Thoughts on The Passing Scene

Random thoughts on the passing scene...

Alexis de Tocqueville

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. 

Margaret Thatcher

The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Ronald Reagan

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

It isn't that liberals are ignorant, its just that they know so much that isn't so.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Great nations have responsibilities to lead and we should always be cautious of those who would lower our profile because they might just wind up lowering our flag.

Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.

Abraham Lincoln

Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Benjamin Franklin

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

Socrates

Extreme freedom can't be expected to lead to anything but a change to extreme slavery, whether for a private individual or for a city.

CS Lewis

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Thomas Sowell

The only thing that can cure poverty is wealth.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

How can a President of the United States be re-elected in a landslide after four years when unemployment never fell below 15 percent for even one month during his first term? Franklin D. Roosevelt did it by blaming it all on the previous administration. Barack Obama may be able to achieve the same result the same way.

I hate to hear about "partnerships" between government and business, or between government and other organizations. When there is a partnership between an ant and an elephant, who do you suppose makes the decisions?

One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.

There are too many people, especially among the intelligentsia, who will never appreciate the things that have made this country great until after those things have been destroyed—with their help. Then, of course, it will be too late.

Friedrich August von Hayek

‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

P. J. O'Rourke

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

More

No cuts or caps for executive salaries in Big Education

Receiving federal assistance may entail pay cuts for fat cat executives in business, but no such worries for highly paid big shots in higher education. One of the largest industries in America, one far more dependent on federal largess than Wall Street or Detroit, has immunity. 

Another fat cat executive

Postmaster General John E. Potter recently warned that economic times are so dire that the U.S. Postal Service may end mail delivery one day a week and freeze executive salaries. But his personal fortunes are nonetheless rising thanks to 40 percent in pay raises since 2006, a $135,000 bonus last year and several perks usually reserved for corporate CEOs.