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2009 May 29
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"True freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free." |
"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." |
"Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant.
Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are
extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics.
Which would you prefer, a United States with political power
centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies
with detailed information on Americans and compliant states
or power widely dispersed over 50 states,
thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?" |
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2009 May 28
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"...[W]e insist on the principle that no danger or crisis, foreign or
domestic, will be solved by Americans surrendering more of their
constitutional liberties, in the foolish hope that a bigger government
will provide greater security." |
"It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way." |
"The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism
and big nanny government is because too many people vote
in the expectation of getting something for nothing,
not because they have a concern for what is good for the country.
A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote.
If children were forced to learn about the Constitution,
about how government works, about how this nation came into being,
about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of
liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming
out of the mouths of silly old men." |
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2009 May 27
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"Crime is contagious.
If the government becomes a law breaker,
it breeds contempt for the law." |
"Here I close my opinion.
I could not say less in view of questions of such gravity
that go down to the very foundations of the government.
If the provisions of the Constitution can be set aside
by an Act of Congress, where is the course of usurpation to end?
The present assault upon capital is but the beginning.
It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping,
till our political contests will become a war of the poor
against the rich; a war growing in intensity and bitterness." |
"Absolute, arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority." |
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2009 May 26
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"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." |
"Since the general civilization of mankind,
I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms
of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power
than by violent and sudden usurpations." |
"To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws ..." |
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2009 May 25
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"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being
corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his
revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his
tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who
rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.
He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new
blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of
immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or
mutual check, in our Constitution." |
"The object and practice of liberty lies in the limitation of government power." |
"A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime.
All that is required is that we take away the criminals’ rights
-- which, of course, are our own.
Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel
a sense of security from the new totalitarian state." |
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