Help choose the next quote/phrase for Limestone Roof. I like A and/or B.

(A) Behaving at the peak of genetic madness
(B) The Redmond equivalent of a Detroit Monday car
(C) Malefactors of great wealth
(D) Pseudo concern underwritten by smug knowingness

Labels: quotes

"But you know what? I'm done with it. I'm going back to gentlemen's hosiery. You know where you are with an honest pair of socks."

- Joe Blumfield

Labels: quotes, weekend

This quote from John Hood explains how choice is a bit of a misnomer and coercion is de rigueur when it comes to the redistributionists. Isn't the left all about choice?

There is nothing remotely socialistic or communistic about sharing. If you have a toy that someone else wants, you have three choices in a free society. You can offer to trade it for something you value that is owned by the other. You can give the toy freely, as a sign of friendship or compassion. Or you can choose to do neither.

Collectivism in all its forms is about taking away your choice. Whether you wish to or not, the government compels you to surrender the toy, which it then redistributes to someone that government officials deem to be a more worthy owner. It won't even be someone you could ever know, in most cases. That's what makes the political philosophy unjust (by stripping you of control over yourself and the fruits of your labor) as well as counterproductive (by failing to give the recipient sufficient incentive to learn and work hard so he can earn his own toys in the future).

Government is not charity. It is not persuasion, or cooperation, or sharing. Government is a fist, a shove, a gun. Obama either doesn't understand this, or doesn't want voters to understand it.

Dr. Haywood wrote about this coercion in his essay "A Human Action Taxonomy" in When We Are Free.

Related
Why Is Mommy A Democrat?

Labels: quotes

"I don't know how anybody who pretends to know anything about history can be so naive as to suppose that after all these centuries of corrupt and imperfect social systems, there is eventually to evolve something perfect and pure out of them- the good out of the evil, the unchanging and stable and eternal out of the variable and mutable, the just out of the unjust. But perhaps revolution is a contradiction of evolution, and therefore means the replacement of the unjust by the just, of the evil by the good. And yet it is still just as naive to suppose that members of the same species, without having changed anything but their minds, should suddenly turn around and produce a perfect society, when they have never been able, in the past, to produce anything but imperfection and, at best, the barest shadow of justice.

But once it had, once capitalism had been completely overthrown, the semi-state, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, would itself only be a temporary matter. It would be a kind of guardian of the revolution, a tutor of the new classless society, during its minority. But as soon as the citizens of the new, classless world had had all the greed educated out of them by enlightened methods, the last vestiges of the "state" would be wither away, and there would be a new world, a new golden age, in which all property would be held in common, at least all capital goods, all the land, means of production and so on, and nobody would desire to seize them for himself: and so there would be no more poverty, no more wars, no more misery, no more starvation, no more violence. Everybody would be happy. Nobody would be overworked. They would all amicably exchange wives whenever they felt like it, and their offspring would be brought up in big shiny incubators, not by the state, but by that great, beautiful surd, the lovely, delicious unknown quantity of the new "Classless Society."

I don't think that even I was gullible enough to swallow all the business about the ultimate bliss that would follow the withering away of the state...but I simply assumed that things would be worked out by the right men at the right time."

- Thomas Merton, 1948

Labels: quotes

"After several hundred years of this, it had become a large unruly nest of different styles; there was a palm court, Perspex furniture, some Renaissance plasterwork, the latest up-lighters, and a lingering air of the Thirties. It felt like the sort of place to come and wait for an airship." - John Gimlette

At some point I will finish Panther Soup and start quoting someone else. It's beginning to get a little embarrassing.

Labels: quotes

I wanted to listen to the England versus Kazakhstan WC Qualifier on BBC Radio 5 but was thwarted by some tart with a pleasant sounding voice prattling on about 'unauthorized rights'. I will settle for the US versus Cuba WC Qualifier from Washington DC later this evening.

How about a quote?

"For a long time I lay there, thinking about the grass. Right then, there didn't seem anything else to think about - excerpt perhaps the only other commodity the plains had in abundance which, of course, was solitude." - John Gimlette

Limestone Library - Dwell Magazine

The roads—and the routes and the paths, the trails and the rights-of-way—take us away and they bring us home. They make us who we are and they make the places where we live.

Perpetual Motion: Vol. 1
Perpetual Motion: Vol. 2
Perpetual Motion: Vol. 3
Perpetual Motion: Vol. 4

Unrelated
Does the History Channel offer any programming about history and shouldn't programs like Monsterquest and UFO Hunters be on the Sci-Fi channel? I think Shockwave should be on Spike TV.

Labels: quotes, soccer, weekend

The attempt to centralize all power in the one capital city and, indeed, in its administrative quarter, means the assimilation of all possible rival institutions from monasteries to television stations, from harbour authorities to charitable foundations. All these can be eliminated in the name of democracy or efficiency, and the result is the creation of the one government machine into which all problems are fed and from which all wisdom is to emerge. All that is initially lost is the likelihood of the government's having to listen to informed criticism from outside its inner circle of officials. Thereafter the problems centre upon the growing size and complexity of the central administration. As the civil servants multiply there is an ever-increasing distance between the citizen and the nameless people who will ultimately decide upon his application, protest, or appeal.

- C. Northcote Parkinson

The Fourth Estate has already been absorbed (see below).

A Gallup survey says 52 percent of Americans do not trust news media, up from 30 percent in 1972. Are the two tied? Of course, they are. Who’s responsible for that?

Labels: end times, left-wing media, liberals, quotes

"Government turns every contingency into an excuse for enhancing power in itself."

