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The War for Southern Independence

...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government , and to provide new Guards for their future security. ... --The Declaration of Independence

"We could have pursued no other course without dishonor.  And sad as the results have been, if it had all to be done over again, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same manner."  --General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A. [cited in The Memorial Volume of Jefferson Davis by J. William Jones, 1889, Sprinkle Publications, p. 309]

"The Civil War wasn't just a victory of North over South; it was a victory for centralized government over the states and federalism. It destroyed the ability of the states to protect themselves against the destruction of their reserved powers. Must we all be happy about this? [Abraham] Lincoln himself -- the real Lincoln, that is -- would have deprecated the unintended results of the war. Though he sometimes resorted to dictatorial methods, he never meant to create a totalitarian state. It's tragic that slavery was intertwined with a good cause, and scandalous that those who defend that cause today should be smeared as partisans of slavery. But the verdict of history must not be left to the simple-minded and the demagogic."
--Joseph Sobran (syndicated columnist) [www.sobran.com]

"Like most war leaders, he [Lincoln] grossly distorted and exaggerated the motives of his enemy. He constantly insisted that the South wanted to “destroy” the Union, when it merely wanted to withdraw from it. He called honorable men like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee “traitors,” though they never betrayed anyone in their lives. He accused the South of “aggression,” when it was the South that was being invaded, and truly destroyed, by the Union armies. Having assured the country that he had neither the power nor the inclination to disturb slavery, Lincoln made the destruction of slavery his lofty war aim in the middle of the war." ---Joseph Sobran ( http://www.sobran.com )

"A nation preserved with liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but with the spirit of liberty still alive.  Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government."  --Private John H. Haley, 17th Maine Regiment, USA

"If the right of secession be denied...and the denial enforced by the sword of coercion; the nature of the polity is changed, and freedom is at its end.  It is no longer a government by consent, but a government of force.  Conquest is substituted compact, and the dream of liberty is over." --Albert Taylor Bledsoe, from Is Davis a Traitor?

"If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side." --Ulysses S. Grant

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."--Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1861 Inaugural address

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union." --Abraham Lincoln in an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley on his justification for the Northern War of Aggression against the constitutional secession of the South. In September 1862, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation (effective Jan. 1, 1863).

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue . The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves." --H.L. Mencken ( HL Mencken )

"People separated from their history are easily persuaded." --Karl Marx

Why did the North want a war?  Read below the reasoned thought of the time...

The predicament in which both the Government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester [England] can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage...If the importations of the counrty are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel.  The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons, to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets.  With the lost of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many huindred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior?  They share in the common ruin.  So do our manufacturers...Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty-free.  The process is perfectly simple... The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North...We now see clearly whither we are tending, and the policy we must adopt.  With us it is no longer an abstract question---one of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated powers of the State or Federal government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad.....We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched.  ---New York Times March 30, 1861

The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods.  What is our shipping without it?  Literally nothing....It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose.  No---we MUST NOT "let the South go." ----Union Democrat , Manchester, NH, February 19, 1861

From a story entitled: "What shall be done for a revenue?"

That either revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad....If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.....Allow rail road iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railroads would be supplied from the southern ports. ---New York Evening Post March 12, 1861, recorded in Northern Editorials on Secession, Howard C. Perkins, ed., 1965, pp. 598-599.

"Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision."     Gen. Pat Cleburne CSA

In 1788, the Massachusetts state convention ratified entry into the Union by a vote of just 187 to 168. Let us suppose that, a couple of years later, a second vote has rescinded the first, and Massachusetts respectfully announced: “Upon further consideration, we have decided that belonging to the Union is not in the state’s best interest.“ I wonder if anyone can imagine George Washington issuing the following proclamation:

“ It has come to my attention that Massachusetts intends to depart the Union. I declare Massachusetts in rebellion! I am requesting the Governors of the states to muster armies which are to proceed to Massachusetts and invade it. I am dispatching federal warships to blockade Boston Harbor. Upon capture, the city is to be burned to the ground. Federal commanders shall torch other Massachusetts cities and towns as they see fit.

