laws & leaders

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule
~ H. L. Mencken

It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.
~ Murray N. Rothbard

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
~ Ayn Rand in "The Nature of Government"

The American government creates 50,000 new laws each year, and over 2 million new regulations. Then we are told by the courts that 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse!
~ Lorne Strider

cluster bombs

"A U.S. government official told reporters in Geneva last week that the Bush administration opposes a global agreement that would ban cluster bombs. State Department officials have also told Congress they oppose legislation that would ban the use of cluster bombs in or near civilian areas. If the administration refuses to act, Congress should act by passing the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act."

~ Lora Lumpe, FCNL Legislative Representative

a free press

Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
~ Hugo Black

inequality

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
~ Edward R. Murrow

I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, SC Justice

This is an impressive crowd: the Have's and Have-more's. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.
~ George W. Bush

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
~ G. K. Chesterton

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
~ Thomas Friedman

Every 10 years or so, the US needs to pick up some small, crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
~ Michael Ledeen

american freedom

We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.
~Martin Kelly

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.
~Eugene Victor Debs

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.
~Arthur Miller, playwright

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.
~Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - (1888-1965)

american war

American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century’s major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians.
~ Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action

What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment … inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
~ Thomas Jefferson

militarism

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one! ~ Alexander Hamilton

Many people today don’t want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing, They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety. ~Louis Kronenberger – (1904-1980)

For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.~ Niccolo Machiavelli – (1469-1527) Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher – Source: Discourses, 1513-1517

Today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power. The global military supremacy that the United States presently enjoys–and is bent on perpetuating–has become central to our national identity. More than America’s matchless material abundance or even the effusions of its pop culture, the nation’s arsenal of high-tech weaponry and the soldiers who employ that arsenal have come to signify who we are and what we stand for.  ~Andrew Bacevich in The New American Militarism

america

The convention which framed the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A majority were lawyers-not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man.  ~ Senator Richard Pettigrew – Triumphant Plutocracy (1922)

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel, at this moment, more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. ~Lincoln in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins on November 21, 1864

This great and powerful force-the accumulated wealth of the United States-has taken over all the functions of Government, Congress, the issue of money, and banking and the army and navy in order to have a band of mercenaries to do their bidding and protect their stolen property. ~Senator Richard Pettigrew – Triumphant Plutocracy – Published, January 1, 1922.

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. ~Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961) – Source: Ladies Home Journal, May 1958

american torture

Torture: If the Americans are doing it, and they’re not accountable, then who’s going to come to our rescue?   ~Moazzam Begg, Detainee #558 in Guantanamo Bay.

patriotism

American preachers have a task more difficult, perhaps, than those faced by us under South Africa’s apartheid, or Christians under Communism.

We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white and blue myth. You have to expose, and confront, the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion and caring of most American people, and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly and indirectly, by the poor of the earth.

You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them. This is not easy among people who really believe that their country does nothing but good, but it is necessary, not only for their future, but for us all.

~Peter Storey, former president of the Methodist Church of South Africa