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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." . . . Aristotle
QUOTES FOR WEEK, AUGUST 10, 2008
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate
them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,
and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" . . . Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn . . .
"Recall John 8:32, where Jesus says, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.' Is not His
implication that one shall be free only if he submits to the truth? Knowing the truth is not enough. ... If one is standing
on the edge of a thousand-foot drop ... the truth of nature says that one should obey the law of gravity, unless one desires
to give up his freedom to live. True liberty consists of submitting to truth. That is the liberty God wants us to have."
. . . . John W. Ritenbaugh . . .
"Only reason can convince us of these fundamental truths, without a recognition of which there can be no effective
liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily true; that what we like is not
necessarily good; and that all questions are open." . . . Clive Bell (Civilization 1928) . . .
"Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails."
. . . Clarence S. Darrow . . .
"The naked truth is always better than the best dressed lie." . . . Ann Landers . . .
"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority
is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.'' . . . Giordano
Bruno . . .
"For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine, instead, to suit their own desires, they will
gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn away from the truth
and turn aside to myths." . . . Paul (2 Timothy 4) . . .
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." .
. . Upton Sinclair . . .
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad." . . . Aldous Huxley . . .
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." . . . Herbert S.
Agar . . .
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted
as being self-evident." . . . Arthur Schopenhauer . . .
"Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.'' . . . Joseph Joubert
. . .
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
. . . Winston Churchill . . .
"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are
deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer
perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error." . . . John Stuart Mill . . .
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." . . . Thomas Jefferson
. . .
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." . . . Winston Churchill
. . .
"Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children." . . . Oliver Wendell Holmes
. . .
Have a good weekend,
Grant
FYI: I have changed email providers my new address is : gwkuhns@yahoo.com
However, my current address will remain active for a while.
QUOTES FOR WEEK, AUGUST 3, 2008
"Common sense is not so common." . . . Voltaire . . .
"The extraordinary progress of the world since the Middle Ages has not been due to the mere expenditure of human energy,
nor even to the flights of human genius, for men had worked hard since the remotest times, and some of them had been of surpassing
intellect. No, it has been due to the accumulation of capital. That accumulation permitted labor to be organized economically
and on large scale, and thus greatly enhanced its productiveness. It provided the machinery
that gradually diminished human drudgery, and liberated the spirit of the worker, who had formerly been almost indistinguishable
from a mule." . . . H. L. Mencken . . .
"For millennia, governments restricted the liberty of people to move freely, choose their work, keep their earnings,
spend it, and pass it on as they wished. In medieval Europe, labor guilds blocked entry to trades and professions. Guilds,
not customers, determined which firms would thrive and which would perish. In many places there were road, bridge, river,
and town tolls throttling trade. Defenders of economic restrictions claimed that if people were free to make their own choices
there would be chaos. But in the eighteenth century, French and Scottish thinkers realized that economic restrictions enriched
special interests at the expense of everyone else. Millions would be better off if they were set free. Society as a whole
would do just fine, because in free markets, people have plenty of incentives to seek each other's voluntary cooperation."
. . . Jim Powell [The Triumph of Liberty] . . .
"Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.
People ask, Why is there poverty in the world? Its a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition... The interesting
question isnt Why is there poverty? Its Why is there wealth? Or: Why is there prosperity here but not there? At the end of
the day, the first answer is capitalism, rightly understood. That is to say: free markets, private property, the spirit of
entrepreneurialism and the conviction that the fruits of your labors are your own... In large measure our wealth isnt the
product of capitalism, it is capitalism. And yet we hate it. Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity.
The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His
food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely
more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because,
unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual... Meanwhile, billions have ridden capitalism out of
poverty. And yet the children of capitalism still whine." . . . Jonah Goldberg . . .
"Too often, people and nations are judged harshly because their actions fall short of some imaginary, moral ideal.
Capitalism may be the best economic system, but it's still considered bad because it doesn't make every person equally
rich and successful." . . . John Hawkins . . .
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal
sharing of miseries." . . . Winston Churchill . . .
"The logicand empirical evidenceof economics is pretty clear: free market capitalism works when free people make free
decisions in a free society. Such societies are not only the wealthiest and most successful in the world today, but in my
view the most morally decent that have ever existed." . . . David Strom . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JULY 27, 2008 "Politics
is evil. Ten years ago I thought politics was misguided. But the events of the past decade indeed, of the past 10 or a dozen
decades have proven me wrong. The sum and substance of politics was expressed in the 1860s by Nicholas Chernyshevskii, a
prescient Russian radical: Man is god to man.' And politics violates the other nine commandments as well. Politics could
hardly function without bearing false witness. Likewise, without taking the Lord's name in vain. This is especially true,
given that, in politics, the Lord who is so loosely sworn by is Mankind. In the modern era politics has taken the place of
mere tyranny. The result has been more killing in one century than in all the preceding centuries combined. Covetousness and
stealing define redistributive politics. Without redistribution politics would have no political support. Graven image is
as good a name as any for the fiat money by which politics operates. Politics' insistence upon involvement in every human
activity, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is more anti-Sabbatarian than golf. The Social Security system is no way to honor
thy father and thy mother. And as for adultery, there was, and there may be still, Bill Clinton... Observe our national politics.
Observe politics around the world. Observe politics through the ages. Does it look like God's handiwork? When it comes
to having a role in politics, that would be the Other Fellow." . . . P. J. O'Rourke . . . "Good people,
once they become politicians, frequently turn into scoundrels. This is the general rule because people in government pursue
their self-interest just as private individuals do. They aren't magically transformed into altruistic beings when they
gain political power. They pursue more power, bigger budgets, and bigger bureaucracies, and they do everything to maintain
there grip on power. Constitutional restraints, the general rules within which politicians operate such as spending limits,
tax limits, and term limits are the only way to limit government power." . . . James M. Buchanan . . . [Economics Nobel
laureate, 1986] . . . "He who wants to improve conditions must propagate a new mentality, not merely a new institution."
. . . Ludwig von Mises . . . "Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." . . . William
Penn . . . "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." . . . H. L. Mencken . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JULY 20, 2008 "When
I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off." . . . Helvetius
. . . "If you ever injected truth into politics you would have no politics." . . . Will Rogers . . . "The
deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." . . . Montesquieu
. . . "Gold, not long ago hailed as the basic staple and groundwork of any sound monetary system, is now regularly
denounced as a fetish' or, as in the case of Keynes, as a barbarous relic.' Well, gold is indeed a relic' of barbarism
in one sense; no barbarian' worth his salt would ever have accepted the phoney paper and bank credit that we modern sophisticates
have been bamboozled into using as money." . . . Murray N. Rothbard . . . "Money is not an invention of the
state. It is not the product of a legislative act. The sanction of political authority is not necessary for its existence."
