5 posts tagged “government”

If you are an American, I don't care which party you are a member of (well, except maybe the Communist party).  For just this week only, and I don't care if you like him or not, you need to watch Glenn Beck on Fox News.  I  only ask this week (the end of August).  For both fans and non-fans, your duty is to have a notepad and take notes.  This is to verify or disprove what he asks and says this week.

This is important.  He has uncovered quite an interesting and disturbing thing happening to our nation.  He is having Democrats on his show who are just as concerned about what is happening as are the conservatives on his show.  This isn't some sort of Republican rant.  In fact, he is just as angry with them as he is those that are selling out our country with a nefarious goal in mind.  He holds everyone (that is) responsible in this case.

Frankly, he's rattling his sword and the government is trying everything to discredit and silence him.  Which is a very good sign he's on to something that is true.

Glenn asks you to prove him right or prove him wrong.  It's so important you know the truth he challenges you to do it out of duty as a citizen of the USA.  He doesn't claim perfection, nor does he ask you take his word for it on everything.  He tells you he came to know this and backs up his claims with the truth.  No belittling, no slander, no so-called "hate speech", no racism, just the facts and some very hard hitting questions.

So far, he has exposed the fact that our President has appointed self-admitted Marxists to be his "Czars" and such, and that the "Apollo Group" wrote the "Stimulus" package.  Yeah, a group of people with Marxist values wrote our economic stimulus for our capitalist economy.  What doesn't add up here?  Since when have Communists known anything about capitalist economies?  Glenn's research shows that they want high unemployment, and large debt, so it overwhelms the government with welfare and debt to cause it to collapse.  All the "stimulus" has done so far is to increase unemployment and fund organizations like Apollo.  So, the "stimulus" was written to stimulate Apollo with taxpayer funds.

Set you DVRs for this show at least for this week.  Inside Passage, I know this will be hard for you, but hear him out.  Pay less attention to his personality and more attention to what he is asking and saying.

To give you a hint at how important this is.  Yesterday I heard something I would not have believed would happen ever, no matter even if Jimmy Carter were President.  Rush Limbaugh, ultra-conservative, finally came out with what we all knew, and he was not happy saying it.  Rush Limbaugh called our government, as Obama has finalized it, not a socialist government, but a fascist government.

This is not about race, so get over it.  It's about what is being done to our Republic.

[Added after this article was originally posted]

Those that missed it:  go to Blenn Beck's web site and watch the videos you missed this week to catch up.  Prove him wrong, I challenge you.

Go here for the questions to ask and find out if he's full of crap. 

I received the following email from a great man, Colonel Riley, aka "Sarge".  A truly great man that just loves his country and is fighting to give it back to the people.  I share his sentiments:

Hi Everyone,

As with some of you, I have been getting an untold number of emails from various sources about How to save the GOP I get this stuff constantly from Newsmax, Human Events, Newt Gingrich and a huge number of others. Of course the chronic talk of how Conservative Republicans (?) can get back POWER??

I have a suggestion for all these pundits, editorialist, and talking heads.

HOW ABOUT SAVING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA????  SCREW THE PARTY AFFILIATIONS!  Where are Real Americans willing to serve this country and defend the Constitution, our Freedoms & Liberties, and get GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR LIVES and the Private Sector?

Playing with politics and BS Party Lines is why we are in the shape we are in today.  Playing with the Constitution is why we are where we are today.  What happened to serving the country as opposed to serving Party Agenda, special interest, and buying votes with programs that amount to redistribution of the wealth?

We are a unique country in that we all have the right to the Pursuit of Happiness.  The key word is PERSUIT!!  The Constitution does not provide anything more than your right to pursue your happiness, You cannot pursue your happiness with the government involved in your life or business, Nothing is guaranteed, and if you fail to pursue or fail in your pursuit, that does not justify or obligate the government with other people's money to provide it for you!  Remember the government does not have any of its own money.  The money the government has comes from Americans whom they do not feel can apply it properly so the government has decided to spend your money for you in ways they determine for you.  Why has this never sunk in is beyond me.  Of course someone getting a free ride or something for nothing from the government is grateful.  They do not seem concerned with the restrictions and controls placed on them for their acceptance of government money.  This includes most states in this country who are or have forfeited their control and sovereignty to the Federal Government in the name of accepting funds for more and more programs they should not be involved in, in the first place.  The rights of the individual are disappearing with more and more government and government control.  The pursuit of happiness is void when government has too much control.

