Sing II

"Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That's why I sing these songs. That's why I tell these stories, dammit! No root, no fruit!
--Utah Phillips

Test II

"The test of every religious, political,
or educational system, is the man which it forms.
If a system injures the intelligence it is bad.
If it injures the character it is vicious.
If it injures the conscience it is criminal."
--Henri Frederic Amiel
(1821-1881)
Source: Journal, 17 June 1852

Inventions II

"Education... now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all the social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and 'fans,' driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve 'education' but to do away with it, to end the ugly and antihuman business of people-shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves."

-- John Holt (1923-1985)
American author and educator, proponent of homeschooling,
and pioneer in youth rights theory
Source: Holt, J. (1967). How Children Learn. New York: Pitman Publishing Corporation

More VI

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."

--Laurence J. Peter
(1919-1990) American educator, "hierarchiologist", best known for the formulation of the 'Peter Principle'
Source: Peter’s Quotations, 1977

Proliferation

"Through the rapid proliferation of laws reaching every corner of human existence, “the government is manufacturing more criminals now than ever before.” The list of illegal activities includes more minutiae than one would think possible. Beer-makers are barred from listing alcohol content on bottles, and liquor distilleries cannot advertise on TV. Filling one’s own prairie pothole can land a property owner in jail, as can protecting private property from unlawful intruders. Placing handbills in neighbors’ mailboxes is strictly prohibited, and attempting to sell nectarines of an improper size is a federal offense. Companies are no longer allowed to give salaried professionals partial days off without pay, and in Texas it is a crime to call oneself an interior designer without the government’s permission. It is perhaps easier to recount all that remains legal than all that is now prohibited."

--Jonathan H. Adler
Source: Tyranny Now, LIBERTY, p. 55, November, 1994.

Why II

WHY!!

Wait! Don't go! I don't belong here!
Don't close that door! Don't walk away!
I know about these places, I'm not a stray!
How did I get here?
What did I do?
Wait til my beloved friend gets a hold of you!
My beloved friend?.I know he will look for me til the
very end!

What is this place? It's so cold and loud!
Where's my own bed?..it was like sleeping on a cloud!
There are so many others here, I looked in their eyes
They look so sad, their barks sound like cries!

My beloved owner will come, he will help them too!
Isn't that what beloved friends do?

Why am I still here?

What did I do?

So many human faces, smiling; and, passing thru here
But never the beloved friend I hold so dear!
It seems so long since I've been away
I miss my own bed, I'm not a stray!
So I will sit here and wait for my beloved friend
Sit here and wait til the very end!

Written by Melissa T.,NJ ACO, 2010

Irresponsible

"The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents -- number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome -- so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That's] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic."
--Barack Hussein Obama (1961-)
44th President of the United States
Source: July 3, 2008

Lower

"I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me."
--Mark Twain, "Letters from the Earth"

Ahead II

"She didn't know it couldn't be done, so she went ahead and did it."
--Mary S. Almanac

"Necessary"

"It will be necessary for us to be a nation of men, and not laws."

--Dick Cheney [Richard Bruce Cheney] (1941- )
Vice President of the United States
Source: reacting to the 9-11 attack as reported on PBS "Frontline"

Silence IV

"Oppression can only survive through silence."
--Carmen de Monteflores

2000

"[I]f the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
--Abraham Lincoln
(1809-1865) 16th US President
Source: First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, Washington, D.C.

Tell

"Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do."

--John Pierpont Morgan

Rejuvination

"Now the 21st century approaches and with it the inevitability of change. We must wonder if the American people will find renewal and rejuvenation within themselves, will discover again their capacity for innovation and adaptation. If not, alas, the nation's future will be shaped by sightless forces of history over which Americans will have no control."
--John Chancellor (1927-1996)
American journalist, news anchorman

70%

"It's the youngest and poorest who have the most to worry about. Families headed by people under 35 are almost 70 percent poorer today, adjusting for inflation, than they were in 1984. The causes: lower wages, more expensive housing, and student debt."
--David Frum, "America the Anxious: Why We’re Freaking Out"
Newsweek, August 13/20, 2012, page 41

Also available online,

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/05/david-frum-on-high-anxiety-america.html

(Alas, the source of this eye-opening statistic is not revealed...)

Accumulation

"[T]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
--James Madison(1751-1836),
Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President

Create II

"Electronic calculators can solve problems which the man who made them cannot solve but no government, subsidized commission of engineers and physicists could create a worm." --Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) American critic, naturalist

NDAA

"A decision of the Fuhrer in the express form of a law or decree may not be scrutinized by a judge. In addition, the judge is bound by any other decision of the Fuhrer, provided that they are clearly intended to declare law."
--Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
Source: 1936 Decree

Dropped

"Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street."
--Virginia Woolf

Smoothly

"...the Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution followed the Reichstag fire."
--Srdja Trifkovic (1954- )
Serbian author, historian

Strewn

"The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards."
--Walter Bagehot

Strewn

"The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards."
--Walter Bagehot

Strewn

"The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards."
--Walter Bagehot

Facts II

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."
--Aldous Huxley

Rebel

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
--Benjamin Franklin

Swiss

"[T]he Swiss people are the best practitioners of the ideals of non-aggression. The Swiss national government posts are parttime positions. Most decisions are made at the canton (state) level. Swiss per capita income is the highest in the world, showing that non-aggression pays. How did the Swiss come to adopt a relatively non-aggressive constitution in an aggressive world? In the mid-1800s, they imitated our constitution and stuck with it!"
--Dr. Mary J. Ruwart (1949- )
Source: Healing Our World, Ch 22

Odds III

"Never tell me the odds."
--Han Solo, "Star Wars"

Occupy

"The mission of the Gestapo expanded steadily as, from 1933 onward, 'political criminality' was given a much broader definition than ever before and most forms of dissent and criticism were gradually criminalized. The result was that more 'laws' or lawlike measures were put on the books than ever."
--Shelia Fitzpatrick
Source: Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989, 1997

Afterlife

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
--Douglas Adams

Corporatism

"Unable to maintain their government-granted monopoly, the powerful railroad interests turned to government to do the regulating and price-fixing which they were unable to do themselves. In fact, the pressure that induced Congress to enact the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 did not come from reformers bemoaning abuses by the powerful railroad interests; it came from the railroad interests themselves, asking Congress to shield them against the harsh winds of competition."
--Dan Smoot [Howard Drummond Smoot] (1913-2003)
former supervising member of the FBI headquarters staff
in the Washington Office and one of the first to research
and publish on the activities of the Council on Foreign Relations
Source: The Business End Of Government (1973)

Desire II

"The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be." --Ayn Rand

Opposition

"Opposition, n. In politics the party that prevents the government from running amuck by hamstringing it."
--Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) Humorist
Source: The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911