. . . Carl Menger . . . "The first conference hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute was on the gold standard.
How well I can recall the names we were called in Washington DC. Reactionaries, Neanderthals, irrelevant to the modern debate,
worshipers of a barbarous relic, throwbacks, pipe dreamers, and the rest: all designed to make us shut up about the most important
issue in modern political life. ... No one is in a position to restrain the president, the congress, or the courts so long
as the dollar is as printable as paper. Matters of fiscal policy become purely illusory. This is the most dishonest form of
finance there is. It makes a mockery of elections, debates, and just about every other aspect of government. In the end, the
strongest case for the gold standard isn't limited to economic standards. It is a guardian of freedom itself." .
. . Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. . . . "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings
from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit
spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as
a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward
the gold standard." . . . Alan Greenspan . . . "A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one
can take from you." . . . Ramsey Clark . . . "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."
. . . James Madison . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JULY 13, 2008
"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." . . . Hubert Humphrey . . . "Everyone
has a moral compass, but some are more susceptible to magnetic storms than others." . . . Ed Crane . . . "If ignorance
is truly bliss, then why do so many Americans need Prozac?" . . . Dave McGowan . . . "He who is unaware of his ignorance
will be only misled by his knowledge." . . . Richard Whately . . . "I would never apply for a permit to own any gun,
any more than I would apply for a permit to own a Bible, or Torah, or printing press, or to obtain legal counsel, or to assemble
with other citizens. Of course, those who think I should, are only revealing that their contempt for the Constitution isn't
limited to the Second Amendment." . . . Brian Puckett" . . . "Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now."
. . . Steven Wright . . . "A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money." . . . W. C. Fields . . . "Painting:
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic." . . . Ambrose Bierce . . . "Giving
money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" . . . P. J. O'Rourke . . . "The mainstream
today defines 'isolationism' as not allowing our domestic and international policy to be determined by the European Union
or the United Nations." . . . Sterling Rome . . . "At one time, there were more guns than lawyers in this country. Now
look at the mess we are in." . . . Dick Boland . . . "A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong,
which is but saying that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." . . . Alexander Pope . . . "Nothing astonishes men
so much as common sense and plain dealing." . . . Ralph Waldo Emerson . . . "Big business never pays a nickel in taxes,
according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes." . . . Dave Barry
. . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JULY 6, 2008 "Ignorance more frequently
begets confidence than does knowledge." . . . Charles Darwin . . . "It's clear McCain does not understand how markets
work or why they are good. He certainly doesn't understand the role of speculators and other middlemen. He's not alone. Speculators
are among the most reviled people in history. When they were members of ethnic minorities, they have been easy targets for
economically illiterate people who were jealous of their success. McCain wonders "whether speculation has been going on."
He needn't wonder. Speculation always goes on. Speculation means to take a risk on what the future holds in hopes of making
a profit. The world's stock and commodities markets are based on this principle." . . . John Stossel . . . "Above this
race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch
over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent
if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
childhood. . . . For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only
arbiter of that happiness . . . it facilitates their pleasures, manages their principle concerns, directs their industry,
regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking
and all the trouble of living?" . . . Alexis de Tocqueville (circa 1835) . . . "When investigating America's assortment
of energy problems, a common theme starts to emerge: the more you look around, the more you'll find government taxes, regulations,
and subsidies that distort the market, raise prices, and increase our dependence on dictators thousands of miles away." .
. . Kay Bailey Hutchison . . . "The problem isn't a shortage of fuel; it's a surplus of government." . . . Ronald Reagan
. . . "I believe that America's free market has been the engine of America's great progress. It's created a prosperity that is the
envy of the world. It's led to a standard of living unmatched in history. And it has provided great rewards to the innovators
and risk takers who have made America a beacon for science and technology and discovery. We are all in this together. From
CEOs to shareholders, from financiers to factory workers, we all have a stake in each other's success because the more Americans
prosper the more America prospers." . . . Barack Obama (2007) . . . "We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want
and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. – That's
not leadership. That's not going to happen." . . . Barack Obama (2008) . . . Idealism is fine, but as it approaches
reality, the costs become prohibitive. . . . William F. Buckley, Jr. . . . "Political tags ... such as royalist, communist,
democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth ... are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically
into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." . . . Robert Heinlein . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JUNE 29, 2008
"The cause of America
is in a great measure the cause of all mankind." . . . Thomas Paine . . .
"More than 200 years
ago Thomas Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence committed themselves to the cause of American
liberty with these words: ‘And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.’ And they weren’t kidding.
Twelve signers had their homes ransacked and burned by the British. Nine more died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary
War. None, however, lost their honor. We honor their legacy when we devote our time and money to the defense of freedom in
our own time." . . . David Boaz . . .
"Individuality is the
aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights
of others , the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner." .
. . James Fenimore Cooper . . .
"Thoreau believed there
was a moral imperative to mind one's own business. ... He insisted that to achieve human dignity, people must take responsibility
for their lives and maintain independence, which is undermined by government handouts." . . . Jim Powell [The Triumph of Liberty]
. . .
"I heartily accept the
motto, ‘The government is best which governs least,' and I should like to see it acted upon more rapidly and systematically.
Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe: ‘That government is best which governs not at all;' and
when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." . . . Henry David Thoreau . . .
"Those who will not be
governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." . . . William Penn . . .
"A general dissolution
of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While
the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their
liberties to the first external or internal invader." . . . Samuel Adams . . .
"There is a higher law
than the Constitution." . . . William H. Seward . . .
"We have no government
armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge,
or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made
only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." . . . John Adams . . .
"With freedom comes responsibility
... and if you try to separate one from the other you end up with a pile of shavings and two useless pieces." . . . Garry
Reed . . .
"Liberty: The freedom
to do what I want; the responsibility to do what is right." . . . Jim Welker . . .
"Society can do nothing
for the individual which he can not better do for himself; in fact, society can do nothing for the individual." . . . Frank
Chodorov . . .
"A man’s first
duty is to his own conscience and honor – the party of the country comes second to that, and never first. It is not
parties that make or save countries or that build them to greatness – it is clean men, clean ordinary citizens." . .
. Samuel Longhorne Clements – aka, Mark Twain . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JUNE 22, 2008
"The abstract concept of human liberty is one of the mightiest and most important intellectual attainments of our species.
