 Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?
Alexander Hamilton
Federalist Paper 68
I wish no explanation made to our enemies. What they want is a squabble and a fuss; and that they can have if we explain; and they can not have if we don't.
Abraham Lincoln
Letter to Cornelius F. McNeil
The road to hell is paved by those who think they know better.
Andrew Stuttaford
National Review, 9 18 16 http://www.nationalreview.com/corner
Donald Trump and Paris Hilton share an occupation: publicity whore. Paris Hilton is better at it.
Kevin Williamson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422762/paris-hilton-2016-out-trumps-trump
“You concede too much power to the state. It may not demand what it cannot coerce. But what love gives, and spirit, cannot be coerced. Either the state leaves that untouched, or we take its law and nail it to the pillory! By heaven! He who would make the state into a school of mores does no know his sin. The state has always been made into hell because man wanted to make it into his heaven.”
Friederich Hölderlin
Hyperion (1794)
If politics were like sports, we could ask Israel to trade us Benjamin Netanyahu for Barack Obama. Of course, we would have to throw in trillions of dollars to get Israel to agree to the deal, but it would be money well spent.
Thomas Sowell
"The leaders, they're being governed by the industrial complex of Germany," McCain said Thursday. "They might as well have them in the government. It's shameful."
Senator John McCain, R-Arizona
Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. . . . Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president.
"The Zeitgeist"
Washington Post Oct 17 2008 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436.html
At what point do folks start seeing the GOP as taking votes away from the libertarian solution???? Notice that both the Dems and GOP despise the libertarians for pretty much the same reason; they see libs as a threat to the tag team do-nothing gig they've got going for decades.
Fred Bartlett
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/3289.shtml#1
From now on, I'll protect your interests and I'll make your decisions.
Napolean (egalitarian, social engineering, power-broker pig)
DVD: Animal Farm (~37:00 minute-mark); 2004 Digiview Productions, L.L.C.
We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.
Arnold J. Toynbee
Surviving the Future (1971), Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 95., as quoted in wikipedia @ http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee
The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power, we are resisting the powers of death because the concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberty.
Woodrow Wilson
A speech in New York, 1912
... analysts say the opposition Socialists should draw strength from the demonstrations. The leftists, successors to Bulgaria's communist party, have proposed tax cuts and wage hikes ...
Reuters [see link for author(s)]
http://news.yahoo.com/bulgaria-government-resigns-national-protests-073220738.html
Inheritance tax? Why should my deferred spending accrue to your children? Make your case.
Fred Bartlett
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/1915_1.shtml#20
[American Citizenship] captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations
President Barack Obama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/13/president-obamas-2013-state-union
It is exactly the rush to turn every issue of public policy into a OneSizeFitsAll national solution that is dividing the nation against itself. Politics has become a steel cage death match struggle to national domination. It is neither necessary or desirable in a free nation. It is the very definition of Totalitarianism, that which this free nation used to unite itself against. It is what is driving the nation insane.
Fred Bartlett
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/3201.shtml#7
... the country deserves us to be willing to compromise on behalf of the greater good.
President Barack Obama
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/us/politics/obama-says-republicans-given-fair-deal.html?_r=0
They are now two peas in one small pod and as such are false choices to vote for. There should instead be a Constitutionalist party, one who drives the bus back towards the principles of the founding fathers, and there should be a Statist party, one that drives the boat towards totalitarianism.
Jules Troy
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/PollDiscussions/0235_4.shtml#82
I want the people of America to be able to work less for the government and more for themselves. I want them to have the rewards of their own industry. This is the chief meaning of freedom.
Calvin Coolidge
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/101882.Calvin_Coolidge
If liberty is what we claim it is- the principle that protects all personal, social and economic decisions necessary for maximum prosperity and the best chance for peace- it should be an easy sell. Yet, history has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled. If authoritarianism leads to poverty and war and less freedom for all individuals and is controlled by rich special interests, the people should be begging for liberty. There certainly was a strong enough sentiment for more freedom at the time of our founding that motivated those who were willing to fight in the revolution against the powerful British government. During my time in Congress the appetite for liberty has been quite weak; the understanding of its significance negligible. Yet the good news is that compared to 1976 when I first came to Congress, the desire for more freedom and less government in 2012 is much greater and growing, especially in grassroots America.
Ron Paul
http://www.dailypaul.com/263111/ron-pauls-farewell-address-full-text
Who the hell knows?
Leon Panetta
Unsourced (I heard it on the radio in my car) answer of Secretary of Defense, questioned about whether he will keep his job in Obama's 2nd term.
The growth of taxation and government control destroyed the Roman economy and caused the collapse of Rome, which allowed the barbarians to take over. The same thing is happening today. We need not give in to the barbarians, but they are certainly waiting anxiously.
Ayn Rand
Ford Hall Forum; 1967 [excerpted from the book: "Ayn Rand Answers; p. 5"]
In a state-run society the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security is risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side.
