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Monthly Archives: January 2012

Freedom vs the Chains of Security <– Ron Paul

30 Jan

"We need a strong president, strong enough to resist the temptation of taking power the President shouldn’t have."

Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference.

Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives.

Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.

— Ron Paul, Security and Liberty (2007)

 
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Posted by on January 30, 2012 in Philosophy, Politics

 

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Your Body is Your Own <– Mark Twain

27 Jan

Twain was speaking against the government's attempt to regulate Osteopahy...the osteopaths/chiropractors had hoped he was a believer, but it turned out he thought bone-adjustment was a sham, yet defending people being free to choose for themselves.

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.

— Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), address to the New York General Assembly (1901)

 
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Posted by on January 27, 2012 in economic, Health, Liberty

 

Government Spending <- Dave Barry

12 Jan

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail

 

One important reason we have a Defense Department is that when we give it money, it spends it, which creates jobs, whereas if we left the money in the hands of civilians, we don`t know what they`d do with it.

Probably put it in open trenches and set it on fire.

— Dave Barry, The Ultimate Deterrent against Political Fallout

 
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Posted by on January 12, 2012 in Humor, Politics

 

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Wise and Just Governments Don’t Soak the Rich <– James Madison

10 Jan

"They will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights"

A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.

~ James Madison, Property (1792)

 
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Posted by on January 10, 2012 in Politics

 

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Liberty, not Hypocrisy <– Noam Chomsky

09 Jan

Censorship, like all other oppression, is always imposed with the excuse that its victims are obviously wrong, bad, unhealthy, or foolish

 

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

— Noam Chomsky, Guardian (UK), November 23, 1992


 
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Posted by on January 9, 2012 in education, Freedom of Expression, Philosophy, Politics

 

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