Posted on 02/19/2007 12:45:05 AM PST by Exton1
by William Tyler Page
I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.
–Written 1917, accepted by the United States House of Representatives on April 3, 1918.
Quotes by G. K Chesterton that apply today.
“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." - G. K. Chesterton
War is not 'the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you. - G. K. Chesterton
The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - G. K. Chesterton
Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern." - G. K. Chesterton
He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative. - G. K. Chesterton
There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions. - G. K. Chesterton
"The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden." - G. K. Chesterton
"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own." - G. K. Chesterton
"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." - G. K. Chesterton
"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." - G. K. Chesterton
"The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure." - G. K. Chesterton
"[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them." - G. K. Chesterton The Debate with Bertrand Russell, BBC Magazine, 11/27/35
Separation of Church and State
"Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it." - Autobiography, 1937
[Dawn Eden (born September 3, 1968) is an American author, journalist, rock historian, freelance writer, and social and religious commentator. She is the author of The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On.]
ping
Very wise words indeed. Thanks for the great post!
You'll like this one, Caleb.
No kidding. My tagline's one of the Chestertonian bon mots.
Maybe this one? "We can thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them."
Chances are it was this selection:
"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide -- or a drill-book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier, surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry the Christian courage which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage which is a disdain of life."
-- Orthodoxy
That is it. Thanks alot.
and actually the constant references by R. Kirk and you got me to finally dig into his books with which I was only vaguely familiar...
Some may want to explore
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/index.html
Ain't that the truth?.. Fix government!..
Fire a buttload of officials.. and those that work for them..
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