Theodore Forstmann
http://www.quotegarden.com/government.html
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
President Barack Obama
2012 campaign rally in Roanoke, Virginia
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Capitalism is our economic system. The thing we value the most is freedom. We're American and if you believe in freedom, you can't have the free without the dumb. You can't have it. They go hand in hand. Freedom allows you to do dumb things, things we find reprehensible. ... And so football has to be tolerated no different than Ronald McDonald. Ronald McDonald has done far more damage to America than any football coach, any of these overpaid coaches that [Buzz Bissinger is] talking about. ... Football brings the poor and the rich, the black and the white, the Jews and the gentiles -- it brings everybody together, particularly at the college level. Your high school experience, for the most part, is segregated. Your little league experience is segregated. ... I watch our major broadcast media and I watch the clueless, people that don't have the diversity of experience that I have through college football and through life and I watch them consistently tear this country apart. I watched them do it with George Zimmerman, OJ Simpson, Rodney King. Whatever the big media story. Barack Obama. Consistently tear this country apart.
Jason Whitlock (sports writer)
May 2012 Intelligence Squared U.S. debate: "Ban college football"
As the 2012 election campaign heats up, rather than hope and change, President Obama has opted for fear and envy ...
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/06/gop-warns-against-obama-taxmageddon/1?csp=34
"When President Obama was running, I was telling all my neighbors we have to get out and vote," said Thompson. "And it's not just because he's black... well, yes, it is because he's black. I'm not going to tell a lie. It's because he's black. I'm black!" But is being black enough for President Obama this time around? For Carol Thompson and every View Park resident I spoke with, it is.
Shereen Marisol Meraji
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/obama-visit-black-beverly-hills
Sociologists may contend that excessive income inequality restricts social mobility and leads to social segmentation and eventually social breakdown, but other social scientists counter this argument with examples of economically successful authoritarian or elitist societies. Arguments founded on moral fairness are easily disposed of in an atmosphere of moral relativism and cultural pluralism. Present-day believers in an absolute truth identified with virtue and justice are neither willing nor desirable companions for the defenders of social justice.
United Nations
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/ifsd/SocialJustice.pdf
Liberals are uncomfortable with the topic of patriotism because their core philosophical impulses are to make America a different country than it is. This is not an evil impulse, and it can certainly manifest itself in patriotic ways. ... But at the most basic level love is about acceptance. If you are constantly trying to change the person you claim to love into someone he or she is not, there comes a point when it's reasonable to ask whether you really, truly, deeply love the person for who he or she is. Barack Obama campaigned promising to "fundamentally transform" America. We would not think a husband who promises to "fundamentally transform" his wife has a healthy love for her.
Jonah Goldberg
Book: The Tyranny of Cliche`s: How liberals cheat in the war of ideas. Sentinel; p 127-8
"The public's identification of order with law makes it impossible for the public to ask for one without asking for the other. There is clearly a public demand for an orderly society. One of human beings' most fundamental desires is for a peaceful existence secure from violence. But because the public has been conditioned to express its desire for order as one for law, all calls for a more orderly society are interpreted as calls for more law. And since under our current political system, all law is supplied by the state, all such calls are interpreted as calls for a more active and powerful state. The identification of order with law eliminates from public consciousness the very concept of the decentralized provision of order. With regard to legal services, it renders the classical liberal idea of a market-generated, spontaneous order incomprehensible. I began this Article with a reference to Orwell's concept of doublethink. But I am now describing the most effective contemporary example we have of Orwellian "newspeak," the process by which words are redefined to render certain thoughts unthinkable."
John Hasnas
http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm
Has anyone noticed that Pres Obama apologized for the Koran burning done by some American soldiers. Would he have done this had they burned an American flag as some citizens did back a few decades ago, here at home? All liberals talked about then was the right to do such terrible things, in the spirit of the First Amendment. Why not now, when it involves the Koran?
Tibor R. Machan
Message from Tibor Machan
The data show a clear positive relationship, the more individualized the nation, the more citizens enjoy their life. This suggests that the benefits of individualization are greater than its costs. Inspection of the scattergrams shows a linear relationship. There is no pattern of diminishing returns. This indicates that individualization has not yet passed its optimum. The relationship appears to be contingent to level of education and economic prosperity. Positive correlations appear only among the most knowledgeable and prosperous nations. This suggests that the misgivings about individualization apply more to the past than to the future.
Ruut Veenhoven
http://www2.eur.nl/fsw/research/veenhoven/Pub1990s/97a-ab.htm
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It's 1961. I'm 6 years old, and in the kitchen of my buddy, Howie. Howie has a brother, a stay at home mother who is active in the local PTA, and a father who graduated from HS and is a janitor at Beth Steel. Howie's father is standing in the kitchen with one arm around his wife, who is crying and laughing. They are staring at his first weekly take home check that cleared the miracle amount of $100. They live in a clean neighborhood on a tree lined street, they send their kids to a good local school. They think they have just won the lottery. The day this is happening, JFK's federal budget is $100B, over half of which is for defense at the peak of the cold war. JFK will soon give his speech at Rice, and America the nation, as well as American economies, are about to go on a tear. A nation of inspired youth is about to head off in a hundred million different quests to change the world. As well as the odd adventure in Vietnam. Flash ahead to 2012. The federal government spends over $3600B/yr of the nation's income, not $100B/yr. But where are the stories of joyous janitors and their happy wives crying with joy over bringing home a weekly check in which Dad the HS grad has cleared over $3600/wk?
