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Prosperum ac felix scelus Virtus vocatur (Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue). Seneca: Herc. Furens, ii. 250.//%end% ====================== - done %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom//%quote%The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.//%Author%Patrick Henry//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land.//%Author%William Kingdon Clifford//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%I believe that America is the greatest country in history and for good reasons, but America has been changing and not for the better. Our free society has been falling prey to a more repressive system with methods for the increased control of people. The return of groups and individuals to the controlling ideology of Imperialism and Marxism using the structures of Corporatism, Socialism and Democracy. The result is that this nation's foundational principles based on the ideology of Liberty are now in danger of extinction. //%Author%Darren Perkins//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%We fought the Revolutionary War for no taxation without representation, it seems to me that we are much worse off today, because we are heavily taxed, and only the king's corporations control this Country, together with mob rule, of the special interests.//%Author%James Montgomery//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%As the circle of knowledge expands, so does the Sphere of darkness that encompasses it. //%Author%Albert Einstein//%end% %start%%cat=Liberty,Freedom,Independence,Responsibility//%quote%Liberty's view of the government could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it works, work with it. If it doesn't, work against it. If it works you over, abolish it. //%Author%Angel Shamaya//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life. //%Author% John Stuart Mill//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Goodness without wisdom always accomplished evil. //%Author% Robert A. Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Love your country but fear its government.//%Author%Daniel Webster//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%An important art of politcians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public. //%Author% Talleyrand//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. //%Author% Friedrich Nietzsche//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have. //%Author% PJ O'Rourke, "The Liberty Manifesto"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Whatever power you give to the good cops, goes to the bad ones, too. Never forget that. //%Author% Phillip J. Birmingham//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don't hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous. //%Author% Will Rogers//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed? //%Author% Count Oxenstierna//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.That government is best which governs least.//%Author% Thomas Jefferson//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may only resort to force only against those who start the use of force. //%Author% Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.//%Author% Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations.//%Author% Milton Friedman, "Capitalism and Freedom"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century : not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn't have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. "Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts!" //%Author% P. J. O'Rourke, "Age And Guile"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Politics doesn't work. Look at the parts of America where government has had the most power, where government has spent the most money. Look at the housing projects we've got the poor people in. //%Author% P. J. O'Rourke, "Age And Guile"//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Can you imagine working at the following Company? It has a little over 500 employees with the following statistics: 29 have been accused of spousal abuse. 7 have been arrested for fraud. 19 have been accused of writing bad checks. 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses. 3 have been arrested for assault. 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit. 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges. 8 have been arrested for shoplifting. 21 are current defendants in law suits. 84 were stopped for drunk driving in 1998 alone. Can you guess which organization this is? Give up? It's the 535 members of your United States Congress. The same group that perpetually cranks out hundreds upon hundreds of new laws designed to keep the rest of us in line. //%Author% //Jack Sharp%Who%Capitol Hill Blue editor Jack Sharp, researcher Marilyn Crosslyn, and private Investigator James Hargill.  //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. //%Author%Karl Marx//%Source%The Communist Manifesto, 1848.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"I can scarcely contemplate a greater calamity that could befall this country, than be loaded with a debt exceeding their ability ever to discharge. If this be a just remark, it is unwise and improvident to vest in the general government a power to borrow at discretion, without any limitation or restriction." //%Author% Brutus//%Source%The Anti-Federalist,1787-88.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"From the earliest ages of history to the present day there have never been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear dangers from abroad ... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power - that factions will be formed and liberty endangered ... " //%Author% Andrew Jackson//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Right now, I'd rather be in Sweden than in the U.S. because we have seen the problems and are moving away from the welfare state. On your side of the Atlantic you are moving right into it, and you risk destroying your country." //%Author% Ian Wachmeister//%Source%by Paul Klebnikov, "The Swedish Disease," Forbes, May 24, 1993.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends. //%Author%Jeremy Bentham//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write. //%Author%Hugo L. Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice//%Source%1963 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It will be asked whether one would care to have one's young daughter read these books. I suppose that by the time she is old enough to wish to read them she will have learned the biologic facts of life and the words that go with them. There is something seriously wrong at home if those facts have not been met and faced and sorted by then; it is not children so much as parents that should receive our concern about this. I should prefer that my own three daughters meet the facts of life and the literature of the world in my library than behind a neighbor's barn, for I can face the adversary there directly. If the young ladies are appalled by what they read, they can close the book at the bottom of page one; if they read further, they will learn what is in the world and in its people, and no parents who have been discerning with their children need fear the outcome. Nor can they hold it back, for life is a series of little battles and minor issues, and the burden of choice is on us all, every day, young and old. //%Author%Judge Curtis Bok//%Source%Commonwealth v. Gordon, 66 Pa. D. & C. 101, 110. //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings. //%Author%Judge Robert Bork//%Source%1985 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%There is no such thing as a false idea. //%Author%Justice William Brennan//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. //%Author%Justice William Brennan//%Source%1989 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. //%Author%William Jennings Bryan //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The statute mandating recitation of the pledge [of allegiance] is secular because it aims to foster democracy, which is both necessary to the survival of the concept and entirely independent of religion. [...] It is clear in the 2001 [Virginia] state law that no student is forced to accept the beliefs the pledge espouses. //%Author% James C. Cacheris//%who%U.S. District Judge//%Source%21 Feb 2003 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Two hundred ten years ago, the people who drafted our Bill of Rights decided that banning books wasn't the way to handle disagreements. They thought the best thing was more speech. It is a pity that county commissioners in 2002 don't agree. //%Author%Matt Coles//%Who%director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Projects//%Source%on the occasion of a censorship challenge to It's Perfectly Normal //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The core issue here is not whether you agree or disagree with the commissioners about gay people. It is whether you think the answer to a disagreement is to yank the words of anyone who disagrees with them out of the library. //%Author%Matt Coles//%Who%director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Projects//%Source%on the occasion of a censorship challenge to It's Perfectly Normal//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The 1st Amendment embraces the individual's right to purchase and read whatever books she wishes to, without fear the government will take steps to discover which books she buys, reads, and intends to read. //%Author%Colorado Supreme Court//%Source%in a unanimous decision for Tattered Cover //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private school . . . At the next session you may ban books and newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. //%Author%Clarence Darrow//%Source%during the Scopes trial //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. //%Author%Clarence Darrow//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is ironic that our government, which has been relentlessly critical of the messages that popular culture imparts to our youth, would seek to silence an artist who uses the medium of hip hop to preach a message of self respect and self reliance to young women and girls. //%Author%Lisa E. Davis//%Source%attorney for Sarah Jones vs. FCC //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own. //%Author%Justice William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? //%Author%William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world. //%Author%William O. Douglas, dissenting, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer. //%Author%William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence. //%Author%Justice William O. Douglas//%Source%Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1972)//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land. //%Author%William O. Douglas//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%We must protect the freedoms of even those who hate us, and that we may find objectionable. If we fail in this task, we become victims of the precedents we create. //%Author%Judge Robert Doumar //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Putting free speech behind bars simply because it concerns prisoners sets a dangerous precedent. The court's decision makes clear that Arizona may not jail the Internet. //%Author%David Fathi//%Who%Arizona ACLU attorney//%Source%about an attempt to forbid convicts from accessing the internet //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%To vest a few fallible men -- prosecutors, judges, jurors -- with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries… //%Author%Judge Jerome Frank//%Source%Second Circuit of Appeals, 1956 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Words are chameleons, which reflect the colour of their environment. //%Author%Judge Learned Hand//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%One man's vulgarity is another man's lyric. //%Author%John Marshall Harlan //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%When we strip teachers of their professional judgment, we forfeit the educational vitality we prize. When we quell controversy for the sake of congeniality, we deprive democracy of its mentors. //%Author%Justice Gregory Hobbs Jr.//%Who%Colorado Supreme Court//%Source%2002 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from bondage of irrational fear. