Monday, June 30, 2014

Appear

"The great appear great because we are on our knees: Let us rise."
--James Larkin (1876-1947)
Irish trade union leader and socialist activist

Saturday, June 28, 2014

Demolish

"To be young means to undertake to demolish the world and to have the gall to wish to erect a new and better one in its place."
--Nikos Kazantzakis

Friday, June 27, 2014

Skeleton

"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
--George Bernard Shaw

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Interchangeable

"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."
--Alfred Emanuel Smith

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Cowardly

"How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination."
--Jeremy Collier

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Fails

"Where the legal system fails, violence begins."
--Hugo de Groot 1583-1645,
Dutch brilliant lawyer and historian in 'De jure belli ac pacis' (About the law of war and peace), still the basis of modern international law (1625)

Monday, June 23, 2014

Assemble

"Assemble a mob of men and women previously conditioned by a daily reading of the newspapers; treat them to amplified band music, bright lights...and in next to no time you can reduce them to a state of almost mindless subhumanity. Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs, or criminals of so many."
--Aldous Huxley, "The Devils of Loudon"

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Culinary

"It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust."
--Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab Notes

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Defense

"NATIONAL DEFENSE, n. In U.S. political discourse: 1) The pauperization of the nation through expenditures for deadly weapons systems; 2) The bombardment and invasion of small countries. The United States is, of course, the only nation entitled to such 'defense.' If the inhabitants of other countries resist the U.S. government's 'defensive' measures, they become guilty of 'internal aggression'; and if governments of other countries practice U.S.-style national defense, they become guilty of 'naked aggression.'"

(U.S. government spokesmen repeatedly used the Orwellian term 'internal aggression' during the 1960s when referring to the resistance of the Vietnamese to the U.S. occupation of their country.)

--Chaz Bufe, The Devil's Dictionaries ("American Heretic's Dictionary" section)

Friday, June 20, 2014

Serve II

"Is a young man bound to serve his country in war? In addition to his legal duty there is perhaps also a moral duty, but it is very obscure. What is called his country is only its government and that government consists merely of professional politicians, a parasitical and anti-social class of men. They never sacrifice themselves for their country. They make all wars, but very few of them ever die in one. If it is the duty of a young man to serve his country under all circumstances then it is equally the duty of an enemy young man to serve his. Thus we come to a moral contradiction and absurdity so obvious that even clergymen and editorial writers sometimes notice it."
--H.L. Mencken, Minority Report

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Morality II

 "Whether or not legislation is truly moral is often a question of who has the power to define morality."
--Jerome H. Skolnick

Morality II

 "Whether or not legislation is truly moral is often a question of who has the power to define morality."
--Jerome H. Skolnick

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Frozen

"In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition-but even more terrible to be frozen into it."
--Michael Parenti

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Ruin

"Let us disappoint the Men
who are raising themselves
upon the ruin of this Country."
--John Adams
(1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President
Source: November 20th, 1772, the Votes and Proceedings of the Town of Boston were printed as a Pamphlet and sent to each Town stating the Rights of the Colonists.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Good VI

"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people.  It's not good at much else."
--Tom Clancy on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Freedom X

"FREEDOM FIGHTER, n. A State Department term referring to: 1) A mercenary attempting to install an authoritarian regime friendly to U.S. business interests; 2) A heavily armed Islamic fanatic who wishes to impose his religious views upon others through the use of violence."

(For our younger readers, this refers to the rhetoric of the Reagan/Bush administration during the 1980s, when it was? to the tune of $3 billion? bankrolling Osama Bin Laden and the Afghan "freedom fighters" who were to become the Taliban; we'd also note that Reagan and Bush showed pronounced favoritism toward these extremist elements, in contrast to the more moderate Afghans.)
--Chaz Bufe, The Devil's Dictionaries ("American Heretic's Dictionary" section)

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Thank

"We create the government that screws you, and then you’re supposed to thank us for protecting you from it."
--Vin Weber
(1952-) US Congressman (R-MN)

Friday, June 13, 2014

Snap

Something’s eventually going to happen. Government will bloat until it chokes us to death, or one more tyrannical power grab will turn out to be one too many. ... Maybe it’ll be one more round of "reasonable gun control" or one more episode of burning children to death to save them from "child abuse." Whatever, something will snap."
--Claire Wolfe
Source: "101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution"