“I, George Washington, do further declare, that because the people of Massachusetts have perpetrated this brazen treason, all their rights are forthwith revoked. Of course, if any Massachusetts resident disavows his state’s dastardly decision, and swears an oath of loyalty to the federal government, his rights shall be restored. Such cases excepted, federal soldiers should feel free to loot any Massachusetts home. Crops not seized for army provisions should be destroyed without regards to the needs of the rebels and their families. After all, war is hell.

“And to citizens of other states, take warning! Consorting with the Massachusetts rebels will not be tolerated. It has come to my attention, in fact, that certain leaders and legislators in New Hampshire and Connecticut have expressed sympathy for their cause ! I am ordering federal troops to round up these “border state “ turncoats. They will jailed without hearings. I hereby revoke the right of habeas corpus just accorded under the Constitution. In times as these, suspicion alone shall be suitable cause for imprisonment....”

No one believes Washington would have issued such a proclamation. And if he had, he would have swung from a tree. True, Lincoln did not state things so bluntly, but the foregoing accurately reflects Yankee policy. What had changed between 1789 and 1861 to warrant such a response? --James Perloff, from Southern Partisan 2nd Quarter 1997

Full Perloff Article: "A Yankee Apology"

 The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. --Robert Lynd

At 4:30 a.m. on the 12 of April, 1861, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard directed his Confederate gunners to open fire on Fort Sumter. Thirty-four hours later a white flag flying over the fort ended the bombardment.The only casualty was a horse. It was a bloodless opening to the bloodiest war in American history. American homes became armies headquarters. American churches and school houses sheltered the dying, and huge foraging armies swept across American farms and burned American towns. Americans slaughtered one another wholesale, in their own cornfields and peach orchards, along familiar roads and beside rivers with old American names. More than 3 million Americans fought in this war, and over 600,000 men, 2 percent of the total population died as a result of it. Tens of thousands more were wounded and maimed beyond recognition. In two days at Shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee River, more American men fell than in all previous wars combined. At Cold Harbor, some 7000 Americans fell in twenty minutes. Men who had never strayed more than twenty miles from their front doors now found themselves fighting epic battles hundreds of miles from home. Between 1861 and 1865, there were over 10,000 battles and skirmishes fought on American soil, and we killed each other in great numbers - if only to become the kind of country that supposedly could no longer envision how that was possible. ---Unknown

In order to continue his boycott, Mfume is now tapping into an ugly instinct: the desire of the victor to dominate the vanquished. Make no mistake, the NAACP boycott is no longer about putting historical emblems in proper historical perspective-it's about blotting them out of existence. But what next? Shall we eliminate the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers? Shall we pretend they never existed? --Greenville [South Carolina] News, 5/19/00

 
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Government & the wisdom of the Founders

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State. --James Madison, author of our Constitution, in Federalist Paper No. 45

"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity." --James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 46

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." --Thomas Jefferson

"If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams

I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. --Thomas Jefferson

Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master. --George Washington

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.  --Thomas Jefferson

There is no truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world. --Thomas Jefferson

It is not by the consolidation, or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected. --Thomas Jefferson

I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. --Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison 1787 in response to Hamliton's Federalist Paper No. 23 )

"With respect to the words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers (enumerated in the Constitution) connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison [The US Supreme Court has found the meaning of "general welfare" in the Constitution to be much more elastic than did Mr. Madison. But as the "author of the Constitution," what does he know? --editor]

What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? --Thomas Jefferson

Parties are...censors of the conduct of each other, and useful watchmen for the public. Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore,...Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object. --Thomas Jefferson

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." --Voltaire

I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. --Voltaire

"Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." --Edmund Burke

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." --Lord Alexander Tytler on the fall of the Athenian republic

War || Government & Founder's Wisdom || Left Media || Contemporary Government

 

 

 

 

Contemporary Government

THE CONSTITUTION

Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals-- that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government- that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government. -- Ayn Rand

"The poor Constitution itself is hardly paid any attention to. It's necessary to ignore it because most of what government does these days is clearly unconstitutional. The original idea, as expressed by James Madison, was that states would do 95 percent of the governing. Today, they are little more than administrative subdivisions of the central empire." --Charley Reese

