Saturday, December 31, 2005

It occurs to me-

Journalists are often nothing more than professional voyeurs who have the unfortunate tendency of bragging about their moral lapses in public.

Friday, December 16, 2005

-Julianne Loesch Wiley

"Funny how I went straight from left wing to right wing without ever once passing through a phase where I trusted the government." Link

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

— Alexis de Tocqueville

It is surely no exaggeration to say that a man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.

Monday, December 12, 2005

C.S. Lewis on Hell

"[where] everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." -from The Screwtape Letters

Thursday, December 08, 2005

—George Reisman

Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one — even the staunchest supporters of science and technology — had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them, is forecast the weather! — for the next one hundred years... —George Reisman, The Toxicity of Environmentalism

Friday, December 02, 2005

- Vladimir Ilich Lenin

"Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness. Get control of all means of publicity and thereby: Get the peoples' mind off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays, and other trivialities. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance. Destroy the peoples faith in their natural leaders by holding up the latter to ridicule, contempt and obloquy. Always preach true democracy but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible. Encourage government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear with rising prices, inflation and general discontent. Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a soft and lenient attitude on the part of government towards such disorders. By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless."