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Thoughts for Today
May 2005:
* * * * * * 31.
"As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I
keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to
make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor
of, the limits being placed on that freedom." 30.
Over grown military establishments are under any form of government
inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile
to republican liberty 29.
Beat me with the truth, don't torture me with lies 28.
They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor
excommunicated, for they have no souls 27.
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not
either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and
leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and
the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and
what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save
the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing
hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more
will help the cause." 26.
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary,
in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether
hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the
very definition of tyranny." 25.
"If they do it, it's terrorism, if we do it, it's fighting for freedom."
24.
"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow
make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is
punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence
has to be internally denied." 23.
"A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new
master once in a term of years." Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
Political theorist, activist, abolitionist 22.
"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories
of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the
prisoners who were freed . were not, as some assumed, inflicted
methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards,
their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees." 21.
"For in a Republic, who is 'the country?' Is it the Government which is
for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant --
merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine
what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who
isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." 20.
"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or
will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom?
Material abundance without character is the path of destruction." 19.
"For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited
like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily
transactions of life." 18.
"They tell us that we live in a great free
republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and
self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. ... Wars
throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder... And that
is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles." 17. "I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher- ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service." General Smedley Butler. USMC (Ret.) 16.
Our men . . . have killed to exterminate
men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and
suspected people from lads of 10 up.... Our soldiers have pumped salt
water into men to "make them talk," and have taken prisoners people who
held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later. . .
stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the
water below and float down, as examples to those who found their
bullet-loaded corpses." 15.
"War paralyzes your courage and deadens the
spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that
you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why,
but to do and die,' like the hundred thousand others doomed like
yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish
callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder." 14.
"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." 13.
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness.
12. 11.
"And so long as they were at war, their power was preserved, but when
they had attained empire they fell, for of the arts of peace they knew
nothing, and had never engaged in any employment higher than war." 10.
"Some explanations of a crime are not explanations: they're part of the
crime.": 9.
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national
obligations of obedience.therefore [individual citizens] have the duty
to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity
from occurring." : Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal, 1950 8.
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate,
tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.": 7.
"When a long train of abuses and usurpations [...] evinces a design to
reduce them [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such government.": 6.
"Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government
of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways.
The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and
reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to
live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create
in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the
conqueror": 5.
"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": 4.
"I think that every true reformer, every real friend of liberty, will
agree with me in saying that if we must erect safeguards, they should be
rather for the security of the individual than of the mass, and that our
chiefest care must be to train the majority to respect the rights of the
minority, to prevent the claims of the few from being trampled under
foot by the caprice or passion of the many.": 3.
"The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being
governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the
direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing." : 2. "The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his [or her] deception, the one who lies with sincerity.": Andre Gide 1.
"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and
demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of
service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you
go over the great divide.
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