The object of this clause [the right of the people to keep and bear arms] is to secure a well-armed militia.... But a militia
would be useless unless the citizens were enabled to exercise themselves in the use of warlike weapons. To preserve this privilege, and to secure to
the people the ability to oppose themselves in military force against the usurpations of government, as well as against enemies from without, that
government is forbidden by any law or proceeding to invade or destroy the right to keep and bear arms.more John Norton Pomeroy quotes | Throughout the history of the United States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular resistance.more Bruce D. Porter quotes | 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.more Judge Richard Posner quotes | 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.more Judge Richard Posner quotes | 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.more Richard Posner quotes | 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.more Richard Posner quotes | 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.more Richard Posner quotes | | If you permit the audio recordings, they'll be a lot more eavesdropping. ... There's going to be a lot of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers. ... Yes, it's a bad thing. There is such a thing as privacy.more Judge Richard Allen Posner quotes | The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to limit what the federal government could do. Any interpretation of a provision of the Bill of Rights as a grant of federal power is ipso facto wrong.more L. A. Powe, Jr. quotes | Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.more General Colin Powell quotes | So our record of living our values and letting our values be an inspiration to others I think is clear.
And I don't think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world.
We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home ... to live our own lives in peace.more General Colin Powell quotes | To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so...
To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.more Pierre-Joseph Proudhon quotes | Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.more Pierre-Joseph Proudhon quotes | An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.more Joseph Pulitzer quotes | If a government were trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of a population, what would it do?
1. The use of indirect rather than direct taxes, so that the tax is hidden in the price of goods.
2. Inflation, by which the state reduces the value of everyone else's currency.
3. Borrowing, so as to postpone the necessary taxation.
4. Gift and luxury taxes, where the tax accompanies the receipt or purchase of something special, lessening the annoyance of the tax.
5. “Temporary” taxes, which somehow never get repealed when the emergency passes.
6. Taxes that exploit social conflict, by placing higher taxes on unpopular groups.
7. The threat of social collapse or withholding monopoly government services if taxes are reduced.
8. Collection of the total tax burden in relatively small increments over time, rather than in a yearly lump sum.
9. Taxes whose exact incidence cannot be predicted in advance, thus keeping the taxpayer unaware of just how much he is paying.
10. Extraordinary budget complexity to hide the budget process from public understanding.
11. The use of generalized expenditure categories to make it difficult for outsiders to assess the individual components of the budget.
more Amilcare Puviani quotes | 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 meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be 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. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.more Carroll Quigley quotes | Our government has found that the most effective way to control a person is not by the ballot or the bullet, but rather by the 'bucket'. Today, in a country that fought a revolution to rid itself of a repressive government and excessive taxes, government takes 40 percent of everything we earn in the form of taxes.more Byron C. Radaker quotes | A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth.more Sir Walter Raleigh quotes | Let me explain this. There are, fundamentally, only two causes of the progress of the nineteenth century -- the same two causes which you will find at the root of any happy, benevolent, progressive era in human history. One cause is psychological, the other existential -- or: one pertains to man's consciousness, the other to the physical conditions of his existence. The first is reason, the second is freedom. And when I say "freedom," I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as "freedom from want" or "freedom from fear" or "freedom from the necessity of earning a living." I mean "freedom from compulsion -- freedom from rule by physical force." Which means: political freedom. more Ayn Rand quotes | The goal of the “liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle the country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time. Never permitting their direction to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservative” was only to retard that process.)more Ayn Rand quotes | We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.more Ayn Rand quotes | Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals -- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government -- that it is not a charter _for_ government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection _against_ the government.more Ayn Rand quotes | It was not the tycoons of big business, it was not the working classes, it was the intellectuals who reversed the trend toward political freedom and revived the doctrines of the absolute State, of totalitarian government rule, of the government's right to control the lives of the citizens in any manner it pleases. This time, it was not in the name of the "divine right of kings," but in the name of the divine right of the masses. The basic principle was the same: the right to enforce at the point of a gun the moral doctrines of whoever happens to seize control of the machinery of government.more Ayn Rand quotes | Do you wish to know when that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading
is done, not by consent, but by Compulsion -- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing --
when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors -- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by
work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you -- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming
self-sacrifice -- you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make
terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.more Ayn Rand quotes | Every government interference in the economy
consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force,
to some men at the expense of others.more Ayn Rand quotes | Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a “time machine” and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century—would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets?more Ayn Rand quotes | Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.more Ayn Rand quotes | Government control of the economy, no matter in whose behalf, has been the source of all the evils in our industrial society -– and the solution is laissez-faire capitalism, i.e., the abolition of any and all forms of intervention in production and trade, the separation of State and Economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of Church and State.more Ayn Rand quotes | 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.more Ayn Rand quotes | The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia is the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced. If service and self-sacrifice are a moral ideal, and if the "selfishness" of human nature prevents men from leaping into sacrificial furnaces, there is no reason -- no reason that a mystic moralist could name -- why a dictator should not push them in at the point of bayonets -- for their own good, or the good of humanity, or the good of posterity, or the good of the latest bureaucrat's five-year plan. There is no reason that they can name to oppose any atrocity. The value of a man's life? His right to exist? His right to pursue his own happiness? These are concepts that belong to individualism and capitalism -- to the antithesis of the altruist morality.more Ayn Rand quotes | Make no mistake about it -- and tell it to your Republican friends: capitalism and altruism cannot coexist in the same man or in the same society. Tell it to anyone who attempts to justify capitalism on the ground of the "public good" or the "general welfare" or "service to society" or the benefit it brings to the poor. All these things are true, but they are the by-products, the secondary consequences of capitalism -- not its goal, purpose or moral justification. The moral justification of capitalism is man's right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; it is the recognition that man -- every man -- is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others, not a sacrificial animal serving anyone's need.more Ayn Rand quotes | It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal.more Leonard E. Read quotes | Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the people.' 'We the people' tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. 'We the people' are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the people' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the people' are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I've tried to do these past eight years.more Ronald Reagan quotes | I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.more Ronald Reagan quotes | The NRA believes America's laws were made to be obeyed and that
our Constitutional liberties are just as important today as 200 years ago.
And by the way, the Constitution does not say
Government shall decree the right to keep and bear arms.
The Constitution says 'The right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed.'more Ronald Reagan quotes | No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!more Ronald Reagan quotes | We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority or government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put in this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer. Itīs so hard for government planners, no matter how sophisticated, to ever substitute for millions of individuals working night and day to make their dreams come true. The fact is, bureaucracies are a problem around the world.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.more Ronald Reagan quotes | The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself. ... [I] hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.more Ronald Reagan quotes | | Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?more Ronald Reagan quotes | Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community?more Ronald Reagan quotes | Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.... We've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of government himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.more Ronald Reagan quotes |
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