All those who seek to destroy the
liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and
shortest means to accomplish it: Alexis de Tocqueville
*
Throughout the history of the United
States, war has been the primary impetus behind the growth and development of
the central state. It has been the lever by which presidents and other national
officials have bolstered the power of the state in the face of tenacious popular
resistance: Bruce D. Porter
September 28, 2004
Evil Personified:
"But why should we hear about
body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many
this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should
I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Barbara Bush on ABC - Good Morning America, March 18, 2003
September 27, 2004
It is easier to lead men to combat,
stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the
patient labors of peace: Andre Gide
*
Whatever you do, you need courage.
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you
are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your
critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end
requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories,
but it takes brave men and women to win them: Ralph Waldo Emerson
September 25, 2004
Until lions have their historians, tales
of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters: African Proverb
*
Power always thinks it has a great soul
and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's
service when it is violating all his laws. John Adams
September 23, 2004
Whenever a people... entrust the defence
of their country to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power
of that country will remain under the direction of the most wealthy citizens.":
A Framer
*
Our government has kept us in a
perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour
- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some
terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble
us up if we did not blindly rally behind it: General Douglas MacArthur
*
Once a government is committed to the
principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and
that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a
source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives
in fear: Harry S Truman
*
"When I tell the truth, it is not for
the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending
those that do." : William Blake
September 20, 2004
"In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want
us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have
a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.": Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese monk, activist and writer.
September 19, 2004
Youth is the first victim of war; the
first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man; it takes
only 20 seconds of war to destroy him. King Baudouin I: King of Belgium
*
It is a tragic mix-up when the United
States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on
the victims of poverty: Martin Luther King, Jr: 1929-1968
*
Fear is not in the habit of speaking
truth: Publius Cornelius Tacitus
September 17, 2004
The men the American people admire most
extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are
those who try to tell them the truth: Henry Louis Mencken: American humorous journalist, 1880-1956
*
I hate it when they say, 'He gave his
life for his country.' Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives
of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory
of their country. We kill them." Admiral Gene LaRocque.
September 16, 2004
"So long as the people do not care to
exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are
active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods,
religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men" : Voltaire.
*
The price of apathy towards public
affairs is to be ruled by evil men: Plato
*
"The love of liberty is the love of
others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." : William Hazlitt
*
In the country of the blind the one-eyed
man is king: Erasmus c.1469 - 1536
September 15, 2004
The War Prayer by Mark Twain
O
Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help
us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help
us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing
in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help
us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help
us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in
the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the
sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with
travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives,
protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with
their tears, strain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is
the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid
with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
http://www.sfheart.com/The%20War%20Prayer.htm
September 14, 2004
Heroism on command, senseless violence,
and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how
passionately I hate them!: Albert Einstein
*
Our country is the world, our countrymen
are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other
lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more
dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal
to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury: William Lloyd Garrison, Declaration of Sentiments, Boston Peace Conference,
1838
September 11-12, 2004
Be alert that dictators have always
played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And
don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve
the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered Expression:
Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081
*
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding:
Louis D. Brandeis
*
The Framers of the Bill of Rights did
not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to
prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be
preexisting: Justice William J. Brennan, 1982
*
Never think that war, no matter how
necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime: Ernest Hemingway
*
How many does it take to metamorphose
wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is
murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not
murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough
to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly
innocent. But how many does it take?: Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845
*
There have been periods of history in
which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was
never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral
legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the
violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for
one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act
of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of mostof the
violence we humans have ever committed: Gil Bailie
September 10, 2004
We Americans have no commission from God
to police the world: Benjamin Harrison, address to Congress, 1888
*
We need a type of patriotism that
recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us. We must get away from
the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything. She can
lead in some things. The old "manifest destiny" idea ought to be modified so
that each nation has the manifest destiny to do the best it can - and that
without cant, without the assumption of self-righteousness and with a desire to
learn to the uttermost from other nations: Francis John McConnell
September 9, 2004
If you are neutral in situations of
injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its
foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not
appreciate your neutrality: Bishop Desmond Tutu
*
I think that we should be men first, and
subjects afterward. It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law,
so much as for the right: Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
*
He does not believe who does not live
according to his belief: Thomas Fuller
September 8, 2004
Once a government is committed to the
principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and
that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a
source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives
in fear: Harry S Truman
*
We should never forget that everything
Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom
fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait,
1963
*
Never do anything against conscience
even if the state demands it: Albert Einstein
*
As long as the world shall last there
will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would
last forever: Clarence Darrow
September 7, 2004
"Man is the only animal that deals in
that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren
about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind.
He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to
slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom
he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood
off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his
mouth": Mark Twain
September 6, 2004
"One of the world's greatest problems is
the impossibilty of any person searching for the truth on any subject when they
believe they already have it." Dave Wilbur
*
"It's not a matter of what is true that
counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." Henry Kissinger
*
"Most of the greatest evils that man has
inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about
something which, in fact, was false." Bertrand Russell
*
"When shall it be said in any country of
the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among
them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not
in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am
friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country
boast of its constitution and government ." Thomas Paine
September 3, 2004
War Is A Racket. A racket is best
described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of
the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted
for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a
few people make huge fortunes: Major General Smedley Butler. 1881 - 1940
*
"There is no nonsense so arrant that it
cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.":
Bertrand Russell
*
"For every social wrong there must be a
remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong:
Henry George 1839 - 1897
September 1-2, 2004
"The vested interests - if we explain
the situation by their influence - can only get the public to act as they wish
by manipulating public opinion, by playing either upon the public's
indifference, confusions, prejudices, pugnacities or fears. And the only way in
which the power of the interests can be undermined and their maneuvers defeated
is by bringing home to the public the danger of its indifference, the absurdity
of its prejudices, or the hollowness of its fears; by showing that it is
indifferent to danger where real danger exists; frightened by dangers which are
nonexistent." Sir Norman Angell 1872 - 1967
*
"Iniquity, committed in this world,
produces not fruit immediately, but, like the earth, in due season, and
advancing by little and little, it eradicates the man who committed it.
...justice, being destroyed, will destroy; being preserved, will preserve; it
must never therefore be violated." Manu 1200 BC
Updated/Revised:
Saturday, October 02, 2004 13:19:00 -0700
