is not the same as individual rights. View quote
Alan Charles Kors