It provides us with a comprehensible, visible star of such celestial magnitude that all who wish can see it. As such, it serves
the function of Polaris for those who comprehend its use. You can steer your life by it, even if you cannot reach it. But
until you can see it cleanly, despite the mist of multitudes, the storm of events, the scudding clouds of things, until it
stands out stark and bright in your own sky, you will probably find that you are pursuing some flickering lesser purpose.
Should that be the case, the problem is readily resolved. Take a new sighting and steer closer to the full abstract meaning
of the word." . . . Robert LeFevre . . .
"Freiheit stirbt in kleinen teilen." (Freedom dies in little pieces.) . . . German proverb . . .
"When you understand that ownership means control, you can quickly be overwhelmed with the realization that we actually
control very little about our lives today, even some of our most personal actions. We've gradually allowed government to dictate
what is 'safe,' and even what is moral . . . wrapped up in the lie that it is all for 'the common good.' We've allowed ourselves
to believe whatever they tell us, especially through the popular press and other media. Far too few people ever consider that
information critically or make any attempt to verify it from a non-government and truly independent source." . . . Susan Callaway
. . .
"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings. Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking.
Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs. The Jews have come from tragedy and forced the world
to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling. We have
not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not
seen a single Jew protest by killing people. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people
and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind,
before they demand that humankind respect them." . . . Dr. Wafa Sultan , Syrian-American psychiatrist . . .
"Attack another's rights and you destroy your own." . . . John Jay Chapman . . .
"All religions united with government are more or less inimical to liberty. All, separated from government, are compatible
with liberty." . . . Henry Clay . . .
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." . . . Thomas Jefferson . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JUNE 15, 2008
"Maturity does not come with age, but with the accepting of responsibility for one's actions. The lack of effective, functioning
fathers is the root cause of America's social, economic and spiritual crises." . . . Dr. Edwin L. Cole . . .
"... the demagogues of big government are back with their lies and their empty promises. And what do we do about it? I
don't know. I'm too stupid to answer that question. But in fairness to myself, I am not just stupid I am a student of stupidity.
I'm a political reporter. .... The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically.
It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.". . . P. J. O'Rourke . . .
"We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress
we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money." . . . Col. David S. (Davy) Crockett , Rep. Tennessee [before
the House of Representatives, circa 1827] . . .
"It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is
to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence." . . . Charles A.
Beard . . .
"Contrary to popular belief, adding earmarks to a bill does not increase federal spending by even one penny. Spending levels
for the appropriation bills are established before Congress adds a single earmark to the bill. The question of whether the
money spent is determined by earmarks or by another means does not effect the total amount of spending. ... we must not allow
earmarking reform to distract us from what should be our main priority restricting federal spending by returning the government
to its constitutional limitations." . . . Dr. Ron Paul, Rep. Texas [before the House of Representatives, April 2008] . . .
"Unfortunately, it is revolutionary to talk about obeying the Constitution." . . . Ron Paul . . .
"Truths and roses have thorns about them." . . . Henry David Thoreau . . .
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights,
is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down." . . . Frederick Douglass . . .
"Of all the strange crimes' that human beings have legislated out of nothing, blasphemy' is the most amazing." . . . Robert
Heinlein . . .
"Should I keep back my opinions through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of
treason toward my country and an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings."
. . . Patrick Henry . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JUNE 8, 2008
"Never can we relax by hoping that the good intentions of big government proponents will protect us from the evils of government
power that intimidate us all. All politicians, from total statists Marxists and Fascists to average conservatives and liberals
of today's Congress, devoutly promise that all their actions are based on good intentions. But it doesn't matter. Bad ideas
regarding the nature and role of government breed bad results and suffering occurs nevertheless. Twisted logic, Machiavellian
justifications, excuse making, and short-run benefits can never justify the removal of one iota of liberty from any one person
if we intend to live in a free society." . . . Ron Paul . . .
"The true villain in our having to cough up $60, $70 or $80 to fill our gas tanks is the U.S. Congress caught in the grip
of environmental extremists. But if reality is too difficult to swallow, we can continue to blame and support the congressional
attack on oil executives, turn food into oil and think of other crackpot solutions'." . . . Walter E. Williams . . .
"We focus on the negative and our politicians stoke our unhappiness all the more. They bribe us with our own money, promising
to expand the government to address the grievances that they promote. But we ought to be careful what we wish for." . . .
Tom Purcell . . .
"Political power has been the biggest threat to liberty everywhere. Throughout history, governments have killed more than
300 million people. During the twentieth century alone, governments killed some 170 million people. Only about 38 million
were battle deaths. The great bulk of deaths resulted from mass murder in the name of political, ethnic,
racial or religious doctrines. These crimes were anticipated by some of the most astute political thinkers, who deserve to
be better known." . . . Jim Powell (The Triumph of Liberty) . . .
"If you would rather be part of the solution than part of the problem, you should ask only one thing of government: To
be left alone!" . . . Robert J. Ringer (Restoring the American Dream) . . .
"What could possibly go wrong?' That's what members of Congress probably thought when they started shoveling bigger subsidies
at ethanol producers. Now, with food riots erupting in some parts of the world, we have our answer: A lot." . . . Edward Feulner
. . .
"The era of big government is so not over, as Bill Clinton claimed it was in 1996. It is just beginning and increasingly
the political contests seem to be about who will manage its growth, not who will reduce its size, cost and reach." . . . Cal
Thomas . . .
"I always voted at my party's call / And I never thought of thinking for myself at all." . . . William S. Gilbert (Gilbert
and Sullivan's, H. M. S. Pinafore) . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JUNE 1, 2008
"Myths aren't lies. They are beliefs that people adopt because they have an air of plausibility. But myths aren't true,
and they often get in the way during serious problem-solving." . . . Jay Greene . . .
"A faction is a number of citizens ... who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse
to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." . . . James Madison, Federalist
No. 10 . . .
"Every time a person fills up at the pump, he should visualize the billions of barrels of oil that are
waiting in Alaska, and the billions of barrels of oil that are waiting in the Dakotas and Montana, and the billions of barrels
of oil that are waiting just off shore and curse the environmental extremists who are forcing him to pay far more for his
transportation than is necessary." . . . Henry Lamb . . .
"Five of the ten hottest years in US history were in the 1920s and 1930s. Average global temperatures stabilized in 1998,
and then fell 1.1 degrees F. the past twelve months, satellite measurements show. Ice core data demonstrate that, over thousands
of years, rising temperatures preceded higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, by hundreds of years the exact opposite
of climate chaos hypotheses." . . . Paul Driessen . . .