"The Constitution didn't 'grow'; it was never supposed to. Written law must be stable, or it isn't law. A government that can change the very meaning of old words is tyrannical. What really happened -- fairly recently, in historical terms -- is that the courts were taken over by liberal zealots who saw the judiciary as a potential instrument of raw power. After all, justices are appointed for life; they don't face the people at the polls and can t be held responsible for the consequences of their rulings. So by disguising their desires as constitutional mandates, the courts have been able to impose their will on the whole country, uninhibited by reason, tradition, or any other force." --Joseph Sobran

"A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it." --Sen. Sam Ervin

"The most successful revolutions aren't those that are celebrated with parades and banners, drums and trumpets, cannons and fireworks. The really successful revolutions are those that occur quietly, unnoticed, uncommemorated. We don't celebrate the day the United States Constitution was destroyed; it didn't happen on a specific date, and most Americans still don't realize it happened at all. We don't say the Constitution has ceased to exist; we merely say that it's a 'living document.' But it amounts to the same thing." --Joseph Sobran

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John Kennedy

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." --9th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." --10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

BIG GOVERNMENT

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. --Barry Goldwater

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. -- Thomas Sowell

Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders. --Bob Inglis, 1995http://www.termlimits.org/

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." --P.J. O'Rourke

MULTI-CULTURALISM

To move cabin, push button of the wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press the number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by natural order. Button retaining pressed position shows received command    -- Elevator Instructions, Madrid, Spain

Readers: Does this make a case for an Official Language for the USA? I'd hate to see the above writer translate the US Constitution. --editor http://www.us-english.org/

"Our founders...recognized that only a virtuous people would deserve the continued blessings of liberty that had been bestowed upon them. Moreover, virtually all of our nation's founders believed that a virtuous people was a necessary pre-condition for self-government, and that virtue could not be had or sustained without religion. President Washington...noted in his Farewell Address that 'reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.' Benjamin Rush was even more blunt: 'Where there is no religion, there will be no morals'. ...Since about the middle of the past century, the connection between religion and the public schools has been severed, with the predictable result that our public schools today too often fail in their most important task of inculcating moral virtue in the next generation of citizens, even when they succeed in outfitting our children with useful job and other skills. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once noted, 'Education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason but with no morals'," --John C. Eastman

TAXES

There are words that can transform the most big-spending liberal in Congress, who has for decades been blithely adding to the soaring national debt, into someone who proclaims the need to reduce that debt at all costs. Those magic words are 'tax cut'. ... Silly talk about how much people will 'receive' from a tax cut ignores the fact that they are receiving nothing. They are simply keeping money that they earned. --Thomas Sowell

Passive activity income does not include the following: Income for an activity that is not a passive activity .   -- IRS form 8583, Passive Activity Loss Limitation

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." - Albert Einstein

"I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books. --Ronald Reagan

"In 1950, the tax burden on the typical American family was about 5percent of their annual income. Today, the government burden on families is about 40%. Translation: If taxes had stayed at the 1950 level, millions of mothers could return to the full-time care of their homes and children with little or no reduction in family income. And according to a series of recent studies and surveys, that's where most of them have decided they would prefer to be: at home, raising their children. Those institutions -- marriage, family, religion, schools -- that historically have preserved our social learning curves and served as bulwarks against moral degeneration, are under broad attack, and crumbling. It is not a priority of liberals to stop this assault." --Linda Bowles

"The federal government cannot maintain a budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of whiskey untouched in the cupboard." --Rep. Ron Paul

 

Government PLUNDER

"Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not. Too many Americans depend on government money under programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy. Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers, but they understand government checks with their names on them." --Joseph Sobran

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain- and since labor is pain in itself- it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder. --Frederic Bastiat

When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating. --Frederic Bastiat

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else. --Frederic Bastiat

 "In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." --Voltaire

All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man. --H.L. Mencken

Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition. --H.L. Mencken

Taxes are not just about money. Every tax represents a transfer of power and freedom from the people to the government. The underlying premise of every tax is that the money will do more good in the hands of government than in the hands of the people who earned it. --Linda Bowles (syndicated columnist)

Today the taxing power, rather than chattel slavery, is the instrument by which the parasitical element of the population subsists. And that element, which includes politicians, panics at the slightest reduction in the state's power to plunder. Once you start liberating taxpayers, even a little tiny bit, nobody knows where it may end. --Joseph Sobran (syndicated columnist)

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."
--George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) -- (1944), Everybody's Political What's What? 

