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To: counterpunch

You sound just like the Siren who attempts to convince the sailor their are no jagged rocks beneath those calm waters... You cannot separate social from fiscal... one entails the other. You cannot separate morality from government... one requires the other. Amoral or immoral men cannot govern themselves:

In “A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly,” 1791, Edmund Burke wrote: “What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves.”

Edmund Burke continued: “Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

This portion particularly applies to those holding your opinions:

“...in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves.”


310 posted on 11/14/2010 10:25:55 PM PST by TCH (DON'T BE AN "O-HOLE"! ... DEMAND YOUR STATE ENACT ITS SOVEREIGNTY !When a majority of the American)
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To: TCH

Those words by Burke are among my all time favorite quotes.


311 posted on 11/14/2010 10:34:42 PM PST by little jeremiah (Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.CSLewis)
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