Interesting Quotes

"I propose a limitation be put on how many sqares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting. Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required."

 Sheryl Crow on Environmentalism

Tyranny

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." 

 C. S. Lewis

Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?

by Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul (R)

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits… That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.

Centralized Power

Thomas Jefferson

"When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

Censorship

"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

Sigmund Freud, 1933

Education

"Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery."

Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister (1804-1881):

Thoughts from Washington

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth."

George Washington

'I Am a Socialist' that is Lawrence O’Donnell

by Scott Lazarowitz



Lawrence O’Donnell MSNBC Commentator

 Recently, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell announced that he is a "socialist." O’Donnell referred to Milton Friedman’s quote, "We’re all Keynesians now," and President Richard Nixon’s quote, "I am now a Keynesian," in the context of Keynesian economics being very similar to socialism. O’Donnell went on to assert his pride in being a socialist, and even suggested that Glenn Beck, Rand Paul and others are also socialists in one form or another.

So here is an elaboration of someone, whoever that might be, explaining why he is a socialist:

"First and foremost, I am a socialist because I disagree with the Founding Fathers’ ideas on morality and the Rule of Law. It is important that we have a centralized government that redistributes all the wealth. The State needs to have the power to take some of the wealth away from those the State decides have too much of it. Obviously, no one has a ‘right’ to one’s own wealth or property. And I don’t believe that ‘all men are created equal’ because, if there is a law against theft, then obviously because we need to allow agents of the State to take wealth away, then therefore laws against ‘theft’ must exempt agents of the State. That means that some people should be above the law.


"And I am a socialist in medical care because I think that the centralized government should control everyone’s medical care – it’s as simple as that. It is important that government bureaucrats and their government doctors and medical services have a monopoly in the medical industry so they don’t have to deal with competitive interests, as opposed to a free market in medical care in which the consumers determine which doctors and medical plans would stay in business and which ones would fail. Some people assert that that gives ‘power to the people,’ but we socialists don’t want the people to have that kind of power – it takes control away from government bureaucrats and that’s why I don’t like that. It’s important that government officials control the ultimate decisions in what affects American medical patients (and because the Blue State grandmas are more likely to vote for the "good guys" than the Red State grandmas, if you know what I mean).

Quotes from the Sons of Liberty

"The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."

Samuel Adams

Airplane II Security Clip

The Pilgrims and Property Rights: How our ancestors got fat & happy

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Quotes from the Sons of Liberty

"Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms under our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"

Patrick Henry

The Original Radical

"Natural rights are those which always appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the rights of others.--Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural rights which man retains after entering into society, and those which he throws into common stock as a member of society.

The natural rights which he retains, are all those in which the power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind; consequently, religion is one of those rights. The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his purposes. A man by natural right has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it; but what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to redress it? He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of society, and takes the arm of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right."


Thomas Paine

Will Republicans Get Serious on Spending?

Don't count on it.

by Steve Chapman

Barely a week has passed since the thumping Republican victory in congressional elections, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is enjoying the chance to reveal how the GOP will use its new power.


Speaking to a crowd at the annual convention of the Federalist Society, an influential organization of conservative and libertarian lawyers, McConnell is among friends. They are happy to hear him declare, "Americans want less government, less spending and less debt."

Then the senator tells them what his party is going to do to bring the runaway federal budget under control. "We will vote to freeze and cut discretionary spending," he vows.


What is important is not so much what is said but what is omitted. The four biggest items in the federal budget are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. And those programs escape any mention from McConnell.

They make up about 60 percent of the federal budget. Domestic discretionary outlays, by contrast, account for only about 16 percent. If Republicans focus entirely on those, they will be sending a clear and quite believable message: We're not serious. 

 Read the rest at Reason.com

Coming soon.....

Don't Touch My Junk

by Mike Calpino

Mike Calpino

 The controversy over new airport screening procedures has continued to grow. No doubt it will explode over the long holiday weekend, particularly is planned protests involve even a fraction of the flying public. The TSA and Homeland Security have dug in their heels and defended the new procedures as necessary to ensure our safety. If a majority of Americans begin to strenuously object or even refuse, there is the possibility of a real confrontation over these methods. Even more importantly, it is getting people to talk about government intrusion in a way they have not considered before. It is the various levels in which these procedures have struck a nerve that need to be explored.