"[Computer] models reflect the assumptions and hypotheses that go into them and our still limited understanding of complex,
turbulent climate processes that involve the sun, oceans, land masses and atmosphere. They do a poor job of dealing with the
effects of water vapor, precipitation and high cirrus clouds on temperatures and climate, because the underlying physics arent
well understood." . . . Richard Lindzen [ MIT meteorology professor] . . .
"Climate scientists still dont understand the temperature roller coaster of the last century, as carbon dioxide levels
rose steadily: temperatures climbed from 1910 to 1945, fell between 1945 and 1975, and increased again from 1975 to 1998."
. . . Syun-Ichi Akasofu [founding director of the International Arctic Research Center] . . .
"Too many journalists belong to the First Church of Global Warming. Earth's climate is ridiculously complex, and much of
the science supporting global warming remains uncertain and/or hotly debated. It's one thing for Greenpeace, Mother Jones
magazine and other secular arms of the religious left to believe Doomsday is nigh. They accept global warming as a matter
of faith, not science, and see it as a way to achieve political power. But serious journalists are supposed to know better."
. . . Bill Steigerwald . . .
Well, the carbon dioxide is going up. And remember that carbon dioxide is plant food in the fundamental sense. All of life
depends on the fact carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere. So, we're fortunate it's not a toxic gas. But, on the other hand,
what is the climate doing? And when we build - and I'm one of the few people in the world that actually builds these climate
data sets - we don't see the catastrophic changes that are being promoted all over the place. For example, I suppose CNN did
not announce two weeks ago when the Antarctic sea ice extent reached its all-time maximum, even though, in the Arctic in the
North Pole, it reached its all-time minimum. . . . Dr. John Christy [University of Alabama, Earth System Science Center] .
. .
"Back in the 1970s, the hysteria was about global cooling and the prospect of a new ice age. A National Academy of Sciences
report back then led Science magazine to conclude in its March 1, 1975, issue that a long ice age is a real possibility. According
to the April 28, 1975, issue of Newsweek, the earths climate seems to be cooling down. A note of urgency was part of the global-cooling
hysteria then as much as it is part of todays global-warming hysteria. According to the February, 1973, issue of Science Digest,
Once the freeze starts, it will be too late." . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is
causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earths atmosphere and disruption of the Earths
climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial
effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth." . . . National Academy of Sciences petition, signed
by 31,072 scientists, as of May, 2008. . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MAY 25, 2008
"We never cease to be amazed by the inability of some to feel shame and their lack of reverence for America and those who
defend its freedoms, including the right to be stupid. The cover of the April 21 issue of Time, taking the famous Joe Rosenthal
photo of Marines planting our flag on the blood-soaked island of Iwo Jima and replacing our flag with a tree, qualifies for
obscenity of the year. It echoes the greenie theme first advanced by Al Gore in his book Earth In The Balance that the internal
combustion engine is the greatest threat in the history of mankind. Gore and Bill Clinton have both said that global warming
is ultimately a greater threat than terrorism... This trivializing of the sacrifice of American blood and treasure to defend
freedom ignores the fact that in World War II we faced a real enemy with a terrible agenda. The bombs that fell on Pearl Harbor
were quite real, not the output of some badly fed computer model. Global warming may or may not be a
significant threat to the United States, Tim Holbert, a spokesman for the American Veterans Center, [said]: The Japanese Empire
on February 1945, however, certainly was, and this photo trivializes the most recognizable moment of one of the bloodiest
battles in U.S. history." . . . Investors Business Daily . . .
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." . .
. George Orwell . . .
"America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition
than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat." . . . James Madison . . .
"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." . . . Nathan Hale . . .
"This flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as
a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation... Though silent, it speaks to
us speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us, and of the records they wrote upon it." . . . Woodrow
Wilson . . .
"Of our three national holidays, for me, Memorial Day is the most significant. The Fourth of July celebrates our independence.
Harkening back to our beginnings, Thanksgiving recalls our religious roots. But it's the blood and guts (the suffering and
sacrifice) symbolized by Memorial Day that made America possible. To make ideals real and to protect and preserve them requires
payment in the coin of strife and death.". . . Don Feder . . .
"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." . . . Calvin Coolidge .
. .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MAY 18, 2008
"What's wrong with saying: You're about to lose your house because you got a subprime loan to buy a house $300,000 more
than what you could afford. Sorry, but it's your own fault?" . . . John Hawkins . . .
For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance. . . . Adlai E. Stevenson . . .
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty,
the duty to take the consequences." . . . P. J. O'Rourke . . .
"Ninety-eight percent of borrowers are not in foreclosure. Only a small percentage of them are even late in payments. Politicians
love a "crisis." John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all think that the government should bail out homeowners who
can't pay their mortgages. When they say the government should do this, they mean the taxpayers, including those who are paying
their mortgages. They also think the government should regulate the lending and investment industries further. Why? Because
"crisis" justifies making big government bigger." . . . John Stossel . . .
"If everything's a crisis, then where's the crisis?" . . . Arthur Herzog . . .
Making economic policies on the basis of human interest stories which is what politicians increasingly do, especially
in election years has a big down side for those people who do not happen to be in the categories chosen to write human interest
stories about. The general thrust of human interest stories about people with economic problems, whether they are college
students or people faced with mortgage foreclosures, is that the government ought to come to their rescue, presumably because
the government has so much money and these individuals have so little. . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
Failures are like skinned knees, painful but superficial. . . . Ross Perot . . .
"The goal of the progressives as it emerges from the record of the past decades was to smuggle this country into welfare
statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting
these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named.
Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption,
leading to a fait accompli." . . . Ayn Rand . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MAY 11, 2008
"The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit
the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that
we ourselves have set up." . . . Milton Friedman . . .
"Those who want the government to provide subsidies to help meet the high cost of college seem not to consider whether
government subsidies might have contributed to the high cost of college in the first place." . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
"Government schooling has promoted superstitious servile reverence for a sacrosanct State. The American people once had
their liberties; they had them all; but they could not rest until they had turned them over to a prehensile crew of professional
politicians." . . . Albert Jay Nock . . .
"The true origin and purpose of public education is not so much education as we think of it, but indoctrination in the
civic religion. This explains why the civic elite is so suspicious of homeschooling and private schooling: it's not fear of
low test scores that is driving this, but the worry that these kids aren't learning the values that the state considers important."
. . . Murray N. Rothbard . . .
"A primary purpose of the educational system is to train schoolchildren in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to
the state and the nation ..." . . . California Appellate Court . . .
"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" . . . Proverbs 22:6 . . .
