Christ-centered, Roman Catholic, pro-life, 2nd Amendment supporting, former USAF officer, certified financial planning practitioner, speaker, author, very fond of own opinion, dogmatic, persistent, former Raider-fan turned Packer-fan (currently ignoring the lot of them), loyal American patriot. Husband of my best friend and father of the four most beautiful children in the world (no, yours don't even come close).

Author of:

It's about getting the Church to stand up to the one major political party and the politicians sponsoring evil in our country. We will win when Catholics vote like Catholics... and Catholics will vote like Catholics when the clergy stands up and engages the enemy. Pray for us.

Where The Scriptural Rosary follows the life of Christ in Scripture, The Personal Rosary meditates on our lives following Him. As we pray to "imitate what [these mysteries] contain", we focus our meditation on how we can take up our crosses in daily sacrificial love for God and one another.

Aeronautical Engineering (major)--USAF Academy
Arabic Language (minor)--USAF Academy
Political Science (honorary major)--USAF Academy
Accredited Asset Management Specialist--College for Financial Planning
Certified Financial Planner Program--College for Financial Planning

Multiple interests: Faith; Truth; National Security; Islamic Jihad; Education; American Heritage; Economic Issues; et al.

Major Pet Peeve: Ignorance (and the exuberant display thereof).

Note: I'm primarily a daytime poster. Home time is family time.

Second Note: My daytime firewall may not allow me to use Freepmail. I'll see that I have it and get to it when I can. I'm not necessarily ignoring you.

Authored Threads:

Eucharist - Communion with God in Flesh
The Fruits of the Spirit are Beatitudes
The Gifts I Have to Give
True Greatness is Found in the Humble
There's Something about Mary...
Teaching from the Cross
The Love We Have to Give
Why abortion will end in America the moment Catholic bishops say it ends
Why Catholics Can't Vote for Democrats
Common Sense for the Catholic Voter
Defeating the Culture of Death: The Pro-Life Vote
Simple (but Powerful) Voting Guide Sheet
It's Time for the Big Guns - 2018 Election
Bishops - The Church in Crisis
Defeating the Culture of Death - The Bishops
Defeating the Culture of Death
Trump Can Only Destroy Himself
Last Blast to the Bishops
Defeating the Culture of Death
Letter to my Bishop on Faithful Citizenship
Voting Guide for Serious Catholics
Why I'll Vote FOR The Marriage Amendment
Email to My Pastor on Social Justice
Sarah Palin Mattered
Bush? Obama? Congress Spends the Money...
Reply to Speaker Boehner
ARTICLE IV; Section 4: Republican Government
Democratic Party = The Anti-Catholic Party--So Stop Voting for Them!
Open Letter to the RNC
Awaken the Church!
What Every Catholic Needs to Know Before Voting
Forming the Consciences of Catholic Voters
Another Letter to US Conference of Catholic Bishops (Immigration)
Open Letter to US Conference of Catholic Bishops
Why Should Christians Vote For Democrats?
The Proper Role of Government

These aren't actually threads but interesting posts...
Explaining the Catholic Gospel
Explaining "Controversial" Doctrines of the Catholic Church
Explaining the Role of Works in Our Salvation
Explaining the Need for Confession
Explaining the Need for the Crucifixion
Explaining the Authority of the Pope
Explaining the Authority of the Church
More on the Authority of the Church (it's important!)
Even more on the Authority of the Church (very important!)
Explaining Sacrificial Offerings for the Remission of Sins
Explaining the Fatherhood of the Priesthood
Explaining the Problems with Sola Scriptura
A Demonstation of the Failure of Sola Scriptura
Explaining the Metaphors of Jesus
Explaining Transubstantiation
Explaining Temptation
Explaining Misconceptions of the Church

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; it is right [to do so].... There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man."

-- G.K. Chesterton

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

-- Thomas Jefferson

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

-- Frederic Bastiat

"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has shown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts ~ a child ~ as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience.

"It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

--Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, "Notable and Quotable," Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94

“Who is going to save our Church? Do not look to the priests. Do not look to the bishops. It’s up to you, the laity, to remind our priests to be priests and our bishops to be bishops.”

— Archbishop Fulton Sheen

In accord with the knowledge, competence, and preeminence which they possess, [lay people] have the right and even at times a duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church, and they have a right to make their opinion known to the other Christian faithful, with due regard to the integrity of faith and morals and reverence toward their pastors, and with consideration for the common good and the dignity of persons.

— Catechism of the Catholic Church 907

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it."

-- H L Mencken

"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant—they have been cheated; asleep—they have been surprised; divided—the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ... the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government, they should watch over it ... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free."

