"Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it."
by:
Mark Twain
[Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910) American author and humorist
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Okay editor this is a really good one; thought provoking. What he is saying is that a long held tradition or way of doing things loses the memory of its first cause, and thus it is hard to attack or to understand the tradition. The non historian simply says "that is the way it is". But historians, deeper digging folk, can understand and identify the why. Thus there are reasons for Socail Security, Medicare etcetera. Let us not forget our past or we will be forced to live it again. That is what the right wing in this country wants us to do, live the past again.
 -- Waffler, Smith     
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    Editor, please, in the future run the quotes past Professor Waffler before putting them in our email. And to keep the Professor happy, you could throw in a few quotes from Chairman Mao now and then.
     -- jim k, Austin,Tx     
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    Say what you want about the past Waffler. It was a time when folks did not depend on government, but themselves. It was a time our nation was not in deep dodo-uh debt. Today is not the greatest time of our history.
     -- cal, lewisville, tx     
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    And that is why the government is in the 'culture' business, ever trying to instill more 'customs' and 'traditions' like body scanners, permits, licenses, police checks, income taxes, printing money, inflation, presidential wars for American 'interests,' borrowing for school, for cars, for housing, for life! It is all quite 'normal' now -- Waffler cannot understand what people are complaining about -- just follow the system, and you'll be fine. What he doesn't see is the creeping oppression and the progressive servitude being imposed upon us all to the point we can't even conceive of a nation without all the aforementioned customs.
     -- E Archer, NYC     
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    cal is right! Before WWII, more individual Americans could *do* things, such as home repair, sewing, growing food. Nowadays, it seems more Americans are managers and academics--people who can't *do* anything themselves. Compare that to China where, I've heard from American expatriats, that everyone knows how to repair things, sew, grow things. Which nation do you think will come out on top? The nation of Affirmative Action, Unions, and Welfare, or the nation of poverty and drive?
     -- Byron, Fort Collins, CO     
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    Boomers have the best observational viewpoint. Horse and buggy to electricity and cars. History lived, stories told of the oppressive progressive nature of socialism, its indoctrination at the point of a gun. An ever growing hunger for expansion of progressive income tax at the local, state and federal levels. Redistribution of wealth through positivism and Keynesianism. A bunch of damn socialist like Waffler. Classical Liberalism returns within the think tanks of leadership at the WH. Scares the crap out of all the little plunderers, lined up across the nation waiting for the scraps to fall from DC's table. GOOD. What a great Wake Up call for Patriots of classical economic liberalism ! Agrarian values and Common Sense parenting, instilling a classical education, that, by the way, has been swept under the rug called ignorance.
     -- Ronw13, Oregon     
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    Where once, individual sovereigns spoke, one to another concerning natural law, liberty and servants administering inalienable rights now, the traditional custom is gone. The occupying statist theocracy infesting this land's theocratic seminaries (government schools) and ecclesiastical propagators (MSM) have replaced such customs with Police State enforcement of carnal gods canons, tyranny and immorality as freedom's norm, and an inorganic phantasm (government) as god - inherent with all rights and the ability to make new progressive definitions of rights. Now that the new custom is to call evil good, and good evil; put darkness for light, and light for darkness; and, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter (by way of extreme terse example: compelled compliance, government license, victimless crimes, larceny with impunity and Wafflers reference to the theocratic SS and Medicare), the less need there is to justify replacement of the unknown.
     -- Mike, Norwalk     
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