"The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mothers care, shall be in state institutions
at state expense." . . . Karl Marx . . .
"For more than 220 years - from the 1620s to the 1840s - most American schooling was independent of government control,
subsidy, and influence. From this educational freedom the American Republic was born. . . . In their never-ending effort to
help homeschoolers, public school bureaucrats periodically try to increase homeschooling regulations. This makes K-12 education
perhaps a unique endeavor: it's a field in which the failures regularly, and astonishingly, insist that they should be able
to regulate the successful." . . . Bruce N. Shortt, Ph.D. . . .
"I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob." . . . William F. Buckley, Jr.
. . .
"No Child Left Behind" can't work. The only way to leave no child behind is to have everybody stand still. A slogan like
"No Political Pundit Left Behind" wouldn't work either. Somebody has to be last to learn that freedom works. We'll just have
to leave some pundits behind." . . . Michael Kelly . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MAY 4, 2008
"The grand paradox of our society is this: we magnify individual rights but we minimize individual capacities." . . . Joseph
Wood Krutch . . .
"Here are a million human beings who would all die in a few days if supplies of all sorts did not flow into [Paris]. It
staggers the imagination to try to comprehend the vast multiplicity of objects that must pass through its gates tomorrow,
if its inhabitants are to be preserved from the horrors of famine. . . . And yet all are sleeping peacefully at this moment,
without being disturbed for a single instant by the idea of so frightful a prospect. What, then, is the resourceful and secret
power that governs the amazing regularity of such complicated movements, a regularity in which everyone has such implicit
faith, although his prosperity and his very life depend upon it? That power is an absolute principle, the principle of free
exchange. We put our faith in that inner light which Providence has placed in the hearts of all men, and to which has been
entrusted the preservation and unlimited improvement of our species, a light we term self-interest, which is so
illuminating, so constant, and so penetrating, when it is left free of every hindrance." . . . Frederic Bastiat [1845] . .
.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard
to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own
necessities but of their advantages." . . . Adam Smith . . .
"The modern Welfare State is merely a complicated arrangement by which nobody pays for the education of his own children,
but everybody pays for the education of everybody else's children; by which nobody pays his own medical bills, but everybody
pays everybody else's medical bills; by which nobody provides for his own old-age security, but everybody pays for everybody
else's old-age security; and so on. [Frederic] Bastiat exposed the illusive character of all these welfare schemes more than
a century ago, in his aphorism: The State is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody
else.'" . . . Henry Hazlitt . . .
The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those
other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help people, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing
their votes. . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those
who try to tell them the truth." . . . H. L. Mencken . . .
"Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties,
by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural
reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price
of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly
do the rest." . . . Thomas B. Macaulay [circa 1844] . . .
"Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: While democracy seeks
equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." . . . Alexis de Tocqueville . . .
"Democracy is the road to socialism." . . . Karl Marx . . .
"Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests." . . . Lord Palmerston . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, APRIL 27, 2008
"Everything that deceives can be said to enchant." . . . Plato . . .
"I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons." . . . Will Rogers . . .
"New Deal began like the Salvation Army, promising to save humanity. It ended like the Salvation Army, by running flop
houses and disturbing the peace." . . . H. L. Mencken . . .
"A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one." . . . J. P. Morgan . . .
"The study of law sharpens the mind by narrowing it." . . . Edmond Burke . . .
"It is clear... that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical
warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." . . . Hillary Clinton [2002] . . .
"It's not a lie if you believe it." . . . George Costanza [Seinfeld] . . .
"The mistakes in Iraq are not the responsibility of our men and women in uniform but of their Commander in Chief. From
the decision to rush to war without allowing the weapons inspectors to finish their work or waiting for diplomacy to run its
course." . . . Hillary Clinton [2008] . . .
"It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as folly." . . . Winston
Churchill . . .
"In statesmanship, get the formalities right, never mind the moralities." . . . Mark Twain . . .
"In the early decades of the Republic, equality meant equality before God; liberty meant the liberty to shape one's own
life....A very different meaning of equality has emerged in the United States in recent decades equality of outcome. Everyone
should have the same level of living or of income, should finish the race at the same time. Equality of outcome is in clear
conflict with liberty. The attempt to promote it has been a major source of bigger and bigger government, and of government-imposed
restrictions on our liberty." . . . Milton Friedman . . .
"Government now resembles an irresponsible parent, spending the children's wages and inheritance as if there were no tomorrow."
. . . Cal Thomas . . .
"I really don't know that much about the economy." . . . John McCain . . .
"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution." . . . Oscar Wilde . . .
"Baseball has arrived in the nick of time to serve an urgent national need. It gives Americans something
to think about other than super-delegates." . . . George Will . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, APRIL 20, 2008
"Tax Freedom Day [April 23, 2008] is the first day of the year in which a nation as a whole has theoretically earned enough
income to fund its annual tax burden. It is annually calculated in the United States by the Tax Foundation." . . . Wikipedia
. . .
"Most of what Congress is constitutionally authorized to spend for is listed in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution
and includes: coining money, establish Post Offices, support Armies and a few other activities. Todays federal budget is over
$3 trillion dollars. I challenge anyone to find specific constitutional authority for at least $2 trillion of it. That includes
Social Security, Medicare, farm and business handouts, education, prescription drugs and a host of other federal expenditures.
Americans who have become accustomed to living at the expense of another American would not want Congress to obey the Constitution,
especially if it left out their favorite handout." . . . Walter Williams . . .
"To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder." . . . Benjamin Disraeli . . .
"A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector
of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny." . . . Calvin Coolidge . . .
"When the federal government is held to its proper constitutionally limited functions, tax reform will take care of itself."
. . . Ron Paul . . .
"Im proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money." . . . Authur
Godfrey . . .
"Lord, the money we do spend on Government and its not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money
twenty years ago." . . . Will Rogers . . .
"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution
and no property can bear taxation." . . . John Marshall . . .
"The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is... legal plunder to be identified?
Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not
belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without
committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay... If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply
and develop into a system." . . . Frederic Bastiat . . .
"As a taxpayer, you are required to be fully in compliance with the United States Tax Code, which is currently the size
and weight of the Budweiser Clydesdales." . . . Dave Barry . . .
"I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word fair in connection with income tax policies." . . . William F.
Buckley Jr. . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, APRIL 13, 2008
"The Constitution is not a living organism. It's a legal document." . . . Antonin Scalia . . .
"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous
that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are
promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow."
. . . Alexander Hamilton and James Madison [Federalist No. 62, 1788] . . .