-- James Madison

In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.

Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig).

-- John Quincy Adams on Islam

“It is also a habit of tyrants to prefer the company of aliens to that of citizens at table and in society; citizens, they feel, are enemies, but aliens will offer no opposition.”

— Aristotle

"There's nothing constitutionally seemly about a court decision that says this law is only legal because the people's representatives flat-out lied to the people when they passed it. ... Only in America does "health" "care" "reform" begin with the hiring of 16,500 new IRS agents tasked with determining whether your insurance policy merits a fine. ... The U.S. Supreme Court is starting to look like Britain's National Health Service – you wait two years to get in, and then they tell you there's nothing wrong. And you can't get a second opinion."

-- Mark Steyn, "A Lie Makes Obamacare Legal"... after the Obamacare Ruling of 2012

“The best way ‌to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

— Abraham Lincoln

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

-- Sir Winston Churchill

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"I respect ordinary thieves more than I respect politicians. Ordinary thieves take my money without pretense. (They) don’t insult my intelligence by proclaiming that they’ll use the money that they steal from me to make my life better."

-- Walter Williams

"...We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all the blessing were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."

-- Abraham Lincoln's Proclamation for a National Day of Fast

"The denial of the right of ownership to a man is a denial of his basic freedom: freedom without property is always incomplete. To be 'secured' – but with no accompanying responsibility – is to be the slave of whatever group provides the security.

A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the 'slave state' disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free."

-- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banners openly.

"But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.

"He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."

-- Thomas Jefferson

We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn't make any sense at all."

-- Ronald Reagan, 1965

"The words of the Bible and of the Church fathers rang in my ears, those sharp condemnations of shepherds who are like mute dogs; in order to avoid conflicts, they let the poison spread. Peace is not the first civic duty, and a bishop whose only concern is not to have any problems and to gloss over as many conflicts as possible is an image I find repulsive."

-- Cardinal Ratzinger

"A time will come when people will not listen to accurate teachings. Instead, they will follow their own desires and surround themselves with teachers who tell them what they want to hear."

-- 2 Timothy 4:3

“Every Person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”

--Senator Jacob Howard, co-author of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, 1866.

"The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments."

-- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution

"When injustice becomes law, then resistance becomes duty."

-- Thomas Jefferson

For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.

-- James Madison letter to Joseph C. Cabell, 13 Feb 1829

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."

-- Gen Eisenhower

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."

-- Ayn Rand

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

--Thomas Jefferson

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”

-- C.S. Lewis

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed. Lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C.

"I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."

--Thomas Jefferson

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

-- Sam Adams

“The first effect of not believing in God, is that you lose your common sense.”

-- G.K. Chesterton

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell."

-- C.S. Lewis

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

-- Abraham Lincoln

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.”

-- Alan Greenspan

"Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases."

-- John Adams

"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

-- John Quincy Adams

"It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place."

-- Judge Roger Vinson, Healthcare Ruling, 1/31/2011

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."

-- Patrick Henry

"But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system."

-- Frédéric Bastiat, How to Identify Legal Plunder

"Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"I sought for the key to the greatness of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

--Alexis de Tocqueville

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time, and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out."

-- Andrew Jackson

"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

-- James Madison

"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evil men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."

-- Noah Webster

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

-- Winston Churchill

“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”

-- Jean Baptiste Colbert

“For every benefit you receive a tax is levied.”

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough voters to win the next election.”

-- Unknown

“The fundamental class division in any society is not between rich and poor, or between farmers and city dwellers, but between tax payers and tax consumers.”

-- David Boaz

“The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.”

-- Will Rogers

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion."

-- C.P. Snow

“Sometimes, the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power, mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies. You remember that, boy. Doesn’t matter if they are true or not. A man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”

-- Hub McCane, from the movie 'Secondhand Lions' (2003)

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

-- H. L. Mencken

“Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven’t been taxed before.”

-- Art Buchwald

“Tax reform means, ‘Don’t tax you, don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.”

-- Russell B. Long

“I hold in my hand 1,379 pages of tax simplification.”

-- Delbert L. Latta

“Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation.”

-- Grover Cleveland

“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

-- Margaret Thatcher

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1802

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

-- Thomas Jefferson

“On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

-- Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823

"Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

-- John Jay, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

-- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798

Man has often lost his way, but modern man has lost his address.

-- Gilbert K. Chesterton

“...I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such... and believe further, that this is likely to be well-administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other...”

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1787, urging the adoption of the US Constitution.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the people.' 'We the people' tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. 'We the people' are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which 'We the people' tell the government what it is allowed to do. 'We the people' are free."

