Let's Stop Spending Money We Don't Have, To Kill People We Don't Know, For Reasons We Don't Understand.

The picture quotes Penn Jillette, but in reality the quote originated with Teller. Penn Jillette:

My point of view on Libertarianism is, first, let’s stop the things we all agree need to be stopped. Let’s stop, as my partner Teller says, “Let’s stop spending money we don’t have to kill people we don’t know for reasons we don’t understand.” Let’s just stop killing people, that’s really expensive. And Bush and Obama did a lot of that.

Then let’s stop… let’s stop all the bailing out of rich people. Let’s stop all the, ‘we’ve got to help people get jobs by giving money to these rich people,’ planning on trickle down from the government. Let’s stop that, you know, as Harry Brown, the Libertarian candidate from 20 years ago used to say, “We spend all this money on tobacco subsidies and all this money educating people not to smoke.” Let’s just stop one of them. We don’t care to begin with, just stop one of them. And I think then, we whittle it down and then, you know, you can make your argument that we still need education, that we still need libraries, that we still need infrastructure. And you’ll probably win with me.

The mistake we make with Libertarianism is, I think, is that we start by saying, “Let’s stop the government from doing really stupid stuff.” And people come back with the argument and say, “So you don’t want bridges?” And you go, “Oh, okay.” Can we argue about bridges after we’re out of Afghanistan? Can we argue about bridges after we’ve stopped killing people in Texas for crimes? Can we argue about bridges after there’s no one in prison for marijuana possession and use? Nobody in prison for prostitution. Can we… once we get all that done, can we then have the argument about bridges?

Can we just stop the stuff that big government’s doing that we really know is bad?