"No subject is so much discussed today or so little understood as inflation. The politicians in Washington talk of it
as if it were some horrible visitation from without, over which they had no control like a flood, a foreign invasion, or
a plague. It is something they are always promising to "fight" if Congress or the people will only give them the "weapons"
or "a strong law" to do the job. Yet the plain truth is that our political leaders have brought on inflation by their own
money and fiscal policies. They are promising to fight with their right hand the conditions brought on with their left." .
. . Henry Hazlitt . . .
"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to
say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't
do it again.'". . . Ben S. Bernanke [At the Conference to Honor Milton Friedman, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois,
November 8, 2002 , On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday ] . . .
"When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" . . . John Maynard Keynes . . .
"There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production
and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others;
this is the political means. The State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known
to history originated in any other manner. The State, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely antisocial.
It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State
may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above
justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing." . . . Albert Jay Nock . . .
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments
of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." . . . James Madison . . .
"The Constitution is a pretty simple document. It says that the federal government has very limited authority.
And it goes on to say that every authority not granted to the federal government through it is reserved by the States and
the people." . . . J. J. Jackson
QUOTES FOR WEEK, APRIL 6, 2008
"Who ever said that it is the responsibility of government to make life easy?" . . . Jim Geraghty . . .
"What gives the new despotism its peculiar effectiveness is indeed its liaison with humanitarianism,
but beyond this fact its capacity for entering into the smallest details of human life." . . . Robert Nisbet . . .
"The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity." . . . James Fenimore Cooper . . .
"A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is." . . . Karl
Krauss . . .
"How can limited government and fiscal restraint be equated with lack of compassion for the poor? How can a tax break that
puts a little more money in the weekly paychecks of working people be seen as an attack on the needy? Since when do we in
America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classesone rich, one poorboth in a permanent state
of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien
and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?"
. . . Ronald Reagan . . .
"New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody's castle-roof
perforated." . . . Henry David Thoreau . . .
"I know of no other means of quickening any commerce whatever than by granting to it the greatest liberty and the freedom
from all taxes." . . . A. R. Jacques Turgot . . .
"Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of affluence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy
taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments
which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavor to arrest the progress of society
at a particular point . . . are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical." . . . Adam Smith . . .
An age is called Dark,' not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. . . . James A. Michener
. . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MARCH 30, 2008
"I favor a policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of
this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar that we save means that their life will
be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form." . . . Calvin Coolidge . . .
"These days, there has been much finger-pointing at a system that allowed lenders to issue mortgages that violated the
basic tenets of fiscal responsibility. How is it, people now ask, that banks could issue so many loans to buyers for homes
they could not afford? How indeed? Washington continues to authorize retirement and medical benefits without putting aside
the money to pay for them. ... In real dollars, that means every American owns a $175,000 share of the federal debt. It's
as if you have a second mortgage for a home you don't own." . . . Debra J. Saunders . . .
"If industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the
most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature." . . .
James Madison . . .
"From top to bottom, government wants us to be afraid, needs us to be afraid, invests greatly in us being afraid. Were
we ever to stop being afraid of the government itself, and the fears it fosters, the government would shrivel and die, and
the host would disappear for the tens of millions of parasites in the United States not to speak of the vast number of others
in the rest of the world who now sap the public's wealth and energies directly and indirectly by means of government." .
. . Robert Higgs . . .
"Refrain from using the word Bolshevism, or Fascism, Hitlerism, Marxism, Communism and you have no trouble getting acceptance
for the principle that underlies them all alike the principle that the State is everything and the individual is nothing.
Probably not many realize how the rapid centralization of government in America has fostered a kind of organized pauperism.
The big industrialized states contribute most of the Federal revenue, and the bureaucracy distributes it in the pauper states
wherever it will do the most good in a political way. All of this is due to the iniquitous theory of taxation with which this
country has been thoroughly indoctrinated that a man should be taxed according to his ability to pay, instead of according
to the value of the privileges he obtains from the government" . . . Albert Jay Nock [1932] . . .
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" . . . Dosteovsky
[Grand Inquisitor] . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MARCH 23, 2008
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept
Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who
was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic
on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.
Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can
spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing
nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." . . . C. S. Lewis
. . .
"When all government in little as in great things shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render
powerless the checks provided of one government on another." . . . Thomas Jefferson . . .
"It is naive to think that government can hold the power to grant privileges without also setting off a mad scramble by
special interests to get a piece of it. All the good-government legislation in the world cannot prevent unsavory dealings
between the wielders of power and those who seek to profit by it. To think otherwise is to ignore human nature. There is one
way to rid the political system of this sort of corruption: severely restrict government power as the founders intended. Only
when we eliminate the state's ability to meddle in business will business stop meddling in government. A genuine free market,
unburdened by government interference, is the route to cleaner politics." . . . John Stossel . . .
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." . . .
P. J. O'Rourke . . .
"One difference between politicians and businessmen is what they want. Politicians want votes. Businessmen want profits.
There's not the least reproach in wanting either one. The relevant question is: Which of these two aims has more to do with
the satisfaction of customer needs? And the answer is of course, business. A businessman is no smarter, perhaps, than a politician.
He's just more cued in to matters economic. Once the politician has your vote, you recede from view, at least until the next
election. The businessman, by contrast, wants your business every day." . . . Bill Murchison . . .
"Despair is inappropriate for a culture as buoyant as our own." . . . William F. Buckley, Jr. . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MARCH 16, 2008
"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." . . . Samuel Adams . . .
Character is what we have to depend on when we entrust power over ourselves, our children and our society to government
officials. We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou. . .
. Thomas Sowell . . .
"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." . . . Benjamin Franklin . .
.
"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." . . . Charles de Gaulle . . .
"Vote for the man who promises least; hell be the least disappointing." . . . Bernard Baruch . . .
"Vote, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country." . . . Ambrose
Bierce [The Devils Dictionary] . . .
"The people never give up their freedom, except under some delusion." . . . James Madison . . .
"Obama pours out potent nothing and each listener gives it his own special something." . . . Jon Sanders . . .
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between ones real and ones declared aims, one turns
as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink." . . . George Orwell . .
.
"In post-Judeo-Christian America, the sports club is the new church. Global warming is the new religion. Vegetarianism
is the new sacrament. Hooking up, the new prayer. Talk therapy, the new witnessing. Tattooing and piercing, the new sacred
symbols and rituals." . . . Kathleen Parker . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MARCH 9, 2008
"The government solution to any problem is usually at least as bad as the problem." . . . Milton Friedman . . .
"George Bushs taxpayer rebate program is like giving an alcoholic another drink." . . . Michael Bloomberg . . .
"The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government
would do better." . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot
strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help
the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further
the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character
and courage by taking away mens initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could
and should do for themselves." . . . William J. H. Boetcker . . .
"Those who have the habit of considering long-run consequences will recognize that all these programs for sharing the wealth
and guaranteeing incomes must reduce the incentives at both ends of the economic scale." . . . Henry Hazlitt . . .
"In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This
is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme
for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.
If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." . . . Alan
Greenspan . . .
"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." . . . Thomas Jefferson . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, MARCH 2, 2008
"We'd all like to vote for the best man but hes never a candidate." . . . Kin Hubbard . . .
"We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex but Congress can." . . . Cullen Hightower . .
.
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner." . . . H.
L. Mencken . . .
"The presidential candidates have been repeatedly asked how they would "manage the economy." With the exception of Ron
Paul, every candidate has accepted the premise that this is something the president of the United States should do. Or can
do. . . . Notice that [they equate] government power and market power. That is absurd. "Power" in a free market means success
at creating goods and services that your fellow human beings voluntarily choose to buy. Government power is force: the ability
to fine and imprison people. . . . Politicians who talk about managing the economy ignore the fact that, strictly speaking,
there is no economy. There are only people producing, buying and selling goods and services. Keep that in mind, and one realizes
that government action more often than not interferes with the productive activities that benefit everyone.. . . The economy
is far too complex for any president no matter how smart to manage. How can politicians and bureaucrats
possibly know what hundreds of millions of individuals know, want and aspire to? How can government employees fathom what
trade-offs to make in a world of scarce resources? . . . They can't. That's why free people are more prosperous than unfree
people. . . . Presidential candidates should promise to keep their hands off the economy." . . . John Stossel . . .
"Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way." . . . Henry David Thoreau
. . .
"Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread." . . . Thomas Jefferson
. . .
"Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing much of
anything else." . . . P. J. O'Rourke . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, FEBRUARY 24, 2008
"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." . . . Edward Abbey . . .
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as
with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured
by mortal power." . . . Alexander Hamilton . . .
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our
Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." . .
. John Adams . ..
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest
of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." . . . John Jay, First Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court . . .
"Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention...The
Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them
conceive the one without the other." . . . Alexis de Tocqueville . . .
"The religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety
and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine
Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government." . . . Noah Webster . . .
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds
of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble
for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever." . . . Thomas Jefferson . . .
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." . . . William Penn . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, FEBRUARY 17, 2008
"It is strange that the qualities we are looking for in a sitting presidentthoughtful, calm, and seriousare exactly the
qualities that we penalize in those running for president." . . . Rich Galen . . .
"Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political
character must soon follow." . . . Elias Boudinot . . .
"Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels but they live like men." . .
. Dr. Samuel Johnson . . .
"The modern industrial system is a great social co-operation. . . . The parties are held together by impersonal force ...
supply and demand. They may never see each other; they may be separated by half the circumference of the
globe. Their co-operation in the social effort is combined and distributed again by financial machinery, and rights and interests
are measured and satisfied without any special treaty or convention at all. . . . This great cooperative effort is one of
the great products of civilization." . . . William Graham Sumner . . .
"Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he is free to pattern his own life, to develop his
own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family." . . . Herbert
Hoover . . .
"The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him." . . . William H. Davies . . .
While American politicians continue to court socialism as the solution to our alleged healthcare crisis, Slovakia is busily
introducing private health-insurance companies and reducing the role of the government. The irony is thickand distressing.
While Americans are increasingly tempted to look to a growing federal government to solve their every problem, the former
Soviet stateswhom we essentially freed from communismare embracing liberty far more consistently than we are. The ideals of
freedom, of lower taxes and less government shouldnt sound strange to us. They simply represent good constitutional thinking
in the tradition of the Founders. Sadly, it seems that Latvia, Bulgaria and Slovakia are more familiar with our Constitution
than is our own federal government. . . . Mark Alexander . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, FEBRUARY 10, 2008
"It is the low drive for sameness and the hatred of otherness that characterizes all forms of collectivism, which inevitably
are totalitarian because, defying the divine diversity of the universe, these ideologies want to convert us by force to sameness
-- sameness being the brother of equality. The collectivist vision enjoins uniformity: the nation with one leader, one party,
one race, one language, one class, one type of school, one law, one custom, one level of income, and so forth. Since nature
provides diversity, this deadening sameness can be achieved only by brute force, by leveling, enforced assimilation, exile,
genocide. All forms of totalitarianism, all leftist ideologies, reaching their culmination in the French, Russian, and German
Revolutions, have gone that way -- with the aid of guillotine, gallows, gas chambers, and Gulag." . . . Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
. . .
"Every day, about 17 Americans die while waiting for a transplant. ... In 1984, Rep. Al Gore sponsored a law making the
sale of organs punishable by five years in jail. Congress couldn't contain its enthusiasm; the bill passed 396 to 6. So giving
someone a kidney is a good deed, but selling the same kidney is a felony." . . . John Stossel . . .
"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. Let us be like the man of the frontier
and always reveal with utmost honesty our real reasons for all that we do." . . . J. P. Morgan . . .
"As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and
A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes what C shall do for X, or
in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X. As for A and B, who get a law to make themselves do for X what they are
willing to do for him, we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without any law, but what I want
to do is to look upon C ... I call him the Forgotten Man. He is the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive
work. ... We shall, before we know it, push down this man who is trying to help himself." . . . William Graham Sumner . .
.
"Interesting, is it not, that no one considers it necessary to insist that the debate has ended' about whether the Earth
is round. People only insist that a debate stop when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues." . . . George
Will . . .
"In all my travels, three reflections constantly occur to me: how much unnecessary solicitude and alarm England devotes
to the affairs of foreign countries; with how little knowledge we enter upon the task of regulating the concerns of other
people; and how much better we might employ our energies in improving matters at home. ... It will be a
happy day when England has not an acre of territory in Continental Asia. ... If we do not draw in our horns, this country
, with all its wealth, energy, and resources, will sink under the weight of its extended empire" . . . Richard Cobden (1847)
QUOTES FOR WEEK, FEBRUARY 3, 2008
"It is a greater honor to be right than to be president or popular, for statesmanship consists rather in removing causes
than in punishing or evading results ... thus, it is the rarest of qualities." . . . James Garfield . . .
"We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but what does
all that mean to a mother or father who cant take a sick child to the doctor?" . . . Hillary Clinton . . .