- John Adams

Labels: quotes

Obama I have never seen as anything but a bag of wind, possessed of great political guile, but steeped in the faddy, solipsistic notions of post-1960s college leftism.

- John Derbyshire

Labels: obama, quotes

"I predict that if Democrats do better in coming elections, much of the lefty apocalypticism will diminish..."

Labels: quotes

I found this on No Left Turns:

The difference between Republicans and Democrats that our division demonstrates is the degree to which Republicans (and especially, perhaps, conservatives) are inclined to deliberate (and, yes, fight) about our principles. Hillary and Obama spar . . . but about what? Who’s the most authentic candidate for female voters? Who deserves the Hispanic vote? Who can get the biggest payoff for the labor unions or the old folks? There’s never any talk about the purposes and the ends of government. That’s all assumed. The only time you’ll hear the word "should" is when they’re leveling some insult at a Neanderthal Republican who is not yet on board with their program. To be a Democrat today is to acknowledge that you believe in the "End of Political Thought"--or, to be less generous, that you don’t believe in thought at all. The only thought is that given to the means to achieve pre-determined ends. That’s why their politics is almost always more wonkish and less interesting and fascinating only when it is more Machiavellian and internal.

Source

Related
(1) CPAC starts tomorrow.

(2) Some humor from one of the poster(s) at Ace:

"I for one welcome our new McCain/Huckabee overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted blog commenter, I can be helpful in rounding up the others to toil in the weight-loss and border crossing camps."

Labels: democrats, end times, quotes, the good guys

"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature."
- David Hume


I'm reading Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War by Richard M. Ketchum. I like these meaty tomes and this book is brilliant. He excels at keeping the prose quick without sacrificing any of the details and descriptions of the events (and personalities) involved in the conflict.

I'm in transit this weekend and should have enough airport time to reflect on what I've read so far and how it complements McCullough's 1776, Berkin's A Brilliant Solution, and Brumwell's Redcoats.

**UPDATE**

I have two quotes from the book to substantiate Hume's quote.

Clark's proposals were ignored by the commissary staff, which quickly spotted the opportunity to make money by supplying wagons to the army. The method was to threaten local farmers with military reprisals if they did not lease or sell their "country wagons" at outrageously low prices. Then, having cheated the farmers, the commissaries proceeded to cheat the government by selling the vehicles to the crown at huge fees and pocketing the profits. Clark figured he could easily have saved the Treasury £100,000 a year by converting English carts but discovered sadly that "private emolument has been more attended to than publick good."

Modern Day Example

SEN. Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

Source

This is one of my favorite quotes from the book.

What was behind this, of course, was the intense jealousy each man felt because of the other- Gates because of Arnold's courage and exploits in battle, which were the talk of the camp; Arnold because the credit, glory, and prestige he so desperately wanted were being denied him. In many respects the dispute revealed Gates at his worst, taking advantage of what he knew to be Arnold's most sensitive trigger points, deviling the man until he could take it no longer and giving the screw an extra twist for good measure. Gates was being more than petty: his behavior could only be described as vindictive and nasty, for as he well knew, he had the command and the therefore the last word.

I worked with someone like Gates.

Notes: The picture is General John "Gentlemen Johnny" Burgoyne. Thanks Ms. S.

Labels: quotes, weekend

Baby Boomers sometimes remind me of that tiresome woman at a cocktail party who keeps talking about herself and then finally comes up for air and says, "But enough about me. What about you? What do you think about me?"

- Dean Barnett

Labels: clintons, generational conflict, quotes

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;--let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

- Abraham Lincoln

Labels: quotes

"The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don’t have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine. I don’t have to say that everyone’s special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don’t have to pretend that Islam means peace.

This is leftism’s great strength: it’s all white lies. That’s its only advantage, as far as I can tell. None of its programs actually works, after all. From statism and income redistribution to liberalized criminal laws and multiculturalism, from its assault on religion to its redefinition of family, leftist policies have made the common life worse wherever they’re installed. But because it depends on—indeed is defined by—describing the human condition inaccurately, leftism is nothing if not polite. With its tortuous attempts to rename unpleasant facts out of existence—he’s not crippled, dear, he’s handicapped; it’s not a slum, it’s an inner city; it’s not surrender, it’s redeployment—leftism has outlived its own failure by hiding itself within the most labyrinthine construct of social delicacy since Victoria was queen."

Andrew Klavan

Labels: quotes

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

Poor Al, having been rebuffed from the White House under such extraordinary odds (how do you botch wha cycle Clinton enjoyed), has set his sights on being the titular head of some Captain Planet-esque GLOBAL tax organization. He is fawned over by the editors of Rolling Stone, CNN and a cadre of vacuous musicians and entertainers.

Here is another intelligent oped on the pop culture of global warming. Did you know that about termites?

In order to focus on you and what you are doing to increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, which, as everyone knows will destroy the globe, we do not discuss the activities of termites. Fifteen years ago it was estimated that the digestive tracts of termites produce about 50 billion tons of CO2 and methane annually. That was more than the world's production from burning fossil fuel.

Labels: quotes

"For some, these dreams of a non-friction life with unlimited abundance are transferred onto an inanimate object called the government, which becomes the great existential teat for all of us. It will heal us when we are sick, rescue us from hurricanes, take care of us when we’re old, educate us, and generally shield us from the vicissitudes of fate."

- Gagdad Bob

Labels: quotes

"The tyranny of orthodoxy has been replaced by the tyranny of relativism."

- Tobias Jones

Labels: quotes

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
-Mark Twain

Labels: quotes