Fred Bartlett
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Books/0274_1.shtml#20
So much of the argument out there all the time is up at 40,000 feet, these abstract arguments about who's conservative or who's liberal," Obama said. "Most Americans — and certainly most small business owners — you guys are just trying to figure out how do we make things work, how do we apply common sense. And that's what this is about
Barack H. Obama
http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/13/10148099-obama-seeks-power-to-merge-agencies
It is a grave error to suppose that a dictatorship rules a nation by means of strict, rigid laws which are obeyed and enforced with rigorous, military precision. Such a rule would be evil, but almost bearable; men could endure the harshest edicts, provided these edicts were known, specific and stable; it is not the known that breaks men’s spirits, but the unpredictable. A dictatorship has to be capricious; it has to rule by means of the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the wantonly irrational; ...
Ayn Rand
“Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Objectivist Newsletter, Feb. 1962, 5
President Obama’s jobs bill is better than doing nothing in the face of a national crisis, but it won’t have much impact on unemployment.
Fareed Zakaria
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/where-obamas-jobs-bill-falls-short/2011/09/28/gIQA5jne5K_story.html
[answering the question, 'What are we to do when the president behaves in a blatantly unconstitutional fashion?'] The only remedy in the constitution is the impeachment remedy. Unfortunately, the framers never dreamed... that when they separated the powers between legislative, executive and judicial that one branch would give up its constitutional authority, the way Congress has. We now have, increasingly, an elected dictatorship - no matter which party is in the White House.
Ralph Nader
Freedom Watch TV Interview on 9/15/11
Now is the time to jump-start job creation, restart lending and invest in areas like energy, health care and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down...It's an agenda that begins with jobs. (First address to Congress, 2.2009, when unemployment was 8.1%)
President Obama
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/analysis-jobs-obama-hopes-save/story?id=14478913&page=2
We're capable of empathizing and sympathizing, but only with single individuals, and not with very large numbers of people and collectives. Now, these kinds of limitations have quite striking consequences today. First of all, they result in our 'failure to aid.' In 2008, only five countries (Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands) had reached the modest goal that the United Nations set decades ago of aid amounting to 0.7% of a country's GNP.
Julian Savulescu
"Festival of Dangerous Ideas" (Sydney Opera House) video link: http://vimeo.com/7515623 -- at the 19:20 mark
Global warming has become the defining moral issue of our time. Science has been hijacked by alarmists. And the public are given to believe that they are to blame.
Paul Reiter
Documentary: "Cool It"; 2010; Bjorn Lomborg
It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. ... Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. ... For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.
James Madison
Federalist No. 41 ( http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa41.htm )
So, sir, we find that not alone in these two conventions, but by the common action of the states, there was an important addition made to the Constitution by which it was expressly provided that it should not be construed to be a General Government over all the people, but that it was a Government of States, which delegated powers to the General Government. The language of the ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution is susceptible of no other construction: 'The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'
Judah P. Benjamin (19th Century US senator)
Book: Power Divided is Power Checked (p 77); by Jason Lewis; ISBN: 978-1-935098-50-8
They [politicians] don't need to drive us deeper in debt, they choose to
John Stossel
Fox News - John Stossel web site
The House legislates, the President talks, and the Senate kills.
Charles Krauthammer
Fox News Commentary 7/29/2010
Before we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, we should ask people like me to give up tax breaks that we don't need and weren't even asking for.
Barack H. Obama
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/07/obama-opposes-short-term-debt-deal-from-boehner/1?csp=34news
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Thomas Jefferson
United States Declaration of Independence
The rights to food, water, adequate housing and work under fair and equitable conditions should not be compromised by the implementation of austerity measures.
Cephas Lumina, unpaid "Toohey-like" UN expert
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=38901&Cr=austerity&Cr1=
Survival in the market often requires recognizing mistakes and changing course, while survival in politics often requires denying mistakes, continuing the current policies, and blaming the bad policies on others.
Thomas Sowell
The Housing Boom and Bust, second edition, page 153
Wednesday's rally took up a familiar theme: taxing the state's wealthiest residents to help solve the deficit. One man held a sign that took his frustration a step further--he had changed it from "Tax the Rich" to "Eat the Rich." Organizers also went after specific GOP legislators, reminding Minnesotans of what they think the state will look like if the Republicans succeed with their budget cuts. One sign read "Gazelka Gulch," a reference to Sen. Paul Gazelka, R-Brainerd.
Minneapolis StarTribune
http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/125117154.html
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
Barack Hussein Obama
.... as a Senator, March 2006, he voted against raising the debt ceiling.
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