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Beginning III

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
--Douglas Adams

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Abused

"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans. And so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it. That’s what we did in the announcement I made last weekend of the public housing projects, about how we’re going to have weapon sweeps and more thins like that to try to make people safer in their communities."
--President Bill Clinton, March 22, 1994 statement made on MTV’s "Enough is Enough"

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Football

"Football is a mistake.  It combines two of the worst things about American life.  It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
--George Will

Monday, June 09, 2014

Ceased

"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom.  When ... the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."
--Sir Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

Sunday, June 08, 2014

Protected

"These are dangerous times.  When we are afraid, we want to be protected, and since we cannot protect ourselves against such horrors as mass murder by bombers, we are tempted to run to the government, a government that is always willing to trade the promise of protection for our freedom, which left, as always, the question: How much freedom are we willing to relinquish for such a bald promise?

Already the President was calling for more power, more power for the FBI.  He wanted a thousand more men.  And he wanted to use the army, no less, in situations like Oklahoma City.  And he wanted more power to tap our phones and to invade our privacy. He wanted express authority from Congress to infiltrate the fringe groups and, in short, to snoop and to peer and to spy on the citizenry, especially those who hold different beliefs from those that flow in the phlegmatic and murky mainstream of America. But the question remains, will we really be safer with a thousand more, or even a hundred thousand more FBI agents armed with even greater power to more easily tap our phone that are already so easily tapped and to break into our homes that are no longer safe under the much-mangled exclusionary rule?"

--Gerry Spence Lawyer and author Source: "From Freedom To Slavery", from the new introduction, (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1995), p. xxiv

Saturday, June 07, 2014

Thieves

"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."
--Thomas Carlyle

Friday, June 06, 2014

Past

[P]ast error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live. Now as ever, we do ourselves best justice when we measure ourselves against ancient tests, as in the Antigone of Sophocles: "All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride."

--Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968, Kansas State University Speech

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Acting

I do not want -- as I believe most Americans do not want -- to sell out American interests, to simply withdraw, to raise the white flag of surrender. That would be unacceptable to us as a country and as a people. But I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong. I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that we are acting as if no other nations existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike. I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world.

--Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968, Kansas State University Speech

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Turbulance

We are in a time of unprecedented turbulence, of danger and questioning. It is at its root a question of the national soul. The president calls it "restlessness;" while cabinet officers and commentators tell us that America is deep in a malaise of the spirit -- discouraging initiative, paralyizing will and action, dividing Americans from one another by their age, their views, and the color of their skins.

There are many causes. Some are in the failed promise of America itself: in the children I have seen, starving in Mississippi; idling their lives away in the ghetto; committing suicide in the despair of Indian reservations; or watching their proud fathers sit without work in the ravaged lands of Eastern Kentucky. Another cause is in our inaction in the face of danger. We seem equally unable to control the violent disorder within our cities -- or the pollution and destruction of the country, of the water and land that we use and our children must inherit. And a third great cause of discontent is the course we are following in Vietnam: in a war which has divided Americans as they have not been divided since your state was called "bloody Kansas."

--Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968, Kansas State University Speech

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

Breed

"If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better world for tomorrow."
--William Allen White
Quoted by Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968, Kansas State University Speech

Breed

"If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better world for tomorrow."
--William Allen White
Quoted by Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968, Kansas State University Speech

Monday, June 02, 2014

Vast II

"My dear Sir, take any road, you can't go amiss. The whole state is one vast insane asylum."
--James L. Petigru,
on being asked the way to the Charleston, South Carolina Insane Asylum (1860).

Sunday, June 01, 2014

Mysticism

"There is, of course, in the feeling toward the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. The sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one's desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feeling of protection. It is not for nothing that one's State is still thought of as Fatherland or Motherland, that one's relations towards it is conceived in terms of family affection. The war [World War I] has shown that nowhere under the shock of danger have these primitive childlike attitudes failed to assert themselves again, as much in this country as anywhere. If we have not the intense father-sense of the German who worships his Vaterland, at least in Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority . . . A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and to whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties. In this recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort, and a certain influx of power. On most people the strain of being an independent adult weighs heavily . . ." --Randolph Bourne, "The State"