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%Source%dissenting Gitlow v. People of State of New York 1925 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We felt, we still feel, the passion of life to it's top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire. //%Author%Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company. //%Author%Charles Evans Hughes//%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it...No grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy. //%Author%Justice Robert Jackson//%Source%U.S. Supreme Court, 08 Dec 1945, and reprinted in Precision-Guided Coverage, Molly Ivins, May 2003 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Patriotism and respect are earned through the substance and values of a nation, not by its physical symbols. By making the American flag untouchable, Congress would be sending the message that approval of our nation is an obligation not a choice. //%Author%Marvin Johnson//%Who%a Legislative Counsel for the ACLU//%Source%circa 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%China, Cuba, countries where the only freedoms are those bestowed on a whim by the state -- these countries jail their kids for burning the flag. We do not. America was created around dissent. Our freedom is founded upon the right to make known our opinion without threat of government interdiction -- Old Glory is the ultimate, tangible expression of this national belief. //%Author%Marvin Johnson//%Who%a Legislative Counsel for the ACLU//%Source%circa 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought. //%Author%Justice Anthony Kennedy//%Source%U.S. Supreme Court, 16 Apr 2002, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%After years spent trying to deal with the effects of COINTELPRO, my rage at the FBI's almost unimaginable evil remains undiminished because I believe that it succeeded in many of its horrifying goals, given the deaths of Martin King, Malcolm X, and other sixties leaders. Since the FBI uses taxpayer dollars to fund its extreme and ridiculous investigations of anyone who expresses dissenting opinions, even resorting to crime -- including theft, encouragement to murder, subornation of perjury, and manipulation of the judicial process -- to achieve its ends, I have always advocated its disbanding. //%Author%William M. Kunstler//%Who%civil rights attorney //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. [...] This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, [...] is fundamental to our free society. //%Author%Thurgood Marshall//%Source%Stanley v. Georgia, 1969 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art. //%Author%Sandra Day O'Connor//%Source%Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 1991 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The prima facie evidence provision in this case ignores all of the contextual factors that are necessary to decide whether a particular cross burning is intended to intimidate. The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut. //%Author%Sandra Day O'Connor//%Source%writing for the majority in Virginia v. Black, 07 Apr 2003 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%MacKinnon's treatment of the central issue of pornography as she herself poses it -- the harm that pornography does to women -- is shockingly causal. Much of her evidence is anecdotal, and in a nation of 260 Million people, anecdotes are a weak form of evidence. //%Author%Judge Richard Posner//%Who%U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit//%Source%reprinted in Defending Pornography, pg 141 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%I do not know what has caused MacKinnon to become, and, more surprisingly, to remain, so obsessed with pornography, and so zealous for censorship. But let us not sacrifice our civil liberties on the altar of her obsession. //%Author%Judge Richard Posner//%Who%U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit//%Source%reprinted in Defending Pornography, pg 141 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Now that eighteen-year-olds have the right to vote, it is obvious that they must be allowed the freedom to form their political views on the basis of uncensored speech before they turn eighteen, so that their minds are not a blank when they first exercise the franchise. And since an eighteen-year-old’s right to vote is a right personal to him rather than a right to be exercised on his behalf by his parents, the right of parents to enlist the aid of the state to shield their children from ideas of which the parents disapprove cannot be plenary either. People are unlikely to become well-functioning, independent-minded adults and responsible citizens if they are raised in an intellectual bubble. //%Author%Richard Posner//%Who%Seventh District Judge //%Source%American Amusement Machine Association, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Teri Kendrick, et al., Defendants-Appellees (2001) //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches." [...] "A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers. //%Author%Richard Posner//%Who%Seventh District Judge //%Source%Thomas v. Chicago Park District, Sep. 2000 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny -- and judging from the record of this case not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today. //%Author%Richard Posner //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If what we read today can result in a subpoena or a search warrant tomorrow, fear replaces freedom. We presented three witnesses who said there would, in fact, be a chilling effect if the Tattered Cover was forced to turn over the information. //%Author%Dan Recht//%Who%lawyer for the Tattered Cover bookstore //%end% ========================================================= - done %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Indeed, perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection. //%Author%Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr, American Civil Liberties Union, et al. v. Janet Reno //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Technology now permits millions of important and confidential conversations to occur through a vast system of electronic networks. These advances, however, raise significant privacy concerns. We are placed in the uncomfortable position of not knowing who might have access to our personal and business e-mails, our medical and financial records, or our cordless and cellular telephone conversations. //%Author%Justice William H. Rehnquist, US Supreme Court Chief Justice, 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The First Amendment should not be used as a shield for pornographers at the expense of our children. It is clear that public libraries have a compelling interest to protect the physical and psychological well-being of children. The law does not require every computer in the library to be equipped with the filtering software. The law strikes a delicate balance between protecting children and permitting adults to use a filter-free Internet without trampling on the First Amendment. The law is a reasonable and constitutional way to protect children from online pornography in public libraries. //%Author%Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice [Except that Sekulow and his ilk don't want to protect children so much as they want to control what all people are thinking, saying, seeing, and doing. —MN] //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Now, far be it from me to criticize partial nudity and cartoonish violence. Hell, if there were a Partial Nudity and Cartoonish Violence network (PNCV?), I'd be all over it. MTV has every right to show squished testicles and blurred ta-tas -- and I reject any lawmaker's attempt to the censor the network. //%Author%Evan Serpick, Entertainment Weekly, 07 Nov 2002, printed at CNN.com //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Under the First Amendment, clearly, there can be no "approved view of women" and of "how the sexes may relate to each other." (The free speech issue would be obvious to academics if the question were an approved view of men, women or Americanism.) There can be no imposition of regimes aimed at changing the attitudes of free citizens by censorship and coercion, rather than by appeal to reason and decency. Freedom of speech, like its close ally freedom of conscience, in America are essential legal and moral values, and their protection begins with the recognition that we are a nation of free individuals who may define for ourselves the deepest part of our being. Disguising censorship as a "civil rights" mechanism will not succeed in gutting the First Amendment. //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The point is, or should be, simple. Pure speech, even if obnoxious to many, if it does not fall into any of the categories of unprotected speech, is fully protected by the First Amendment. Harassment, in its true sense, may be legislated against, but on the basis of total content-neutrality and only with respect to time, place and manner. (The same may be said of threats to physical safety, which are not constitutionally protected.) //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%If a professor or student says something extremely unpleasant to any other person - whether a member of a minority group or not - that speaker is within his or her constitutional rights. If, on the other hand, the speaker delivers a message, whether one of love or of hate, to another at a time, in a place, or in a manner that constitutes harassment within the ancient common law and widely understood definition of that term, such utterance may be punished, and it does not take a special campus speech code to do it, for the civil and criminal laws governing the entire society apply. All of the arguments concerning the relationship between Title VII and Title IX sexual harassment law are entirely beside the point and are rendered irrelevant by the Constitution. To repeat the central point: It is fine for colleges and universities to have anti-harassment codes, as long as pure speech is not counted within the definition of harassment //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The fact that codes banning speech are unconstitutional does not mean that a university is powerless in seeking to promote tolerance, understanding, civility, and mutual respect among members of its community. However, the means chosen must be educational, not coercive. Teaching critical thinking, as well as the lessons of history, presumably will bring perceptive students closer to the view expressed by Justice Robert Jackson, writing for a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case declaring that a Jehovah's Witness child may not be forced to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag in violation of his religious conscience. //%Author%Harvey A. Silverglate, 26 Jan 1999, Speech Codes and College/University Campuses //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%It is offensive - not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society - that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so. //%Author%Justice John Paul Stevens; in the majority opinion against the Stratton, Ohio, soliciting permit ordinance //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Freedom of discussion is essential to enlighten public opinion in a democratic state. It cannot be curtailed without affecting the right of the people to be informed through sources independent of the government concerning matters of public interest. There must be untrammeled publication of the news. ... Democracy cannot be maintained without its foundation: Free public opinion and free discussion throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within the limits set by the criminal code and the common law. //%Author%Supreme Court of Canada, 1938, in striking down the Albert Press Bill, and reprinted in Yesterday's News, pg 39 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime . . . . //%Author%Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States(1966) //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Regulations that 'drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the marketplace' for the benefit of children risk destroying the very political system and cultural life' that they will inherit when they come of age. //%Author%United States Supreme Court, ACLU v. Reno, June 1997 //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%[The] classroom is peculiarly the "marketplace of ideas." The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers "truth out of a multitude of tongues, (rather) than through any kind of authoritative selection." //%Author%United States Supreme Court, Keyishian v. Board of Education //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%In Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964), we held that even when a speaker or writer is motivated by hatred or ill-will, his expression was protected by the First Amendment.... Were we to hold otherwise, there can be little doubt that political cartoonists and satirists would be subjected to damages awards without any showing that their work falsely defamed its subject.... The appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploitation of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events -- an exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the portrayal. The art of the cartoonist is often not reasoned or evenhanded, but slashing and one-sided.... //%Author%United States Supreme Court, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty -- and thus a good unto itself -- but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole.... The First Amendment recognized no such thing as a "false" idea. As Justice Holmes wrote, "when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas.... //%Author%United States Supreme Court, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker's opinion that gives offense, that consequence is a reason for according it constitutional protection. For it is a central tenet of the First Amendment that the government must remain neutral in the marketplace of ideas. //%Author%United States Supreme Court //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%The Legislature should recognize that you don't consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration. By doing so, you dilute the freedoms that the flag represents. //%Author%Van Valkenburgh, Idaho Civil Liberties Union //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. //%Author%Chief Justice Earl Warren, Sweezy v. New Hampshire //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for. //%Author%Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"The Constitution has admitted the jurisdiction of the United States within the limits of the several States only so far as the delegated powers authorize; beyond that they are intruders and may be rightfully expelled." - John C. Calhoun //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"It is every Americans' right and obligation to read and interpret the Constitution for himself."