"Is the United States a free country? Not by traditional measures. In the history of Western civilization, freedom has an economic meaning and a legal meaning. The United States fails both measures of freedom. April 15 -- Tax Day -- has come to symbolize America's lack of economic freedom. Americans have no more claim to their incomes than did medieval serfs. The most successful Americans are comparable to slaves." ---Paul Craig Roberts

"The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men." --Lyn Nofziger

War || Government & Founder's Wisdom || Left Media || Contemporary Government

 

 


Left Media

"If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as "candle making industry threatened". --Newt Gingrich , US Congressman and House Speaker, 1995

"I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's." --Marion Barry , Mayor of Washington, DC

"Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican." --Marion Barry , Mayor of Washington, DC

"What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?" --M. Barry, Mayor of Washington, DC (See U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17)

"I am a great mayor; I am an upstanding Christian man; I am an intelligent man; I am a deeply educated man; I am a humble man." --M. Barry , Mayor of Washington, DC

Editors note: Marion Barry was elected to his fourth term as mayor of Washington, D. C. in 1994.  Barry's ignorance speaks for itself. --editor

"We can build a collective civic space large enough for all our separate identities, that we can be e pluribus unum -- out of one, many." --Vice-President Al Gore
E Pluribus Unum is the motto on the Great Seal of the United States of America, and is Latin for "out of many, one." Mr. Gore's policies revealed his lack of understanding of many government issues." --editor
(Source: January 1994. From a Milwaukee speech to the Institute of World Affairs as quoted in Investor's Business Daily, October 25, 1996.)

 

Miscellaneous

Gun-Control - Second Amendment

"If the homicide rate is falling, if the fatalities from firearms accidents are the lowest they've been since 1902, why do you suppose some people are so fiendishly insistent on more gun control? ...Why do they clamor for safer guns when firearm accidents account for only [a small percentage] of the 90,000 accidental deaths annually in the United States? Well, I personally think that their motive has nothing to do with fighting crime or with safety. After all, firearms are dead last as a cause of accidental fatalities among both children and adults. Doctors, we now know, kill three times as many Americans annually from mistakes than firearms kill, counting homicides, suicides and accidents. I think that the answer is both old and simple. Gun-control laws have always been elitist and racist. Elitists have always wanted to disarm the common folks while, of course, retaining the privileges of arms for themselves. And the right to keep and bear arms has always been a populist cause." --Charley Reese (sydicated columnist)

"They won their freedom with bullets so that we could defend our freedom with ballots. That is the holy war [we must] wage and win. But instead of fighting the Redcoats, we're fighting the blue-blood elitists." --NRA's Charlton Heston

Revisiting the Revolutionary War is a bracing reminder that the fate of a continent, and the shape of the modern world, turned on the free choices of remarkably few Americans defying an empire. --George Will

"How are we better off if more people who don't even care enough to become informed about the serious issues show up at the polls to make choices by guess and by golly? That is putting form over substance. It is also putting enormous power in the hands of political demagogues who exploit the voters' ignorance to gain power for themselves." --Thomas Sowell

"Respect for human rights is something that should be cherished, and nowhere on earth are they fully respected -- but some countries and cultures have a far better record than others. The Western world and its culture have a far superior record of human-rights protections than anywhere else. Think about it. If you are a feminist, where would you prefer to live: Iran, Saudi Arabia, China or a country in Africa? If you are a criminal, where would you prefer to be tried and imprisoned: Turkey, Mexico, China or Russia? If you are a minority, where would you prefer to live: Burundi, Albania, Malaysia or Liberia? If you were an unborn spirit condemned to live a life of poverty, but permitted to choose a country for that life, what country would you choose: Chad, Romania, North Korea or Kenya? A moment's reflection to any of these questions would yield an answer: You would prefer the United States or a European country. That's not to say that the United States and European countries are utopias, but by observing who's trying to flee to where suggests they are superior alternatives to other places." --Walter Williams

 


 

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