-- Ronald Reagan

"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."

-- Justice Joseph Story

"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country."

-- Daniel Webster

"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."

-- Daniel Webster

"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."

-- Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."

-- William Penn

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."

-- C.S. Lewis

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds . . . we [will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent . . . till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."

-- Thomas Jefferson On Taxes and Debt

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

-- Theodore Roosevelt 1907

"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."

– Thomas Jefferson

“Muslims, in fact, are more often exhorted by their scriptures to brutalize non-Muslims than Christians are urged by the gospels to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.”

-- Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, 'to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.'

-- Thomas Jefferson

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over lousy fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years.
These nations have progressed in this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
from faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to Complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage."

-- Alexander Fraser Tyler, Cycle of Democracy (1770)

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

-- Sam Adams

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

-- Winston Churchill

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

-- John Stuart Mill

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

-- President Ronald Reagan

"Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!"

-- Monty Python

"The problem with Internet quotations is that many are not genuine."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"In any compromise between Good and Evil, it is only Evil that can profit."

-- Ayn Rand

"You can’t make socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society, which is coming, where everyone is interdependent."

-- John Dewey, the father of modern American education and co-author of the "Humanist Manifesto."

"There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs....There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

-- Booker T. Washington

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is."

-- George Washington, 1776

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

-- Thomas Jefferson

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money."

-- Alexis de Tocqueville

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

--Theodore Roosevelt

"I find it fascinating that our Protestant friends who revile us Catholics for our "vain rituals" and disagreement with "sola scriptura" commit a more vain and empty ritual everytime they celebrate their communion services. For if it is not Jesus's Body and Blood they are consuming, then they discount Christ's own words as recorded in Scripture and simply play-act an empty ritual as a scene from the life of Christ--lacking in substance. While Catholics "walk by faith and not by sight" in trusting what Christ has told us, protestants denounce what they can't personally sense and prove."

-- Me, 2006

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

-- James Madison

"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks... Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

-- Albert Einstein, 1940

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."

-- Dwight Eisenhower

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'."

-- George Orwell

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived."

-- George Patton

"Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

-- George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

"Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

-- C. S. Lewis

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

-- "Our Deepest Fear" by Marianne Williamson

"A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

-- Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy

"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

-- Floyd Ferris (Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged")

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

-- C. S. Lewis, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, 1930

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 10, 23 November 1787)

"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers. In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I am readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I will, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact."

-- Robert E. Lee, 1863

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

-- John F. Kennedy

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

-- Winston Churchill

"From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Jan Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact it...could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor."

-- President Theodore Roosevelt, "Fear God and Take Your Own Part" (1916)

"If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, then government ought not to be doing it."

-- Lamar Alexander

"All men make mistakes ... married men find out about them sooner"

-- Red Skelton

“We must hate. Hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists.”

-- Lenin

“We hate Christianity and Christians. Even the best of them must be considered our worst enemies. They teach love of one’s neighbor and mercy, which is against our principles. Christian love is an obstacle to the development of the revolution. Down with love of our neighbor; what we want is hatred. We must know how to hate; only then shall we conquer the universe.”

-- Anatoly Lunacharsky, first Soviet education commissar

“I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity. [To approve the measure] would be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

— President Franklin Pierce’s 1854 veto of a measure to help the mentally ill.

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.”

— James Madison, Federalist no. 62, February 27, 1788

“We must confine ourselves to the powers described in the Constitution, and the moment we pass it, we take an arbitrary stride towards a despotic Government.”

— James Jackson, First Congress, 1st Annals of Congress, 489

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

— James Madison, speech in the House of Representatives, January 10, 1794

“...the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”

— Thomas Jefferson

“ [The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.”

— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

— Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

"The trouble is, however, that now, even more than then, the American people have little interest in liberty. Instead, they want the impossible: home ownership for those who cannot afford homes, credit for those who are not creditworthy, old-age pensions for those who have not saved, health care for those who make no attempt to keep themselves healthy, and college educations for those who lack the wit to finish high school. Moreover, they want it now, and they want somebody else to pay for it."

-- Robert Higgs, "Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public Is Shocked", 10 Sep 2008

“Modern economics claims to be a science. This is a sham and a fraud. When it fails to predict future events it does not act like the scientist, disregarding false theories in search of the truth; it acts like the Indian Medicine Man who has failed to make rain. It equivocates, rationalizes and tries to make minor adjustments.”

--H.S. Katz

"... the term "democrat" originated as an epithet and referred to 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.'"

-- Joseph Ellis from "Founding Brothers"

"You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept Communism outright. But we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and realize you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you; we’ll so weaken your economy that you will fall like over ripe fruit into our hands."