At some airports, there are two choices given. There are the new electronic screening machines which display your naked body to some minimum wage security guard, some of whom have been getting pretty excited about their job. If you choose not to display yourself in ways only your spouse should be privy to, don’t want to be radiated in ways the government assures you are safe (we believe everything they say) or the TSA decides you need to be further investigated, then you will receive an "aggressive" patdown. This involves touching and squeezing in areas that, again, only our spouse should touch and squeeze. It is applied to the very young, the very old, the infirm, everyone.

So why does this bother us so much? After all, we don’t want another terrorist with a bomb in his shoe, underwear or anywhere else to get on an airplane, do we? Of course not. However, the way we are going about it is insulting on a variety of levels. On the surface, we know it is a waste of time and resources to treat four year olds, nuns and cancer survivors with prosthetic devices or urine bags as potential terrorists. Yet we have Janet Nepalitano refusing to answer the question as to whether or not they would use such techniques on a Muslim woman in a burka. That offends our basic sense of fairness. We also know that any terrorist who chose to do so could walk across our southern border. If we applied a fraction of the effort on our border we do in the airport, we would catch a lot more terrorists and criminals. So far the TSA has caught.....zero.

A new TSA PSA

Rand's Persecuted Minority

By Roger Donway

Atlas Shrugged is an extended cry against the oppression of creators, most particularly businessmen: the Atlases who bear this world on their shoulders. Uniquely, Rand’s work portrays the exploited entrepreneurs of the mixed economy as the true successors of Socrates, Galileo, and the countless other truth-seekers who, over the centuries, have been silenced, punished, crushed, and killed—not for their vices but for their virtues.

In the scene that gives the book its title, one of the novel’s greatest Atlases, the steelmaker Hank Rearden, is asked: “When you strain your energy to its utmost in order to produce the best, do you expect to be rewarded for it or punished?” The questioner’s point is that Rearden knows he should be rewarded for his productive efforts, yet he allows himself to be punished—and by helpless parasites at that. Why? Why not free himself of his tormentors? Why not shrug them off?

Rand’s novel, thirteen years in the writing, was finally published in October 1957, but she did not stop asking “Why?” Why were businessmen persecuted? Why did moralists not condemn the injustice? Why did businessmen themselves do nothing? Within a few years, she had taken to the college lecture circuit to denounce this continuing oppression, and her talk could not have been more provocatively titled: “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Businessmen.” Nor could it have been better timed. The Sixties were just beginning, and the students at elite Northeastern universities were preening themselves for their moral superiority, in part because they opposed Southern segregation and in part because they disparaged capitalists (like their fathers) as “hidden persuaders” and perpetrators of “planned obsolescence.” Into this environment came Ayn Rand, to declare that America’s truly oppressed minority comprised just those businessmen the students scorned.

Read the Rest

Toward a Conservative Foreign Policy of Non-Interventionism

Mark Grannis

During the presidency of George W. Bush, those of us who criticized U.S. foreign policy as overly hawkish tended to be considered “liberal,” a tendency neoconservatives had little reason to resist. I personally found this very frustrating, for reasons that probably mystify some readers. Does it really matter whether any given position is suitably “conservative”? It does to a conservative, because conservatives are supposed to obsess about continuity with the past. Conservatives are, by definition, strongly committed to the proposition that our received political traditions represent centuries of political wisdom which, at least in the ordinary case, should trump all but the most extraordinarily well-founded private judgments. This gives self-identified conservatives who part ways with their old cohort an unusually strong stake in substantiating the claim that “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me.”


In my own family, the question has arisen from time to time whether my larger-than-life grandfather — a Taft man in the early 50s, a Goldwater delegate at the 1964 Republican Convention, and a committed Republican all his life — would have supported the Bush (43) foreign policy. My mom says yes, and I suppose I have to accept that strictly on her authority. My skepticism, however, has been renewed by a couple of recent issues of The American Conservative.

Read the Rest at Reasonable Minds