"Hillary Clinton, like so many of us, is not a Johnny-come-lately. She believes health care is a right." . . . Rep. John
Lewis (D-GA) . . .
"Every candidate who repeats the misleading nonsense that 47 million in America have no health care, ought to be challenged
with hard truth. The number is grossly exaggerated by including millions who are here illegally and millions of others who
have the means to pay for health care insurance but refuse to adjust their budget and lifestyle. And dont expect any media
type to question where in the Constitution Congress derives any authority to dispense health care." . . . Janet LaRue . .
.
"When I talk about the Two Americas, this is what I mean the very wealthiest and most powerful have manipulated our government
for their own ends. They use their wealth and their power to keep themselves wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone
else. And when they do that, theyre holding America back." . . . John Edwards . . .
"Government allocation of resources enhances the potential for human conflict, while market allocation reduces it. That
also applies to contentious national issues such as Social Security and health care. You take care of your retirement and
health care as you please, and I'll take care of mine as I please. If you prefer socialized retirement and health care, that's
fine if you don't force others to participate. I'm afraid most Americans view such a liberty-oriented solution with hostility.
They believe they have a right to enlist the brute forces of government to impose their preferences on others." . . . Walter
E. Williams . . .
"A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be
compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers." . . . Ronald Reagan . . .
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing
it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." . . . H.L. Mencken . . .
"Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good."
. . . Calvin Coolidge . . .
"Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and
all nations." . . . Paul Valery . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JANUARY 27, 2008
"With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law, and every time they make a law it's a joke." . . . Will Rogers
. . .
"When the economy does not need a rescue plan and gets one, it's called campaign spending'. And this $150 billion stimulus
package is nothing more than campaign spending on the part of both parties." . . . Rush Limbaugh . . .
"Washington, D.C. is a place where delusions go to thrive. That explains why Congress and the president are now agreed
on remedies that will not work, expending money they do not have, to fix a problem that may not exist." . . . Steve Chapman
. . .
"The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while
Republicans have accepted them reluctantly" . . . Norman Thomas . . .
"You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than
any economist's analysis." . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
"If any one think that there are or ought to be, somewhere in society, guarantees that no man shall suffer hardship, let
him understand that there can be no such guarantees unless other men give them ... that is, unless we go back to slavery and
make one man's effort conduce to another man's welfare." . . . William Graham Sumner . . .
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be
your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
. . . Frank Herbert [Dune] . . .
"A government that had been supported by the people and so controlled by the people became one that supported the people
and so controlled them." . . . Garet Garrett . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JANUARY 20, 2008
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." . . . Emma Goldman . . .
"Everybody in this race, Democrat and Republican, is now officially for Change. They get more fervent about Change every
day; its only a matter of time before they start calling for tactical air strikes on Washington. Ill be honest with you: Im
getting tired of Change. I think itd be nice, for a change, if a candidate came out against Change, maybe with a catchy slogan
like, Remember: It Could Get Worse, or Hey, At Least Youre Not Dead." . . . Dave Barry . . .
"Politicians exploit public demands that government ought to do something about this or that problem by taking measures
giving them greater control over our lives. For the most part, whatever politicians do, whether its rent controls to produce
affordable housing, or price controls to eliminate price-gouging, the result is a calamity worse than the original problem.
For example, two of the most costly housing markets are the rent-controlled cities of San Francisco and New York. If youre
over 40, youll remember the chaos produced by the gasoline price controls of the 1970s. Socialist agendas have considerable
appeal, but they produce disaster, and the more socialist they are, the greater the disaster." . . . Walter E. Williams .
. .
"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." . . . William Hazlitt . . .
"Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery
with slogans." . . . Taylor Caldwell . . .
"The titans of the major media dont see themselves as in need of reform. They think the voters have to be reformed, not
the media." . . . Brent Bozell . . .
"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and
true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honor of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if
men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs
will rest on a solid and permanent foundation." . . . Samuel Adams . . .
"I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their
skin but by the content of their character... And if America is to be a great nation this must become true." . . . Martin
Luther King, Jr. . . .
"Indeed, those who followed Martin Luther King when he was speaking of freedom, like Jesse Jackson, tolerate no dissension
from their liberal ranks now. They have abandoned Kings dream, and aligned themselves with political and social agendas obsessed
with color at the expense of character. Black conservatives of national stature, like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin
Powel, Ward Connerly, Michael Steele, Jesse Lee Peterson, Alan Keyes, Don Scoggins, Alvin Williams, Ken Blackwell, Thomas
Sowell, Star Parker and Walter Williams are routinely castigated by Jackson, et al., as "Uncle Toms" and
"puppets." Yet these are the men and women following the call of Martin Luther King." . . . Mark Alexander . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JANUARY 13, 2008
"Is it not ironical that in a planned society of controlled workers given compulsory assignments, where religious expression
is suppressed, the press controlled, and all media of communication censored, where a puppet government is encouraged but
denied any real authority, where great attention is given to efficiency and character reports, and attendance at cultural
assemblies is mandatory, where it is avowed that all will be administered to each according to his needs and performance required
from each according to his abilities, and where those who flee are tracked down, returned, and punished for trying to escape
- in short in the milieu of the typical large American secondary school - we attempt to teach 'the democratic system?" . .
. Royce Van Norman . . .
"It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role
is spelled out in advance, and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school
system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy." . . . Albert Shanker, late president,
American Federation of Teachers . . .
"America's great social, political and innovative strength is in decentralization. But that strength, the American spirit,
is shackled, to disastrous effect, in the field of education, where the key tenets of socialism, central planning and state
monopoly prevail." . . . Tom Shuford, teacher:- Wall Street Journal, August 2, 1996 . . .
"Education... has become in most countries at the present day a national concern. The state receives, and often takes,
the child from the arms of the mother to hand it over to official agents; the state undertakes to train the heart and to instruct
the mind of each generation. Uniformity prevails in the courses of public instruction as in everything else; diversity as
well as freedom is disappearing day by day.". . . Alexis de Tocqueville . . .
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what
sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright
new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged
the social engineers nor discredited them. . . . Thomas Sowell . . .
QUOTES FOR WEEK, JANUARY 6, 2008
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." . . . Albert Einstein . . .
"About 65 million years ago, the Earth experienced one of the most rapid and extreme global climate changes recorded in
geologic history. The period has been named the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The ocean was 18 to 27 degrees hotter than
it is today. Antarctica, which is today's coldest place on Earth, was home to temperate forests, beech trees and ferns. The
Earth had no permanent polar ice caps. In the past 65 million years, the Earth's temperature has increased and decreased with
no help from mankind. My questions to the anti-climate change warrior | 