Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.
– Ben Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
Monthly Archives: October 2009
Democracy Produces Evil
The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.
Elbridge Gerry, Constitutional Convention, Monday, May 31, 1787
Defense against Civil Rulers
Whereas civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.
— Tench Coxe, “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution,” under the pseudonym “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789.
Humor is the Best Defense <- Horace
What stops a man who can laugh from speaking the truth?
– Horace, cited in P.J. O’Rourke’s book Parliament of Whores
Disarm the Innocent <- William Burroughs
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.
I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
— William S. Burroughs, Grand Street, no. 37 (1992). The War Universe
Free Will and Responsibility <- P.J. O'Rourke
One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on.
And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.
– P. J. O’Rourke, Rolling Stone Magazine, November 1989
War: Enemy of Liberty <- James Madison
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.
The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both.
No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
