Criminology

"In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes."

--P. D. Ouspensky (1878-1947)
Source: A New Model of the Universe, 1931

Futile

"The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor."
--Albert Camus

Alike

"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life."
--Dick Gregory

Uncompromising

"If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity."

--Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Author
Source: " 'Extremism' or The Art of Smearing", Chapter 17 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Eternity

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."
--Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish writer

Mention

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize--that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards--that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school.



I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others.

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question.

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry.

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison.

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.


Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.


If I can help somebody as I pass along,

If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,

If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong,

Then my living will not be in vain.

If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,

If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,

If I can spread the message as the master taught,

Then my living will not be in vain.



--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

Rabble-Rouser

I know a man--and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I'm talking about as I go down the way because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.


He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

Parallels

But God has a way of even putting nations in their place. The God that I worship has a way of saying, "Don't play with me." He has a way of saying, as the God of the Old Testament used to say to the Hebrews, "Don’t play with me, Israel. Don't play with me, Babylon. Be still and know that I'm God. And if you don't stop your reckless course, I'll rise up and break the backbone of your power." And that can happen to America. Every now and then I go back and read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And when I come and look at America, I say to myself, the parallels are frightening. And we have perverted the drum major instinct.


--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

Senseless

God didn't call America to do what she's doing in the world now. God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war as the war in Vietnam. And we are criminals in that war. We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I'm going to continue to say it. And we won't stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

Supremacy

And not only does this thing go into the racial struggle, it goes into the struggle between nations. And I would submit to you this morning that what is wrong in the world today is that the nations of the world are engaged in a bitter, colossal contest for supremacy. And if something doesn't happen to stop this trend, I'm sorely afraid that we won't be here to talk about Jesus Christ and about God and about brotherhood too many more years. If somebody doesn't bring an end to this suicidal thrust that we see in the world today, none of us are going to be around, because somebody's going to make the mistake through our senseless blunderings of dropping a nuclear bomb somewhere. And then another one is going to drop. And don't let anybody fool you, this can happen within a matter of seconds. They have twenty-megaton bombs in Russia right now that can destroy a city as big as New York in three seconds, with everybody wiped away, and every building. And we can do the same thing to Russia and China.

But this is why we are drifting. And we are drifting there because nations are caught up with the drum major instinct. "I must be first." "I must be supreme." "Our nation must rule the world." And I am sad to say that the nation in which we live is the supreme culprit. And I'm going to continue to say it to America, because I love this country too much to see the drift that it has taken.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

March

The other day I was saying, I always try to do a little converting when I'm in jail. And when we were in jail in Birmingham the other day, the white wardens and all enjoyed coming around the cell to talk about the race problem. And they were showing us where we were so wrong demonstrating. And they were showing us where segregation was so right. And they were showing us where intermarriage was so wrong. So I would get to preaching, and we would get to talking--calmly, because they wanted to talk about it. And then we got down one day to the point--that was the second or third day--to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. You're just as poor as Negroes." And I said, "You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you're so poor you can't send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march."


--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

Instinct

[W]e all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade...


Now the other problem is, when you don't harness the drum major instinct--this uncontrolled aspect of it—is that it leads to snobbish exclusivism. It leads to snobbish exclusivism. And you know, this is the danger of social clubs and fraternities--I'm in a fraternity; I'm in two or three--for sororities and all of these, I'm not talking against them. I'm saying it's the danger. The danger is that they can become forces of classism and exclusivism where somehow you get a degree of satisfaction because you are in something exclusive. And that's fulfilling something, you know--that I'm in this fraternity, and it's the best fraternity in the world, and everybody can't get in this fraternity. So it ends up, you know, a very exclusive kind of thing.

And you know, that can happen with the church; I know churches get in that bind sometimes. I've been to churches, you know, and they say, "We have so many doctors, and so many school teachers, and so many lawyers, and so many businessmen in our church." And that's fine, because doctors need to go to church, and lawyers, and businessmen, teachers--they ought to be in church. But they say that--even the preacher sometimes will go all through that—they say that as if the other people don't count.

And the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he's a doctor. The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he's a Ph.D. The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he's a lawyer. And any church that violates the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.
February 4, 1968, Atlanta Georgia
"Drum Major Instinct" Sermon

Decadent

"A decadent civilization compromises with its disease, cherishes the virus infecting it, loses its self-respect."
--E. M. Cioran

Mockery

"Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves."
--Thomas Moore (1779-1852) Irish writer

Boot

"Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny -- the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic's descent. ... From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn't matter whether the regulator's foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us."
--John F. Di Leo, Columnist

Same III

"One Blue Dog Democratic House Member reminded me earlier this month of the saying that 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' He wondered if his fellow Members weren't more in need of advice from psychiatrists than from economists at this point."
--John Fund (1957-)
American political journalist, columnist
Source: Wall Street Journal Online, Jan. 23, 2009

Sellers

"Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
--Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) American author

GMOs

"At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote."
--Emo Phillips

Unity

"The unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual."

--Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) German Nazi Dictator

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."
--Hillary Clinton (1947- ) Wife of President Bill Clinton, US Senator (NY-D)
1993

Gorge

"We pray on Sundays that we may have light

To guide our footsteps on the path we tread;
We are sick of war, we don't want to fight,
And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead."

--George Bernard Shaw

Dangerous II

"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 (1880-1956)
American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic

Moral

"It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users.


Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons."

--Milton Friedman (1912-2006)
Nobel Prize-winning economist, economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan, "ultimate guru of the free-market system"
Source: America's Drug Forum interview (1991)"America's Drug Forum" (1991)

Absolute

"A man's admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him."
--Alexis de Tocqueville
[Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clerel, le Comte de Tocqueville] (1805-1859) French historian

Good IV

"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps."
--H. L. Mencken
(1880-1956) American Journalist, Editor, Essayist, Linguist, Lexicographer, and Critic

Fields

"Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields."

--Peter Borden

Medicine

"[Medicine is] a collection of uncertain prescriptions the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind."
--Napoleon Bonaparte

Impossible III

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow."

--Robert H. Goddard

Language

"We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us."
--Vladimir Ilyich Lenin [Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov] (1870 - 1924),
First Leader of the Soviet Union

NDAA II

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures.... The separate existence of the federal states will not be done away.... The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such law is in itself a limited one."
--Adolf Hitler
(1889-1945) German Nazi Dictator
Source: attempting to allay the people's fears over the Reichstag's centralization of law enforcement with the passage of the "Enabling Act" on March 23, 1933; (Historian William Shirer attributes this Enabling Act alone as the legal basis for Hitler's dictatorship).

Head-On

"A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away."

--Gene Roddenberry

Contrivance

"A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."
--John Stuart Mill.

Riverside California: The Police State Noose Tightens

Riverside California tightened the Police State noose last Friday, killing a handcuffed teenager in cold blood while he was handcuffed and laying on the ground.  Happens to white kids, who Lamon was NOT, all the time, right?

And if Lamon had shot someone, like his executioner, he would have been put on "Administrative Leave", right? 

Of course, Riverside has long been on its way to becoming a Police State.  Like Humboldt County California, you can be arrested for speaking your mind.  There as here, the authoritarians got away with it, the authoritarians took that to their cold-blooded hearts, and Lamon lies dead.

TLC

Change VII

"The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea."

--Martin Luther King