-- Nikita Kruschev, Former Soviet Premier

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."

-- Norman Thomas, six-time Socialist Party presidential candidate and one of the founders of the ACLU

* You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
* And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

-- William J. H. Boetcker, 1916

"Think of it this way: if you want more milk, create an environment in which cows will thrive. And just as it makes no sense to say you want more milk but oppose cows because they’re smelly, dirty, and leave their droppings all over the place—it makes no sense to say you want more jobs but oppose entrepreneurs because when they succeed they often wind up with more money than the rest of us. You cannot have it both ways."

-- Herbert Meyer, American Thinker 9/6/11

On Gun Control Specifically:

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes."

--Thomas Jefferson

"The great object is, that every man be armed. [...] Every one who is able may have a gun."

-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 14 1788

"The idea of gun control is predicated on the assumption that a citizen, dead in his home, is somehow morally superior to the one explaining to the police how his attacker got the bullet hole in him."

-- Paraphrased by Me

"Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen."

-- "M.T. Cicero", in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the "militia" referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution

"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..."

-- Samuel Adams, in Phila. Independent Gazetteer, August 20, 1789

"The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the 'government', not to 'society'; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage."

-- Joel Barlow, Advice to the Privileged Orders, 1792-93

The Bill of Rights, then, as any history book will confirm, came into being to satisfy the single most suspicious, vociferous, and relentless foes of the new federal government.

That is the all-important context in which the Bill of Rights was created. The Anti-Federalists, men filled to varying degrees with fear, mistrust, and loathing of the new federal government, insisted on a bill of rights as additional shackles imposed on that new government. Knowing this alone, knowing that the famous Bill exists only to please those most apprehensive of the new government, definitively ends any confusion or debate surrounding the meaning of the Second Amendment.

There is simply no way on Earth the Anti-Federalists would have surrendered to the new and mistrusted government the right to own any gun they wanted at any time they wanted in any number they wanted.

To believe differently, to believe that the Second Amendment actually gives the federal government the authority to regulate firearms, one must believe the absolutely unbelievable. One must believe that the Anti-Federalists, fearing and loathing federal power, compelled Madison to compose this laundry list of rights, this list of things over which the government was to have no authority, and very near the very top of the list, these people in fear of the federal government desired a clause that reads, “Despite the fact that Article I, Section 8 prohibits you federal government people from infringing on our firearms rights, we hereby correct that mistake and surrender to you a right which we previously held, but wish now to give away.”

We must further believe that James Madison was such a monumentally incompetent and abysmal writer that, when trying to give the federal government this new authority to regulate the private ownership of firearms, the last fourteen words of the amendment read, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

We must also believe that revolutionary American history conceals some hitherto unknown and utterly undocumented groundswell of public desire for gun control.

Picture in your mind for a moment the rough-and-tumble individualist who gave birth to this nation, a man who had tamed a wilderness, fought Indian wars on and off for 180 years, and successfully faced down the world’s mightiest empire. Hold a picture of that man in your head for a moment and then try to imagine him being told that this new federal government would have the power to regulate his ownership of firearms in any manner it saw fit, including imprisoning him for possession of any firearm for any reason at any time. No honest or serious man could ever claim to believe that any part of the American electorate desired federal gun control, let alone the Anti-Federalists who forced the creation of the Bill of Rights.”

-- From an article in the Philadelphia Bulletin

Quotes from Calvin Coolidge:

It is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.

Civilization and profit go hand in hand.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

Duty is not collective; it is personal.

Economy is the method by which we prepare today to afford the improvements of tomorrow.

I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can't be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.

Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.

It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of face within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.

No man ever listened himself out of a job.

Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.

Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.

The business of America is business.

The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.

The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.

The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct.

There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.

Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.

To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

Regarding the Early Slate of Republican Nominees for 2008:

There are many ways for my "enemy" to gain advantage over me. Some are overt and some are more covert. There is the overt means of having an absolute 180 degree bassackwards ideologue (like Hitlery or Bustabutt) in power over me. There is also the covert means of continually giving me "the lesser of two evils." Over the years, as the bar lowers with each "lesser", I have to accept less and less. Somewhere, I either stand up for my beliefs or I never get the opportunity to vote for them again.

Conservatives should take great notice of this election. The Republican party decided to swing left to "win" this election. Those who thought we stood for something bigger than that, were apparently wrong.

