Thoughts
From Charles Johnson
Liberty has nothing to do with national interests. It is about the individual.
2017-08-05 at 13:37:36
From Tench Coxe
Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.
2017-08-03 at 22:49:45
From Alexis de Tocqueville
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd.
2017-07-28 at 14:31:27
More From H.L. Mencken
On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of this land will reach their hearts content at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron!!
2017-07-28 at 14:28:25
From Judge Learned Hand
That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose!
2017-07-28 at 14:26:47
More From H.L. Mencken
Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism. It is the aim of the Bill of Rights, if it has any remaining aim at all, to curb such prehensile gentry. Its function is to set a limitation upon their power to harry and oppress us to their own private profit.
2017-07-24 at 13:25:03
From Thomas Gordon
Let us therefore, without regarding the ridiculous, narrow, and dishonest notions of selfish and inconsistent men, who say and do contradictory things, make general liberty the interest and choice, as it is certainly the right of all mankind; and brand those as enemies to human society, who are enemies to equal and impartial liberty.
2017-07-24 at 13:22:48
From George B. De Huszar
We therefore believe in liberty because we believe in the harmony of the universe, that is, in God. Proclaiming in the name of faith, formulating in the name of science, the divine laws, flexible and vital, of our dynamic moral order, we utterly reject the narrow, unwieldy, and static institutions that some men in their blindness would heedlessly introduce into this admirable mechanism.
2017-07-21 at 17:00:30
More From Thomas Paine
It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those that are governed: but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.
2017-07-19 at 13:24:04
From Hanford Henderson
There is but one defensible social ideal, and that is a world in which every individual is free to work out the inner impulses of the Spirit, without aggression on his part or interference on the part of others. A State which accomplished this simple, primal duty, the protection of all its citizens, would accomplish something greater than has yet been historically recorded, and something which no State, preoccupied with illegitimate and paternalistic activities, is ever likely to accomplish.
2017-07-17 at 17:24:53
From Laurence M. Vance
Therefore, any decrease in any tax rate by any level of government is always good and any increase in any deduction or credit by any level of government is likewise always just as good because the result of either one of these things is that Americans get to keep more of their money in their pockets and out of the filthy, blood-drenched hands of Uncle Sam.
2017-07-15 at 11:47:24
From Andrew Hamilton
Power may justly be compared to a great river. While kept within its due bounds it is both beautiful and useful. But when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it, and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes. If, then, this is the nature of power, let us at least do our duty, and like wise men who value freedom use our utmost care to support liberty, the only bulwark against lawless power, which in all ages has sacrificed to its wild lust and boundless ambition the blood of the best men that ever lived...
2017-07-13 at 16:08:22
From Confucius
If a state is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a state is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame.
2017-07-12 at 13:00:28
From Ron Paul
I think it is time for us to declare our independence from an oppressive government that seeks to control our money and our lives in ways unimaginable to those who rebelled against the British Crown in 1776. Our revolution is peaceful, and it concentrates on winning hearts and minds one at a time. But it marches on. We must reclaim the spirit of independence every day and every night and intensify the struggle against those who seek to impose tyranny upon us.
2017-07-08 at 13:58:03
From Mark Helprin
You can always make a case for the public interest if you are willing to exclude from common equity those whose rights you seek to abridge.
2017-07-04 at 13:17:22