Thoughts and Stuff...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

Rodin - The Thinker

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I've been thinking. Or perhaps more accurately stated I've been trying to think above the noise of the thoughtless.

I mean really, does anyone actually think ENTIRELY for themselves? Or do most wait to test which way the wind is blowing on any given day, week, month, or year?

After three years of blogging, visiting conservative, moderate, and liberal sites it seem most follow the blast of some unseen fog horn announcing the proper and correct path all good sheeples should follow. Without question. I should know. I've been one of those fog horns from time to time.

For many this works. After all it IS the easy path. Letting others decide what the proper and reasonable path to liberty and happiness is. Just believe and ye shall be rewarded with eternal blissful happiness.

After all, isn't everyone too busy trying to earn a living, assuming of course they have been able to find employment, to concern themselves with the often intangibles of what exactly the state's role in their life ought to be?

Or, sometimes what the role ought NOT to be?

Progressives and conservatives alike, statists both in their own unique way claim to have the answers to what ails American society and it's economy. No doubt there is truth to be found from both sides. Likely neither has the complete answer to anything.

Yet both sides CHOOSE to remain deaf, dumb, or ignorant of the possibility the synergy created by the fine art of honest negotiated compromise just might {and most probably will} render the best and most workable solution for the nation.

I guess pride gets in the way sometimes and clouds better judgement.

It has been said the more things change the more they stay the same. Can anyone in good conscience disagree? Methinks not.

Wisdom, irrespective of when expounded remains wisdom for the ages. Pointing out a few examples...

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." - Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814.

"I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another." - Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799.

"The clergy ... believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion." - Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800.

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support. - Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1792

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing - Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute. - Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism. - Claude Frédéric Bastiat

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. - Claude Frédéric Bastiat

It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds. - Claude Frédéric Bastiat

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice. - President Harry Truman

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break. President Harry Truman

So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. - President John Kennedy

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - President John Kennedy

The stories of past courage can define that ingredient-they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. - President John Kennedy

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. - President Ronald Reagan

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. - President Ronald Reagan

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last--but eat you he will. - President Ronald Reagan

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today--with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be. - Barrack Obama, speech, Jan. 3, 2008

Reason, tenacity, and self reliance... After all is said and done these are the tools that ultimately will sustain our nation.