//%Author% Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Senator Gary Hart: "Let's do away with income taxes." //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%Senator Howard Metzenbaum: "I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns." //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"All powers granted by the Constitution are derived from the people of the United States; and may be resumed by them when perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted, remains with them, and at their will; and that no right of any description can be canceled, abridged, restrained, or modified by Congress, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President, or any department or office of the United States." //%Author%John C. Calhoun //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone." //%Author%James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No. 46. //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Damn the Constitution!" //%Author% California Assembly Member Mike Roos (sponsor of the California Gun Ban, AB 357), in an Assembly hearing in 1989. //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"...and if you don't have a sword, better sell your clothes and buy one. -Jesus Christ, Luke 22:36. //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"I am convinced that those societies which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate." - Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating." - Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution - taking from the Federal government their power of borrowing (from privately-owned corporate banks)." - Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"We are undone, my dear sir, if legislation is still permitted which makes our money, much or little, real or imaginary, as the moneyed interests shall choose to make it." - Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"We, the People, are the rightful masters of both the Congress and the Courts. Not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who have perverted it." - Abraham Lincoln //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy. The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes." - Abraham Lincoln //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles...the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest [by not having to borrow from privately-owned corporate banks]...Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power." - Abraham Lincoln //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war." - Abraham Lincoln //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Corporate entities are persons, under the law. They are separate persons from the very real human persons who own them and run them. We have the Supreme Court of the United States to thank for this perversion. Through corruption of our government and courts, corporations subverted their original intended purpose and acquired the legal status of "natural persons" while also preserving their limited-liability legal protections. This subversion was institutionalized in an 1886 Supreme Court decision of which Justice William O. Douglas would later write, "There was no history, logic, or reason given to support that view." Thus corporations gained Bill of Rights protections and more, even before women and minorities had full protection." - [Anonymous] //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations." - Andrew Jackson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"The bold effort the present bank has made to control the Government, the distress it has wantonly produced...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American People should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution [The Bank of the United States], or the establishment of another like it." - Andrew Jackson //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Whomsoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate." - James Garfield //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Behind the October Revolution there are more influential personalities than the thinkers and executors of Marxism." - Lenin //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Marxists can always be relied upon to defend the International Bankers, to their dying breath, by portraying capitalism as some sort of vague, accidental ideological abstraction that either everybody or nobody is truly responsible for, rather than as a very specific, profoundly evil system perpetrated by very specific individuals, who are acting with full intention to drain the lifeblood from the Republic until it is dead. This fact alone should be enough to raise suspicion of the Marxists' real intention, which seems to be to focus primarily on property-based 'class' conflict without ever clearly defining the real methods by which the ruling 'class' stays in power, so that they can attempt to convince the public that these methods are some kind of magic that only Marxist intellectuals can understand and con them into replacing the existing tyrannical order with a communist tyrannical order. The Marxists are totally anti-democratic and seem to truly envy the money power more than they despise it." - [Anonymous] //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"If I told you I thought the world was controlled by a handful of capitalists and corporate bosses, you would say I was a left-winger, but if I told you who I thought the capitalists and corporate bosses were, you would say I was far right." - Anonymous Anarchist Black Blocker //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"Left and Right are monolithic ideas - colossal, abstract, and, as their religious origins suggest, cosmic. They are part of the darker side of humanity that replaces the specific with the general, the personal with the impersonal. If you wanted to find a way of making certain that people would have as little as possible in common, there would be no better way than to divide them, not into ten or three or four, but into two. Dual division turns the largest possible sections of humanity against one another, often causing neighbors and compatriots to have nothing to say to one another. No regeneration of community can begin without a careful demolition of Left and Right; nor can this tearing down be relinquished to academic abstraction, technical philosophy, government, corporations, or ideology. Nothing can be built without a new politics - least of all with a politics that refers outward to ideas of Heaven and Hell rather than inward to the experience of daily life." - Hugh Graham, in his book "The Vestibule of Hell: Why Left and Right Have Never Made Sense in Politics and Life" //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Independence,Power//%quote%"This isn't just your normal case of shrill, success-hating, bleeding-heart, eat-the-rich, lawsuit-happy, commie-liberal bed-wetters versus slack-jawed, pinheaded, war-mongering, Bible-thumping, woman-hating, eco-rapist knuckle-draggers. But it is politics as usual." - [Unknown] //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Obviously, neither communism nor fascism has any interest whatsoever in democracy. True democracy can only emerge from a radically centered anarchist-libertarian philosophy, which is the greatest enemy of both of those extremes. The real struggle that is going on is the struggle for democracy against ALL tyranny, not merely 'class' struggle." - [Anonymous] //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson, 1913 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen...At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties." - John F. Hylan, New York City Mayor, 1922 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres." - Gouvernor Morris, head of the committee that wrote the final draft of the U.S. Constitution //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"This (Federal Reserve) Act establishes the most gigantic trust [monopoly] on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. The trusts will soon realize that they have gone too far even for their own good. The people must make a declaration of independence to relieve themselves from the Monetary Power. This they will be able to do by taking control of Congress. Wall Streeters could not cheat us if you Senators and Representatives did not make a humbug of Congress...The greatest crime of Congress is its currency system. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill. The caucus and the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people from getting the benefit of their own government." - Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., 1913 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of government. I do not expect monopoly to restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it." - Woodrow Wilson //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes...Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." - Napoleon //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"...the lord and master of the money markets of the world, and of course virtually lord and master of everything else. He literally held the revenues of southern Italy in pawn, and monarchs and ministers of all countries courted his advice and were guided by his suggestions." - Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, describing Baron Nathan Rothschild in his novel, "Coningsby: Or The New Generation" //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"When the conflict with France ended (at the battle of Waterloo) the House of Rothschild was in control of British finance and was the official banker of the British Government. This odd financial octopus was acknowledged to be in some respects the greatest power on the earth and was acknowledged by some writers as the "Sixth Great Power of Europe"." - E.C. Knuth, in his book "The Empire of The City" //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The shareholders of these banks which own the stock of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are the people who have controlled our political and economic destinies since 1914. They are the Rothschilds, Lazard Freres (Eugene Mayer), Israel Sieff, Kuhn Loeb Company, Warburg Company, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller family, and the J.P. Morgan interests." - Eustace Mullins, in his book "The Secrets Of The Federal Reserve" //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Bill Gates is not the 'richest man in the world' by a long shot. His 50 billion dollar fortune (give or take) is virtually nothing compared to the wealth and economic power of the House of Rothschild. Baron Jacob Rothschild (who controls the Rothschild banking dynasty) is owed approximately half of the U.S. national debt (which is now some 6 trillion dollars) because the privately-owned Rothschild Bank and its proxies have a 51 percent ownership and controlling interest in the U.S. Federal Reserve System; and this 3 trillion dollar amount obviously does not even include the debt that many other nations ultimately owe to the Rothschild banking network. The interest payments alone provide the Rothschild Bank with 100 billion dollars per year. The reason that the Rothschild dynasty remains generally obscure to the public is because virtually all of their