The absolutely outrageous thing in this election is that there was a choice who wasn't the lesser of two evils but a near carbon copy of what we claim to want here on FR. However, we on FR chose to be pragmatic and turn our backs on "our" candidate out of fear of the bogeyman. Does anyone here feel they were led around by the nose by the media we so hate? THEY chose Arnold. THEY declared Tom unelectable. THEY gave all of the election oxygen to Mr Schwarzenkennedy. Those of you who said they would only vote for Tom if he were ahead in the polls on election day doomed him to failure by the very "tainting" of polls you routinely decry. YOU GAVE THEM THEIR AMMUNITION.

Your principles tell you to vote pragmatically, pushing the better choice to the side in favor of the one you've been told can actually win. Who told you this? The very party leaders and authorities we continually rail about on FR? The very media establishment that canonized Arnold as the Republican frontrunner (like Wesley Clark) as soon as he announced his candidacy?

Why is it that Tom can't win? Well, let's first see what it takes to win... To win, Tom needs more votes than his opponents. It takes us to vote for him. What will it take for us to vote for him? We have to know what he believes and see if it jibes with what we believe... he has to get his message out. What will it take to get his message out? It will take a lot of support. What does he not have? Support--not from the party, not from the media, not from you. Why? Because he's unelectable... it's a circular argument.

It's all moot now but my principles as an American say to vote my conscience. I shouldn't worry about my neighbor's vote. To game my vote or to vote strictly party line is to vote like a Democrat and a political lemming--not a man of principle.

At the end of the day, I will be who God called me to be. You can be what God called you to be. However, I am not less than you because I choose the better candidate and you choose to vote with the pack.

-- Me (Post #4,143 on the California Recall Live Thread, 10/7/2003)

Do Democrats Really Want the US to be Victorious?

"I don't think increasing the troops helps us get our foot out of the trap--it just puts 20,000 more targets on the ground. ... My going-in strategy would be to disengage, not on a known timetable because it gives too many options to the enemy, but set a course for disengagement out of there, knowing full what will follow will be a disaster. But there is going to be a disaster anyway."

-- Ret. Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, former USAF Chief of Staff (Regretfully), Southern Oregon Mail Tribune, 1/10/2007

Just think for a moment the joy we would all feel if tomorrow, Al Qaeda announced that "If we haven't driven the Americans out of Iraq by the end of '08, we will quit."

THAT is how you know withdrawal timetables are a bad idea.

- posted on 03/26/2007 7:09:52 AM CDT by RayStacy

___________

• Democrat Barack Obama, Jan. 2007: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

• Democrat Barack Obama, Jan 2007: “I don’t think the president’s [surge] strategy is going to work.”

• Democrat Barack Obama, Jul. 2007: “My assessment is that the surge has not worked.”

• Democrat Barack Obama, Oct. 2007: “[The surge is a] complete failure... Iraq’s leaders are not reconciling. They are not achieving political benchmarks.”

Now: General: President Looked at Iraq Surge to Plan Afghanistan Strategy

_________________

President Obama last night ordered 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, to fight the Taliban, but on an 18-month timetable. In a related story, the Taliban announced they're on a 19-month timetable.

-- Jay Leno

_________________

EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Thursday, January 10, 1963

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.

At Mrs. Nordman’s request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following “Current Communist Goals,” which she identifies as an excerpt from “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen:

[From “The Naked Communist,” by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ”united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Rules for Radicals
by Saul Alinsky

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.

Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself. When Alinsky leaked word that large numbers of poor people were going to tie up the washrooms of O’Hare Airport, Chicago city authorities quickly agreed to act on a longstanding commitment to a ghetto organization. They imagined the mayhem as thousands of passengers poured off airplanes to discover every washroom occupied. Then they imagined the international embarrassment and the damage to the city’s reputation.

Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”

Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

Fourteen Techniques for Truth Suppression

1.Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.

2.Wax indignant. This is also known as the "How dare you?" gambit.

3.Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors." (If they tend to believe the "rumors" it must be because they are simply "paranoid" or "hysterical.")

4.Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspects of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors (or plant false stories) and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.

5.Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nutcase," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and, of course, "rumor monger." Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own "skeptics" to shoot down.

6.Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).

7.Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.

8.Dismiss the charges as "old news."

9.Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.

10.Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.

11.Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. E.g. We have a completely free press. If evidence exists that the Vince Foster "suicide" note was forged, they would have reported it. They haven't reported it so there is no such evidence. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press who would report the leak.

12.Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. E.g. If Foster was murdered, who did it and why?

13.Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.

14.Lightly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as “bump and run” reporting.

And now for something completely different:

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 90% The Flash 65% Spider-Man 60% Green Lantern 60% Supergirl 55% Robin 52% Hulk 45% Iron Man 45% Batman 40% Catwoman 35% Wonder Woman 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

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