G. Edward Griffin

When coercion enters, charity leaves.

G. Edward Griffin (born 7 November 1931) is an American film producer, author, and political lecturer.

Quotes

• We must choose between two paths. Either we conclude that Americans have lost control over their government or we reject this information as a mere distortion of history. In the first case we become advocates of the conspiratorial view of history in the later we endorse the accidental view. It is a difficult choice.
  The reason it is difficult is that we have been conditioned to laugh at conspiracy theories, and few people will risk public ridicule by advocating them. On the other hand, to endorse the accidental view is absurd. Almost all of history is an unbroken trail of one conspiracy after another. Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception.
  • The Creature from Jekyll Island…a second look at the Federal Reserve (1995)

• The so-called charity of collectivism is a perversion of the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan who stopped along the highway to help a stranger who had been robbed and beaten. He even takes the victim to an inn and pays for his stay there until he recovers. Everyone approves of such acts of compassion and charity, but what would we think if the Samaritan had pointed his sword at the next traveler and threatened to kill him if he didn’t also help? If that had happened, I doubt if the story would have made it into the Bible; because, at that point, the Samaritan would be no different than the original robber — who also might have had a virtuous motive. For all we know, he could have claimed that he was merely providing for his family and feeding his children. Most crimes are rationalized in this fashion, but they are crimes nevertheless. When coercion enters, charity leaves.
  Individualists refuse to play this game. We expect everyone to be charitable, but we also believe that a person should be free not to be charitable if he doesn’t want to. If he prefers to give to a different charity than the one we urge on him, if he prefers to give a smaller amount that what we think he should, or if he prefers not to give at all, we believe that we have no right to force him to our will. We may try to persuade him to do so; we may appeal to his conscience; and especially we may show the way by our own good example; but we reject any attempt to gang up on him, either by physically restraining him while we remove the money from his pockets or by using the ballot box to pass laws that will take his money through taxation. In either case, the principle is the same. It’s called stealing.
  • The Chasm, The Future Is Calling (Part One) (2003 - 2009)

• Collectivists would have you believe that individualism is merely another word for selfishness, because individualists oppose welfare and other forms of coercive redistribution of wealth, but just the opposite is true. Individualists advocate true charity, which is the voluntary giving of their own money, while collectivists advocate the coercive giving of other people’s money; which, of course, is why it is so popular.
  • The Chasm, The Future Is Calling (Part One) (2003 - 2009)

External links

• Downloadable audio interview with Scott Horton
• The Reality Zone
• Freedom Force International
• The Coalition for Visible Ballots
• Cancer Cure Foundation

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