assets are privately-owned and they are very carefully protected from public scrutiny by various ways and means. It has been estimated that the House of Rothschild, directly or indirectly, controls a very substantial portion of the 35 trillion dollars in total overall spending power that exists in the world today." - [Anonymous] //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"To ignore the pivotal role played by particular individuals who are in positions of power is to do violence to historical accuracy. A recognition that the course of economic events can be influenced by individuals who have the imagination and the power to take advantage of prevailing conditions does not constitute acceptance of a 'conspiracy' theory of history." - John Blair, Former Chief Economist for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Anti-Trust and Monopoly //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"A civilization based on a system of parasitic usury economics will ultimately destroy itself, because fractional-reserve 'banking', combined with compound 'interest', is truly and totally contrary to the modern "Establishment" economic theory that it represents some kind of perpetual-motion machine. Our economic system was not designed to, nor was it intended to, function honorably for the benefit and general prosperity of all; it was specifically designed to create a nation of debt slaves under the control of a molesting central bank. The perpetrators of the system understand fully that it is finite and must inevitably collapse in a state of insoluble debt, but by that point they expect to have gained full and indisputable control over everything. The 450 richest people in the world have financial assets equal to the combined wealth of the 3 billion poorest; half of all humanity. The only possible explanation for this is that the international economic system has been subverted and corrupted by fully intent ional activities, directed towards undermining national governments and creating institutionalized, privately-owned central banks throughout the world." - [Anonymous] //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The basis of money in today's world is not simply the trading of one thing of obvious value (say, a gold coin) for another thing of obvious value (for example, a keg of beer) which, in fact, would be more a form of barter than a modern day monetary purchase. In the modern economy, the value of money is based strictly on mutual faith and faith alone - faith in pieces of paper signed by a central banker as having whatever value he decides to give them, such as is the case with Federal Reserve Notes. This faith that the paper has some kind of value is basically a game of "let's pretend" on the part of the banker supported only by the fact that the banker has seized control of the government and he will not tolerate any uncontrolled standard of exchange to compete with his official monopoly of interest-bearing usury 'money'. In essence, this means that every time you spend a Federal Reserve Note you are making a very profound expression of faith that the central banker is a kind of 'god' who can create value out of absolutely nothing because this is his 'holy' privelege. Not only that, but you also become perpetually, irreversibly indebted to him, as a form of 'worship', for his creating of the 'money' by the usury that he charges you for this 'service' (e.g., the U.S. 6 trillion dollar debt). This is capitalism." - [Anonymous] //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"There is a large class of people who believe that paper can be, and ought to be, made into money without any promise or hope of redemption; that a note should be printed: "This is a dollar," and be made a legal tender. I regard this as a mild form of lunacy, and have no disposition to debate with men who indulge in such delusions, which have prevailed to some extent, at different times, in all countries, but whose life has been brief, and which have shared the fate of other popular delusions. The Supreme Court only maintained the constitutionality of the legal tender promise to pay a dollar by a divided court, and on the ground that it was issued in the nature of a forced loan, to be redeemed upon the payment of a real dollar; that is, so many grains of silver or gold. I therefore dismiss such wild theories, and speak only to those who are willing to assume, as an axiom, that gold and silver or coined money, have been proven by all human experience to be the best possible standards of value, and that paper m oney is simply a promise to pay such coined money, and should be made and kept equal to coined money, by being convertible on demand." - Secretary of Treasury John Sherman, 1877 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"I am firmly of the opinion that there never was a paper pound, a paper dollar, or a paper promise of any kind, that ever yet obtained a general currency but by force or fraud, generally by both." - John Adams //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash." - George Washington //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Federal Reserve Banks are not Federal instrumentalities...but are independent and privately owned and controlled corporations...Federal Reserve Banks are listed neither as 'wholly owned' government corporations [under 31 U.S.C. Section 846] nor as 'mixed ownership' corporations [under 31 U.S.C. Section 856]...It is evident from the legislative history of the Federal Reserve Act that Congress did not intend to give the Federal government direction over the daily operation of the Reserve Banks...The fact that the Federal Reserve Board regulates the Reserve Banks does not make them Federal agencies under the Act...Unlike typical Federal agencies, each bank is empowered to hire and fire employees at will. Bank employees do not participate in the Civil Service Retirement System. They are covered by worker's compensation insurance, purchased by the Bank, rather than the Federal Employees Com pensation Act. Employees traveling on Bank business are not subject to Federal travel regulations and do not receive government employee discounts on lodging and services..." - Lewis vs. U.S., case #80-5905, 9th Circuit, June 24, 1982 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money." - Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1932 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc." - H.L. Birum, Sr., American Mercury Magazine, August 1957 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive to its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality and economy, and it fosters evil spirits of extravagance and speculation. Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money." - Congressman Daniel Webster, 1846 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers - but the truth is - the Fed has usurped the Government. It controls everything here and it controls all of our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1934 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"From now on, depressions will be scientifically created." - Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1913 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market...The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank." - Curtis Dall, Franklin D. Roosevelt's son-in-law, as quoted from his book, "My Exploited Father-in-Law" //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The one who cannot see that on Earth a big endeavor is taking place, an important plan, on which realization we are allowed to collaborate as faithful servants, certainly has to be blind." - Winston Churchill //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Truth is so precious that it must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." - Winston Churchill //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true." - Henry Kissinger //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from it's original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy making arm of the government." - President Harry Truman //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans." - Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, 1876 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe - the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries - is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads." - Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, 1876 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure." - Joseph Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy, in the July 26, l936 issue of The New York Times //%end% ======================================================================================================= %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite." - Senator William Jenner, 1954 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." - Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Georgetown University in his book "Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time" (Macmillan Company, 1966), highly esteemed by his former student, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"In a small Swiss city [Basel] sits an international organization so obscure and secretive [that few people know about it]...Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men; the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen." - Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, August 5, 1995 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements...The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking systems of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States." - Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, quoted from the New York Times, June 1930 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Ever since the Civil War, Congress has allowed the bankers to control financial legislation. The membership of the Finance Committee in the Senate [now the Banking and Currency Committee] and the Committee on Banking and Currency in the House have been made up chiefly of bankers, their agents, and their attorneys...In this way the committees have been able to control legislation in the interests of the few." - Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Sr. //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,CFR,Money,Power//%quote%"The Council on Foreign Relations is "The Establishment". Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship." - Former Congressman John Rarick, 1971 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,CFR,Money,Power//%quote%"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the American Branch of a society which originated in England [The Royal Institute of International Affairs]...and believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established." - Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Georgetown University //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future." - Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President, 1964 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it will never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassels for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." - John Swinton, Former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, called by his peers "The Dean of his profession", was asked in 1953 to give a toast before the New York Press Club //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, more sure way of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner in which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." - John Maynard Keynes //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it." - John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went", 1975 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"In the colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Script'. We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control it's purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to anyone." - Benjamin Franklin, speaking at the London Parliament //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion." - Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The high office of President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American's freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizen of his plight." - John F. Kennedy, speaking at Columbia University, 10 days before his assassination //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"Mr. Greenspan needs to make his decision independent of what I think. I learned a pretty good lesson during the transition, and that is I commented out loud about one of the actions he took. That's the last time I'm going to comment about the actions Mr. Greenspan takes. He's an independent voice, and needs to be an independent voice." - [Notional] President George W. Bush, speaking in regards to the Federal Reserve Board Chairman, 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population...Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity...To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives...We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better." - George Kennan, Director of State Department Policy Planning staff, Truman Administration, 1948 //%end% %start%%cat=Democracy,Banking,Liberty,Money,Power//%quote%"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power." - Franklin D. Roosevelt //%end% %start%%cat=Government,Corruption//%quote%"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives." - James Madison //%end% %start%%cat=Democracy,Press,Speech//%quote%"Information is the currency of democracy." - Thomas Jefferson //%end% %start%%cat=Individualism,Power,Press,Speech//%quote%"I may be alone with my thoughts, on my island located on my inland sea. Previously, I would be helpless to influence my national government. With the internet, although physically isolated, I can associate with millions across my country and across the globe. No longer am I one person, and no government can afford to ignore me. I have become a power block, in both theory and in fact. Even if I ignore today the ability I now have to associate with others, no government can afford to ignore the possibility that someday I may, for some reason, choose to exercise this ability to associate. The individual, isolated or not, has become important." - Andrew Grosso, Attorney, Chairman of the ACM Committee on Law and Computer Technology //%end% %start%%cat=Constitution,Government//%quote%"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." - Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural //%end% %start%%cat=Constitution,Freedom,Liberty//%quote%"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect [provide] their Safety and Happiness..." - Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies, 1776 //%end% %start%%cat=Dissent,Resistance,Responsibility,Revolution//%quote%"A Government that makes peaceful revolution impossible, makes armed revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy //%end% %start%%cat=Freedom//%quote%"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary." - Malcolm X //%end% %start%%cat=Facism,Press,Speech,Tyranny//%quote%"...news organizations, and all Americans, in times like these have to watch what they say and watch what they do." - Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, September 26, 2001 //%end% %start%%cat=Patriotism//%quote%"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." - Mark Twain //%end% %start%%cat=Patriotism,Responsibility,Government//%quote%"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government." - Thomas Paine //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power,NWO//%quote%"Let us disappoint the men who would raise themselves upon the ruin of our country." - John Adams //%end% %start%%cat=Banking,Money,Power//%quote%"The perverse deceptiveness characteristic of the individuals who control the Federal Reserve Bank is readily apparent to those who know the necessary historical truths. The fact that they adorn their notes with symbols of the Freemasons and pictures of our national heroes (to help carry on the charade that the Fed is a government institution), who were actually diametrically [totally] opposed to the Fed's existence and its type of 'money', is a mockery that is downright diabolical, and must be the insider's 'joke' of all time. Unfortunately, the consequences of this colossal con to the American people, and the entire world, are all too deadly serious. The Federal Reserve Bank is not federal, is not a reserve, and is not even a real bank." - [Anonymous] "The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system; a system which if it could do good in any form is yet so certain of leading to abuse as to be utterly incompatible with the public safety and prosperity. The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson "The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is The People vs. The Banks." - Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1875 "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat, in his book "Economic Sophisms" "A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth." - [Unknown] "The perfect slave is the slave who thinks that he is free." - [Unknown] "The truth is always revolutionary." - Antonio Gramsci "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." Albert Einstein "The militia, who are in fact the effective part of the people at large will render many troops quite unnecessary. They will form a powerful check upon the regular troops and will generally be sufficient to over-awe them." Tench Coxe (an American citizen, October 21, 1787) "Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every other terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of an American." (The Pennsylvania Gazette, June 18, 1788) "Do not separate text from historical background. If you do you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government." James Madison (known as the "Father of the Constitution" and the fourth president of the United States of America) 1982 the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on the Constitution stated in Senate Document 2807: "that the National Guard is not the 'militia' referred to in the Second Amendment." Alexander Hamilton, collected in Federalist Paper 28, originally in the 10 January, 1788, "Daily Advertiser": "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defence which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair." Montesquieu: "The deterioration of a government begins almost always by a decay of its principles." Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 79 (regarding payment of Judges): "In the general course of human nature, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will." Benjamin Franklin, before the Constitutional Convention, (June 2, 1787): "... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharoah, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..." Daniel Webster: "Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." George Washington, Farewell Address: "Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it." Mr. Justice Brandies of the U.S. Supreme Court has written a dissent passage in Olmstead V. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), that is particularly fitting to keep in mind during these times. It reads: "Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means--to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal--would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face." "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Barry Goldwater from his 1964 Presidential Campaign Edward Gibbon, `The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire': "... the discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny." John Trenchard and Walter Moyle: "It's the misfortune of all Countries, that they sometimes lie under a unhappy necessity to defend themselves by Arms against the ambition of their Governors, and to fight for what's their own. If those in government are heedless of reason, the people must patiently submit to Bondage, or stand upon their own Defence; which if they are enabled to do, they shall never be put upon it, but their Swords may grow rusty in their hands; for that Nation is surest to live in Peace, that is most capable of making War; and a Man that hath a Sword by his side, shall have least occasion to make use of it." John W. Whitehead, `The Second American Revolution': "In recent years we have witnessed numerous marches on Washington in which one group or another has demanded new "rights." Frequently, such rights have not meant freedom from state control, but rather entitlement to state action, protection, or subsidy. In the process of yielding to the "will of the people" and creating new rights, the state invariably enlarges itself and its bureaucracy. Each new right seems to demand a new agency to guarantee it, administer it, or deliver it." Josiah Quincy (1774): "Under God we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever, we shall be called upon to make our exit, we will die freemen." Algernon Sidney (1672): "The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of justice and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety." Frank Herbert: "Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security." "Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolate. On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." //%Author%Sir William Blackstone "The big question to ask about proposals for new laws and policies is not whether they sound reasonable, but what damage they can do when they are used unreasonably." -Thomas Sowell "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be fixed by decisions of the supreme Court, then the people will have ceased to be their own rulers." //%Author%Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861: Chief Justice Marlin T. Phelps, Arizona supreme Court: "Nothing was further from the minds of the Framers of the Constitution, than that the supreme Court should ever make the Supreme Law of the Land." Justice Hugo Black, Columbia University's Charpentier Lectures (1968): "The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges' views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation." Justice Hugo Black: "... any broad unlimited power to hold laws unconstitutional because they offend what this Court conceives to be the `conscience of our people' ... was not given by the Framers, but rather has been bestowed on the Court by the Court." Justice John M. Harlan, US supreme Court, 1895: "We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court, and apply that law to the facts as they find them to be from the evidence." Justice Miller, US supreme Court, Loan Association vs. Topeka, 20 Wall (87 US) 664 (1874): "To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of a citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals. . . is none the less robbery because it was done under the forms of law and is called taxation." Justice William O. Douglas: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." Chief Justice Warren Burger: "Ours is a sick profession. [A profession marked by] incompetence, lack of training, misconduct, and bad manners. Ineptness, bungling, malpractice, and bad ethics can be observed in court houses all over this country every day." Prof. Abram Chayes, Harvard law school: "[Judicial action in the last two decades] adds up to a radical transformation of the role and function of the judiciary in American life. Its chief function now is as a catalyst of social change with judges acting as planners of large scale." Prof. William Forrester, Cornell law school: "The Court has assumed, gradually, the role of deciding the problems on its own and ...the American people and their selected officials gradually have accepted the Court as the political instrument for lawmaking." Prof. Edward S. Corwin: "[Attorneys have been] prone to identify the judicial version of the Constitution as the authentic Constitution." The second amendment states: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." "The right of the people to keep and bear...arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country..." (James Madison) "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." (George Mason) Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia,...taken in shorthand by David Robertson of Petersburg, at 271, 275 (2d ed. Richmond, 1805). "What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. ... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." (Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment) "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States" (Noah Webster in a pamphlet aimed at swaying Pennsylvania toward ratification) Noah Webster, "An Examination into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution...", in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56(New York, 1888). "if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?" (Delegate Sedgwick, during the Massachusetts Convention, rhetorically asking if an oppressive standing army could prevail) Johnathan Elliot, ed., Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol.2 at 97 (2d ed., 1888). "...but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formitable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." (Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist 29.) "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. ... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No. 46.) "Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people" (Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788) "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Initiator of the Declaration of Independence, and member of the first Senate, which passed the Bill of Rights.) "Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the _real_ object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" (Patrick Henry) J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836 "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." (Alexander Hamilton) Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Peirce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850) "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..." (Samuel Adams) Walter Bennett, ed., Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, at 21,22,124(Univ. of Alabama Press,1975). "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants" A quote from Thomas Jefferson in a letter to William S. Smith in 1787. Taken from Jefferson, On Democracy 20, S. Padover ed., 1939 "...the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms" (from article in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette ten days after the introduction of the Bill of Rights) Philadelphia Federal Gazette June 18, 1789 at 2, col.2 "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined" (Patrick Henry) J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836 Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 29 (on the organization of the militia): "Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year." Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, Second Session (February 1982): "The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933: "All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately ... The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon ... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government." Samuel Adams [Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (1788?) (Peirce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)]: "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..." [Contrast the above with U.S. Representative Mel Reynolds' statement: "If it were up to me we'd ban them all" as reported on 9 December, 1993, by CNN.] Samuel Adams: "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council [counsel?], nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men [countrymen?]." Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper 29 (speaking of standing armies): "... if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens." John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the Government of the USA, 471 (1787-88): "Arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense..." [Contrast the above with Attorney General Janet Reno's statement: "Gun registration is not enough. I've always proposed state licensing... with some federal standards." as reported by the Associated Press and by ABC on 10 December, 1993.] Charles A. Beard: "You need only 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." Chief Justice Joseph Story, US supreme Court (_Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States_, pp 746-747(1833)): "The right of the citizen to keep and bear arms has justly been considered the palladium of the liberties of the Republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and the arbritrary powers of rulers, and will generally -- even if these are successful -- enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Edmund Burke, 1784: "The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion." [Contrast the above with U.S. Senator Joseph Biden's statement: "Banning guns is an idea whose time has come" as reported on 18 November, 1993, by the Associated Press.] Edward Abbey: "The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." James Madison, Federalist Paper 46: "Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." Gazette of the United States, 14 October 1789: "The right of the people to keep and bear arms has been recognized by the General Government; but the best security of that right after all is, the military spirit, that taste for martial exercises, which has always distinguished the free citizens of these states... Such men form the best barrier to the liberties of America." George Washington, General, Continental Army (Ret.): "Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the people's liberty's teeth." Hermann Goering, 1936: "Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along ... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." George Washington, speech of 7 January 1790 in the Boston Independent Chronicle, 14 January 1790: "A free people ought... to be armed..." [Contrast the above with U.S. Representative Major Owens's statement: "My bill ... establishes a 6-month grace period for the turning in of all handguns" as recorded in the Congressional Record of 10 November, 1993.] IX. Constitution and Bill of Rights Hamilton, Federalist #84: "I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power." Henry Clay: "The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity -- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity." James Madison, Federalist Paper 62: "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 to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?" Samuel Cooke (1770): "Fidelity to the public requires that the laws be as plain and explicit as possible, that the less knowing may understand, and not be ensnared by them, while the artful evade their force." Samuel Cooke (1770): "Mysteries of law and government may be made a cloak of unrighteousness." Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.: "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Tacitus: "[The] more corrupt the government, the greater the number of laws." State vs. Sutton, 63 Minn. 147, 65 NW 262, 30 L.R.A. 630 Am. St. 459: "When any court violates the clean and unambiguous language of the Constitution, a fraud is perpetrated and no one is bound to obey it." (See 16 Ma. Jur. 2d 177, 178) XII. Social Security And Government Welfare Dorcas R. Hardy, Commissioner of Social Security: "There is no law requiring a person to apply for a Social Security number, and there is no section of title 18, United States Code, making it a crime to not have a social security number." John Locke, 1632-1704; Second (?) Treatise Concerning Civil Government: "...every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. .... The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property." Government "can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent. For this would be in effect to leave them no Property at all." .... Rulers "must not raise Taxes on the Property of the People, without the Consent of the People, given by themselves, or their Deputies." "'Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many." "The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." ... whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society, and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty." John Locke, "True end of government", late 1600's; chapter 28 "Of Tyranny". 202. Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm; an whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command to compass that upon the subject which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate, and acting without authority may be opposed, as any other man who by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority to seize my person in the street may be opposed as a thief and a robber if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ, notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant and such a legal authority as will empower him to arrest me abroad. An why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed.... Other Famous quotes Aristotle, more than 2000 years ago: "what is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others." John O'Sullivan, editor of the "United States Magazine and Democratic Review", wrote in 1837: "The best government is that which governs least.... Government should be confined to the administration of justice, for the protection of the natural equal rights of the citizen, and the preservation of the social order. In all other respects, the voluntary principle, the principle of freedom...affords the true golden rule." From page 137 of the March, 1996, issue of "The Freeman". Thomas Pownall: "Let therefore every man, that, appealing to his own heart, feels the least spark of virtue or freedom there, think that it is an honor which he owes himself, and a duty which he owes his country, to bear arms." Tom Anderson: "I wonder why some of the so-called guardians of freedom are so anxious to register guns and so reluctant to register Communists." Washington Post 1/7/92: "Justice Department studies show that armed citizens are much less likely to suffer losses or personal injury from thieves" William H. Seward (1850): "There is a higher law than the Constitution." William Jennings Bryan: "Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not something to be waited for; but rather something to be achieved." William Pitt (1783): "Necessity is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves." "And indeed, gentlemen, there exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robberies or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right. When weapons reduce them to silence, the laws no longer expect one to await their pronouncments. For people who decide to wait for these will have to wait for justice, too -- and meanwhile they suffer injustice first. Indeed, even the wisdom of the law itself, by a sort of tacit implication, permits self-defense, because it does not actually forbid men to kill; what it does, instead, is to forbid the bearing of a weapon with the intention to kill. When, therefore, an inquiry passes beyond the mere question of the weapon and starts to consider the motive, a man who has used arms in self-defense is not regarded as having carried them with a homicidal aim." quoted on page 17 in Stephen P. Halbrook -- That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of a Constitutional Right . published in 1984, by The University of New Mexico Press and The Independent Institute. The following is copied from The Soldiers Training Manual issued by the War Department, November 30, 1928: TM2000-25: 118-120 DEMOCRACY: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic- negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Results in demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy. TM 2000-25: 120-121 REPUBLIC: Authority is derived throughout the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them. Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure. Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences. A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass. Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress. "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it" --Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) "Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." --Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857 H2>B>U.S. Court Cases {CASE} 16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177, late 2d, Sec 256 (?): "The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of it's enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it." {CASE} 16 Am Jur 2d, Sec 177, late 2d, Sec 256: "No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law, and no courts are bound to enforce it." {CASE} Amos vs. Mosley, 74 Fla. 555; 77 So. 619: "If the legislature clearly misinterprets a constitutional provision, the frequent repetition of the wrong will not create a right." {CASE} Bowers vs. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616, at 618 (7th Cir. 1982): "There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen." {CASE} Brandes vs. Mitteriling, 196 P.2d 464, 467, 657 Ariz 349: "Sovereignty means supremacy in respect of power, domination, or rank; supreme dominion, authority or rule." {CASE} Chisholm vs. State of Georgia (US) 2 Dall 419, 454, 1 L Ed 440, 455 @DALL 1793 pp. 471-472: "...at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects...with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty." {CASE} Chisholm vs. State of Georgia, Ga., 2. U.S. (2 Dall.) 419, 471, 1 L. Ed. 440: ""Sovereignty" is the right to govern. In Europe the sovereignty is generally ascribed to the prince; here it rests with the people. There the sovereign actually administers the government; here, never in a single instance. Our governors are the agents of the people, and at most stand in the same relation to their sovereign in which regents in Europe stand to their sovereign. Their princes have personal powers, dignities, and pre-eminences. Our rulers have none but official, nor do they partake in the sovereignty otherwise, or in any other capacity than as private citizens." {CASE} City of Bisbee vs. Cochise County, 78 P.2d 982, 986, 52 Ariz. 1: ""Government" is not "sovereignty." "Government" is the machinery or expedient for expressing the will of the sovereign power." {CASE} Filbin Corporation vs. United States, D.C.S.C., 266 F. 911, 914: "The "sovereignty" of the United States consists of the powers existing in the people as a whole and the persons to whom they have delegated it, and not as a separate personal entity, and as such it does not possess the personal privileges of the sovereign of England; and the government, being restrained by a written Constitution, cannot take property without compensation, as can the English government by act of king, lords, and Parliament." {CASE} Hale vs. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43, 279: "If, whenever an officer or employee of a corporation were summoned before a grand jury as a witness he could refuse to produce the books and documents of such corporation, upon the ground that they would incriminate the corporation itself, it would result in the failure of a large number of cases where the illegal combination was determinable only upon the examination of such papers. Conceding that the witness was an officer of the corporation under investigation, and that he was entitled to assert the rights of the corporation with respect to the production of its books and papers, we are of the opinion that there is a clear distinction in this particular between an individual and a corporation, and that the latter has no right to refuse to submit its books and papers for an examination at the suit of the state. The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the state or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to incriminate him. He owes no such duty to the state, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the state, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his rights are a refusal to incriminate himself, and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under a warrant of the law. He owes nothing to the public as long as he does not trespass upon their rights." /-P-/ "Upon the other hand, the corporation is a creature of the state. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public. It receives certain special privileges and franchises, and holds them subject to the laws of the state and the limitations of its charter. Its powers are limited by law. It can make no contract not authorized by its charter. Its rights to act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved right in the legislature to investigate its contracts and find out whether it has exceeded its powers..." {CASE} Kingsley vs. Merril, 122 Wis. 185; 99 NW 1044: "A long and uniform sanction by law revisers and lawmakers, of a legislative assertion and exercise of power, is entitled to a great weight in construing an ambiguous or doubtful provision, but is entitled to no weight if the statute in question is in conflict with the plain meaning of the constitutional provision." {CASE} Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (@ Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803): "All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void." {CASE} Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436 p. 491: "Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them." {CASE} Norton vs. Shelby County, 118 US 425 p.442: "An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." {CASE} Riley vs. Carter, 165 Okal. 262; 25 P. 2d 666; 79 ALR 1018: "Economic necessity cannot justify a disregard of cardinal constitutional guarantee." {CASE} Robin vs. Hardaway, 1 Jefferson 109, (Va., 1772): "All acts of the legislature apparently contrary to natural rights and justice are, in our law and must be in the nature of things, considered void ... We are in conscience bound to disobey." {CASE} Scott vs. Sandford, Mo., 60 US 393, 404, 19 How. 393, 404, 15 L.Ed. 691: "The words "sovereign people" are those who form the sovereign, and who hold the power and conduct the government through their representatives. Every citizen is one of these people and a constituent member of this sovereignty." {CASE} Slote vs. Board of Examiners, 274 N.Y. 367; 9 NE 2d 12; 112 ALR 660: "Disobedience or evasion of a constitutional mandate may not be tolerated, even though such disobedience may, at least temporarily, promote in some respects the best interests of the public." {CASE} State vs. Sutton, 63 Minn. 147, 65 NW 262, 30 L.R.A. 630 Am. St. 459: "When any court violates the clean and unambiguous language of the Constitution, a fraud is perpetrated and no one is bound to obey it." (See 16 Am. Jur. 2d 177, 178) {CASE} US vs. Dougherty, 473 F 2nd 1113, 1139 (1972): "The pages of history shine on instance of the jury's exercise of its prerogative to disregard instructions of the judge ..." {CASE} US vs. Miller (supreme Court): "The signification attributed to the term Militia appear from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators [Justice Story's commentary is cited later]. These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense... And further, that ordinarily when called for service these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of a kind in common use at the time." {CASE} US vs. Moylan, 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, 1969, 417 F.2d at 1006: "If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence ... and the courts must abide by that decision." {CASE} Warren vs. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181): "... a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen..." {CASE} Wills vs. Michigan Dept. of State Police, 105 L.Ed. 2nd 45 (1989): "States and state officials acting officially are held not to be "persons" subject to liability under 42 USCS section 1983." {CASE} Yick Wo vs. Hopkins, Sheriff, 118 U.S. 356.: "Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to the law, for it is the author and source of law, but in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts." - "For, the very idea that one man may be compelled to hold his life, or the means of living, or any material right essential to the enjoyment of life, at the mere will of another, seems to be intolerable in any country where freedom prevails, as being the essence of slavery itself." "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." -President James Madison, a Mainstream Revolutionary from "Notes on Virgin1a" "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children." Hosea 4:6 "If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this in one instance may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed..." -George Washington's farewell address 1796 "Study the Constitution. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed from the legislatures, and enforced in courts of justice." -Abraham Lincoln "The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men." - Plato Quotes From the Worst leaders in the World .... From: http://www.jbs.org/vo13no12.htm#Times Times Change, But Collectivist Message Remains Constant We must organize all labor, no matter how dirty and arduous it may be, so that every [citizen] may regard himself as part of that great army of free labor.... The generation that is now fifteen years old must arrange all their tasks of education in such a way that every day, and in every city, the young people shall engage in the practical solution of the problems of common labor, even of the smallest, most simple kind. - Vladimir Lenin Imagine an army of 100,000 young people restoring urban and rural communities and giving their labor in exchange for education and training.... [National Service] will harness the energy of our youth and attack the problems of our time. It literally has the potential to revolutionize the way young people all across America look at their country and feel about themselves. - Bill Clinton [T]here is the great silent, continuous struggle; the struggle between the State and the individual; between the State which demands and the Individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or a hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war. - Benito Mussolini I'm here because I want to redefine the meaning of citizenship in America.... [I]f you're asked in school, "What does it mean to be a good citizen?" I want the answer to be, "Well, to be a good citizen, you have to obey the law, you've got to go to work or be in school, you've got to pay your taxes and - oh, yes, you have to serve...." - Bill Clinton All the people I know who are driving for a form of national service, primarily want it to be compulsory. They realize that's a terrible problem politically, so they're not willing to say it. It is endangerment of freedom and the potential for indoctrination that skeptics do not like in the national service concept. However benign the program, some think it will not succeed on any meaningful scale unless it is compulsory. - Martin Anderson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Boston Globe, November 29, 1992 In his April 5 radio address outlining the goals of the summit, the President endorsed compulsory volunteerism - and even called for extending it to middle schools. In other words, the man who so famously avoided the dangerous duty of fighting in Vietnam as a young man now proposes drafting a new generation of young people to perform a different set of difficult tasks. - New York Post editorial, April 27, 1997 Fascism finds it necessary, at the outset, to take away from the ordinary human being what he has been taught and has grown to cherish the most: personal liberty. And it can be affirmed, without falling into exaggeration, that a curtailment of personal liberty not only has proved to be, but necessarily must be, a fundamental condition of the triumph of Fascism. - Mario Palmieri The Philosophy of Fascism (1936) Before they have their own families, the young can make a unique contribution to the family of America. In doing so, they can acquire the habit of service, and get a deeper understanding of what it really means to be a citizen. That is the main reason, perhaps, why we are here. - Bill Clinton We're here for the first President's Summit for America's Future - to mobilize every community and challenge every citizen and to ask our young people to become citizen-servants, too. - Bill Clinton According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, with this need of raising the State to its rightful position. - Mario Palmieri When an opponent says, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already.... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community." - Adolf Hitler "The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they...have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed." -- F. A. Hayek "Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA -- ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state." --Heinrich Himmler. "Gun registration is not enough." Attorney General Janet Reno, December 10,1993 (Associated Press) "Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal." --Janet Reno "A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." ­ Alexander Pope "If the States do not have the right to secede, then they have no rights at all." - Dr. Walter Williams , George Mason University Economics Dept. "If you understood what Communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday become Communist." - Jane Fonda, in a speech to Duke University students in 1970 "... all Americans ... need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Ari Fleischer, official White House spokesperson "...the myth of socialism is far stronger than the reality of capitalism. That is because capitalism is not really an ism at all. It is what people do if you leave them alone." - Arnold Beichmen, Hoover Institute Fellow "A Freudian slip is when you say one thing, and mean your mother." --Anonymous "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms." - Richard Henry Lee "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Abbey "After all, if the government can't keep drugs away from prisoners who are locked in steel cages 24 hours a day, surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, drug-tested, strip-searched, X-rayed and videotaped -- how can it possibly stop the flow of drugs to 260 million other Americans?" - Steve Dasbach, Libertarian Party chairman "All children are essentially criminal." -- Denis Diderot "All generalizations are false. Including this one." - Mark Twain "And it's even more unfortunate that some people would attempt the impossible task of childproofing the world, rather than worldproofing their child." - letter to the editor, New Orleans newspaper "Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law." - Henry David Thoreau "Arms are the only true badges of liberty. The possession of arms is the distinction of a free man from a slave." -- Andrew Fletcher (1698) "Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold." -Shakespeare "Bill Clinton has kept the promises he meant to keep." - Clinton adviser George Stephanopolous (CNN's Larry King Live, 2/15/96) "Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent." -- John Dewey 1899, Our "father" of education "Civility costs nothing and buys everything." --Lady M. W. Montague "Courage is the complement of fear." - Robert A. Heinlein "Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everyone else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There's a philistine and as aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don't reconcile the poles. You just recognize them" -- Orson Welles "Everything in excess. Moderation is for monks!" - Robert A. Heinlein "Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson "Farming looks easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from a cornfield." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower "Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu "I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787 "If it only takes one or two records from a bookstore to help us eliminate drugs on the street, then so be it," said Lt. Lori Moriarty, commander of the North Metro Drug Task Force, which is seeking the Tattered Cover records "If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education." - Thomas Jefferson "In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current." - Thomas Jefferson "In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, Brave, Hated, and Scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, For then it costs nothing to be a Patriot." - Mark Twain "It is both possible and moral, to love one's country and hate its government." - Dr. Walter Williams , George Mason University Economics Dept "Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country." -- George W. Bush (January 28, 2003) "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman, and child of this great nation. We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland." -- Adolf Hitler, proposing the creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." -- George W. Bush (CNN on December 18, 2000) "We will protect limited government and individual freedom in ways you can't even imagine." -- Gov. Jeb Bush (Victory Speech -- Nov. 5, 2002) "If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." -- President Bill Clinton (August 12, 1993) "At every point society acts to keep you from doing what you have to do." -- John Cage, 1973 "A great deal may be learned about society by studying man ... nothing can be learned about man by studying society." -- Ayn Rand "I prefer someone who burns the flag and wraps himself in the Constitution to someone who burns the Constitution and wraps himself in the flag." -- Source Unknown "Marijuana is not known to be very harmful. I mean, it's generally assumed it's not good for you, but coffee isn't good for you, tea isn't good for you, chocolate cake isn't good for you either. It would be crazy to criminalize coffee, even though it's harmful." -– Noam Chomsky "A drug is neither moral nor immoral ... it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole." -– Frank Zappa "The nazis said they had a Jewish problem. We say we have a drug abuse problem. Actually, 'Jewish problem' was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; 'drug abuse problem' is the name we give to our persecution of people who use certain drugs." -- Thomas Szasz, M.D. "You're brought up learning that drugs make you crazy, then you do marijuana for the first time, and it's not so bad. It's kind of cool. That's when kids find out it's been a lie." –- Governor Gary Johnson (R-NM) "If we're living in a free country, we should be free to do what we want to do if we're not hurting anyone else or their property. Why should I be incarcerated if I'm doing something that doesn't hurt anyone else?" -- Woody Harrelson "I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government's business what ideas a man puts into his mind; likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body." -- Thomas Szasz "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." -- Albert Einstein EDUCATION "If you take a look at the history of 'freedom', you notice that the most frightening thing about people who are not free is that they learn to take their bondage for granted, and to believe that this bondage is 'normal' and natural. Right now, a lot of you are helping history to repeat itself; you don't believe you should be free. Of course you want to be free -- in various ways, not just free of school. However, society gives you so many condescending, false and harmful messages about yourselves that most of you wouldn't trust yourselves with freedom. It's all complicated by the fact that the people who infringe most dangerously and inescapably on your freedom are those who say they are helping you, those who are convinced you need their help: teachers, school counselors, perhaps your parents." -- Grace Llewellyn "[Schooling] rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought." -- Ludwig von Mises Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and love by love. -- Thomas Szasz, M.D. "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain "School initiates young people into a world where everything can be measured, including their imaginations, and, indeed, man himself. But personal growth is not a measurable entity. It is growth in disciplined dissidence, which cannot be measured against any rod, or any curriculum not compared to someone else's achievement. In such learning one can emulate others only in imaginative endeavor, and follow in their footsteps rather than mimic their gait. The learning I prize is immeasurable re-creation." -- Ivan Illich "I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas." -- Agatha Christie "State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." -- John Stuart Mill "Let's take a cooks tour of big government at its finest. The government says to us, 'Consider the burden of educating your children. How would you choose teachers and select textbooks, how would you know where to build schools and how many students to have per classroom? Turn your children over to us, and we will unburden you. We will turn your children into functional illiterates'. And with that dirty little Judas bargain, we gave away our children." -- Michael Cloud "Education and learning are the most worthwhile pursuits there are, but they are eclipsed in high school by an emphasis on conformity and blind obedience. -- Jessie Grogan "One of the reasons public schools don't educate our children is that teachers spend so much time with discipline problems that they have little time left to teach." -- Dwight Filley "Education -- compulsory schooling, compulsory learning -- is a tyranny and a crime against the human mind and spirit. Let all those escape it who can, any way they can." -- John Holt "If institutionalized learning was a choice, then the concept of 'childhood' would go out of production." -– Ivan Illich "Public educators, like Soviet farmers, lack any incentive to produce results, innovate, to be efficient, to make the kinds of difficult changes that private firms operating in a competitive market must make to survive." -- Carolyn Lochhead "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater "We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation." -- William Hazlitt "All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging conceptions and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorship in a nutshell." -- George Bernard Shaw "Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do." -- Rudolph Giuliani "Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it." -- Mikhail Bakunin "We are potentially the most dangerous agency in the country. " -- FBI Director Louis Freeh, 1997 "The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words." -- The Atlanta Journal "You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have." -- P.J. O'Rourke "We are living in a sick society filled with people who would not directly steal from their neighbor but who are willing to demand that the government do it for them." -- William L. Comer "Taking somebody's money without permission is stealing, unless you work for the IRS; then it's taxation. Killing people en masse is homicidal mania, unless you work for the Army; then it's National Defense. Spying on your neighbors is invasion of privacy, unless you work for the FBI; then it's National Security. Running a whorehouse makes you a pimp and poisoning people makes you a murderer, unless you work for the CIA; then it's counter-intelligence." -- Robert Anton Wilson "Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities." -- Michael Cloud "The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, 'See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk'." -- Harry Browne "Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them." -- Ronald Reagan "To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded; all by creatures that have neither the right nor wisdom, nor virtue ... To be governed means that at every move, operation, or transaction one is noted, registered, entered in a census, taxed, stamped, authorized, recommended, admonished, prevented, reformed, set right, corrected. Government means to be subject to tribute, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, pressured, mystified, robbed; all in the name of the public utility and the general good. Then at first sign of resistance or word of complaint, one is repressed, fined, despised, vexed, pursued, hustled, beaten up, garroted, imprisoned, shot, machine gunned, judged, sentenced, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed, and to cap it all, ridiculed, mocked, outraged, and dishonored. That is Government. That is it's justice and morality!" –- Pierre-Joseph Prou dhon "Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program." -– Milton Friedman A " nationial emergency " is now a practical necessity in order to carry out what has become the regular and normal method of governmental action. What were intended by Congress as delegations of power to be used only in the most extreme situations and for the most limited duration's have become everyday powers; and a state of "emergency " has become a permanent condition. - Department of Justice, May 21, 1973 "The 4th Amendment protects the individual's privacy in a variety of settings. In none is the zone of privacy more clearly defined than when bounded by the unambiguous physical dimensions of an individual's home - a zone that finds its roots in clear and specific constitutional terms: the right of the people to be secure in their houses shall not be violated." - John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court. Majority opinion in 6-3 ruling that required police to have a warrant before entering a suspect's home to make an arrest, 15 Apr 1980 "The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it." - Thomas Jefferson "The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves." - Dresden James "The information superhighway is a revolution that in years to come will transcend newspapers, radio, and television as an information source. Therefore, I think this is the time to put some restrictions on it." -- Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) "The less government we have the better - the fewer laws and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the individual." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." - Mark Twain "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." - Thomas Jefferson "The militia is the dread of tyrants and the guard of freemen." - Gov. R. Lucas, former Major General of the Ohio Militia, 1832 "The more impediments to legislation, the better." - Robert A. Heinlein "The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are." -- H.L. Mencken "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - 10th Amendment, US Constitution "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." - 4th Amendment, US Constitution "The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure." - Albert Einstein "The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management." - Thomas Jefferson "This country is a one-party country. Half of it is called Republican and half is called Democrat. It doesn't make any difference. All the really good ideas belong to the Libertarians." - Hugh Downs Co-host ABC-TV's 20/20 3/31/97 "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson "Treat every person with kindness and respect, even those who are rude to you. Remember that you show compassion to others not because of who they are, but because of who you are." --Andrew T. Somers "When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak." -- Eric Hoffer You live and learn, or you don't live long." - Robert A. Heinlein A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts. - Herbert V. Prochnow A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. -- Tom Wolfe A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. -- Frank Rizzo All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. - Albert Camus It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them. -- Alfred Adler It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. -Moliere It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. -G. H. Hardy by: zzzBigOne

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