"When promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial 
sentimentalities and amicable philosophical and psychological observations,
beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your verbal evaporations have lucidity, 
intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thespian
bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity and 
sophomoric vacuity." -- Unknown

"It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier,
Who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag."
By: Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC 

"We are conditioned to think that inequity is always injustice."

"How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries 
and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, 
can only be conjectured...No one knows, when he places a marijuana cigarette to 
his lips, whether he will become a joyous reveler in a musical heaven, a mad 
insensate, a calm philosopher, or a murderer..." HARRY J ANSLINGER Commissioner 
of the US Bureau of Narcotics 1930-1962

"We find our population suffering from the old inequalities, little changed by 
our past sporadic remedies. In spite of our effort and in spite of our talk, we 
have not weeded out the over-privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the 
underprivileged....We have...a clear mandate from the people, that Americans 
must forswear the conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through 
excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our 
misfortune, over public affairs as well. In building toward this end we do not 
destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on 
stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn 
more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain 
for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living 
throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth 
and great power."  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jan. 4, 1935.

"Articulate speech and the manifold distinctions it makes possible - all of 
which can be put to the service of reason and truth - is giving way in our 
communications to what is more primitive and ambiguous - namely, the image. And 
we find all around us a steady stream of images which, in the service of a 
ravenous materialism and a rampant sensuality, often offer a distorted 
projection of the good life." President Thomas E. Dillon, Thomas Aquinas College

-Push the rock; bloom where your are planted; tell the truth.

"Victory was the consummation of thorough preparations." Battle of Santiago, 
Bainbridge

The Gov't is full of left leaning folks because those types of folks are 
attracted socialist jobs.

"Only petty minds and trivial souls yearn for supernatural events, incapable of 
perceiving that everything -- everything! -- within and around them is pure 
miracle." -- E. Abbey  

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-
62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden, "Economy" (1854).
  
"I am thankful for...
...the mess to clean after a party because it means I have been surrounded by 
friends.
...the taxes I pay, because it means that I'm employed.
...the clothes that fit a little too snug because it means that I have enough to 
eat.
...my shadow who watches me work because it means I am out in the sunshine.
...a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need 
fixing because 
it means that I have a home.
...all the complaining I hear about our government because it means we have 
freedom of speech.
...the spot I find at the far end of the parking lot, because it means that I am 
capable of walking.
...my huge electric bill, because it means I've been cool in the summer and warm 
in the winter.
...the person behind me in church who sings off key because it means that I can 
hear.
...the piles of laundry and housework because it means my loved ones are nearby.
...weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day because it means that I've 
been productive.
...the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours because it means I'm 
alive." 

"The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant 
step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race 
of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to 
what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of 
information." -- Edward Abbey  

"And just as globalism [globaloney, lvw] is the antithesis of patriotism, the 
transnational corporation is a natural antagonist of tradition.  With its 
adaptability and amorality, it has no roots; it can operate in any system.  With 
efficiency its ruling principle, it has no loyalty to workers and no allegiance 
to any nation.  With share price and stock options its reasons for being, it 
will sacrifice everything and everyone on the altar of profit.  The global 
capitalist and the true conservative are Cain and Abel.  But the growing power 
of global capitalism cannot be denied.  Measured by GDP, fifty-two of the 
world's one hundred most powerful economies are corporations, and forty-eight are 
countries."  Patrick J. Buchanan, p229, The Death of the West.

"Building more schools to solve the education problem clearly shows the 
different world view of the Left vice the Right. The Left is materialistic, so 
all their solutions are materialistic. Build schools to fix education; outlaw 
guns to fix crime; get rid of war machinery to create peace; hand out money to 
fix poverty. All of these solutions attack the problem materialistically when 
the problems are obviously spiritual; the problems exist because of men's 
internal failings." (rough quote) Michael Medved

"[Learned] Hand was speaking of a Court that was then activist in conservative 
causes. There is no reason to suppose that he would have been kinder to later 
Courts whose "fatuous floundering" was in the service of modern liberal causes. 
Perhaps the real lesson to be derived from both the conservative and modern 
liberal eras is that judges cannot be trusted with a written constitution and an 
unlimited and uncheckable power of judicial review. Most men and women, given 
final power, will prove unable to subordinate their personal sympathies and 
passions to the legitimate range of meanings that a dispassionate mind can find 
in the Constitution.

"The Court is obviously not responsible for all that has gone wrong in our 
culture, but it is responsible in no small measure... Those results include the 
declining legitimacy of democratic institutions, the promotion of anarchy and 
license in the moral order, and advancing tyranny in the social order. The 
upshot is that the democratic nation is helpless before an antidemocratic, 
indeed a despotic, judiciary. The American people seem, at the moment, to be 
submissive and without the political will to reclaim the liberty that is 
rightfully theirs."  Robert Bork, p118, 119, Slouching Towards Gomorrah.

...Bread and Circuses...

"In Juvenal's time (55-127 A.D.), the Roman Republic was but a distant memory as 
the power of the emperors grew stronger and stronger. The once proud Senate that 
had witnessed the splendid orations of Cato and Cicero - dominated and weakened 
year after year by the succession of dictators - atrophied into a figurehead of 
an institution. However, Juvenal felt that the populace took the duties of 
citizenship far more seriously during the days of the Republic than in the 
virtual dictatorships of the Caesars. 

He lamented that "the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, 
and all else, now meddle no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread 
and circuses." 

Those scornful words "bread and circuses," panem et circenses in Latin, become 
more meaningful when you understand that Roman citizens became increasingly 
addicted to free distributions of food and the violent gladiatorial and other 
contests held in the Coliseum and the chariot races of the Circus Maximus. He 
felt that Romans had lost the capacity to govern themselves so distracted by 
mindless self-gratification had they become. 

Thus, bread and circuses, is a phrase now used to deplore a population so 
distracted with entertainment and personal pleasures (sometimes by design of 
those in power) that they no longer value the civic virtues and bow to civil 
authority with unquestioned obedience. Bread and Circuses has also become a 
general term for government policies that seek short-term solutions to public 
unrest. 

Unfortunately, Juvenal's words apply quite strikingly to the United States, 
certainly a people who at the turn of the 3rd millennium are almost wholly 
distracted by cheap fast food (relative to other countries) and by the decadence 
of an entertainment industry that that deals so much in sex, violence and 
propaganda."

To Kill an American 

You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a 
report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward 
to anyone who killed an American, any American. 

So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what an 
American is, so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya, mate!!!!) 

An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, 
Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, 
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or 
Afghan. An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, 
Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans. 

An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, 
there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan. The only difference is 
that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses. An American is 
also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the 
government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God. 

An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world. The 
root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which 
recognizes the God given right of each person the pursuit of happiness. 

An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other 
nation in the world in their time of need. When Afghanistan was overrun by the 
Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the 
people to win back their country.! 

As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other 
nation to the poor in Afghanistan. 

Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best music, the 
best food, the best athletes. But they also welcome the least. The national symbol 
of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the 
wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in 
fact are the people who built America. Some of them were working in the Twin 
Towers the morning of September 11, 2001, earning a better life for their families. 
I've been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other 
countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the 
terrorists. 

So you can try to kill an American if you must. Hitler did. So did General Tojo, 
and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the 
world. But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are 
not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the 
human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an 
American.  Author unknown