We have two options:

1. Accept Socialism and more and more government control over our lives and private industry and redistribution of the wealth.  Thus giving up our heritage and all of what our forefathers fought and died for
2. Accept Freedom, Liberty, Much Less Government involvement in our lives.  Become independent and lead our lives as we chose within reasonable laws of course.  Take responsibility for our own actions and lives without the lame excuses or relying on the government or someone else to do it for us.

Socialism is winning big time right now.  I know there are those in denial about the socialist agenda and that is why they are winning.  People / Americans are in denial because they have been conditioned to believe that it could never happen here.  Guess What???  It is happening!!!  It's not about America anymore, it's about power, & control and if that reality does not scare you, nothing will.

America has lost its pride and its soul.  A Great Nation, that while not perfect, has accomplished so much good in this world and for its self, has lost its sense of resilience and independence.  Our leaders travel the world apologizing for imagined faults to countries who owe their existence and prosperity to this country.  Our Leaders are traveling the world visiting and sending messages of weakness and apology to enemies that would like to see every American Dead and this great country destroyed.  America seems OK and very acceptable with this conduct from our leaders.  What is missing is the simple fact that one can be a PROUD AMERICAN without being ARROGANT!  The Arrogance is not average Joe or Jane American, but the elitist who can only find fault with the country that has provided them with so much, and think they have the right to think and speak for all of us!  How about America being ashamed of such conduct by these leaders and electing them right out of office.  Some comments by some leaders are borderline sedition if not sedition in fact.  Where is the outrage?  There is none, it's simply accepted.

So I ask again, how about focusing on saving this once great country, I think that is far more important than saving any political party.  Historically political parties are more concerned with power and control. Granted some political agendas want more power than others and in differing ways.  The core of this Nation is the Constitution and it is under its most sever attack right now today. Both Major Political Parties are guilty of abuse of the Constitution.  Elected officials are sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.  Yet, they ignore it in the name of power and buying more votes by providing programs and money they have no business getting involved in and is not in their Constitutional authority.  Unless of course, as they have done without our consent, voted themselves such power and authority.  The attack on the Constitution is dramatic if one takes the time to look into it.  America is far too accepting of using the government and expecting government to be the answer to any and all problems.  You live in a hurricane zone below sea level, common sense says you can expect to be hit hard by mother nature.  It is your decision, and responsibility, so why does America have to pay to get you out of trouble and rebuild your life??  The afore mentioned comment is meant in just general terms to make a point and nothing more.

So it goes.

Sarge

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson

Andrew McCarthy, a man with genuine BALLS.  A well respected former Federal Prosecutor by both parties, who served under two Presidential administrations (Clinton & Bush), received the Attorney General's Special Service award (by Janet Reno), author of "Willfull Blindness" (a book about his prosecution of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman the leader of the first World Trade Center attack), poignantly turns down an in invitation by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration to participate on the "roundtable" Presidential Task Force on Detention Policy for enemy combatants.

Mr. McCarthy says it plainly, cites law, and gives logical and intelligent reasons for his refusal.

Now if only we had Congressmen this willing to stand up for their country.  If anyone questions the Tea Party movement, we'd honestly say that this man should be leading it.  His sentiments and reasoning are exactly why there is a Tea Party movement.  We are sick and tired of a government running afoul of the highest law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.  It is the very document that gives them their authority, and yet they disregard it, thinking their newer laws trump it.  No, they are governed by it.  The pigs have broken into the garden and are gorging themselves.  They need to be put back in the pens where the Federal government belongs.

The Federal government answers to the US Constitution and the States.  It is clearly written down and is clearly the LAW.  A law the Congress and Administration clearly ignore.  That is incompetence and blatantly tyrannical.

The US Constitution is this country's Highest Law, not the Congress, not the President, and most certainly not any foreign law.  It is what made this country great.  It is not a "living" or "breathing" document.  It's just as valuable now as when it was conceived, and conceived by much more intelligent men than are in our society now.  It is what brought the world out of the dark ages.  It is what made our modern world possible.  It was the liberty that document guarantees.

Andrew McCarthy knows this better than many people, as the law is his specialty, and representing the people was his duty.  Duty to the people, a concept the current Federal government has no grasp or concept of.

Here is Mr. McCarthy's reply to that invitation:

Andrew McCarthy's Letter to Attorney General Holder

May 1, 2009

By email (to the Counterterrorism Division) and by regular mail:
 
The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.  20530-0001
 
Dear Attorney General Holder:
 
This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening with current and former prosecutors involved in international terrorism cases.  An invitation was extended to me by trial lawyers from the Counterterrorism Section, who are members of the Task Force, which you are leading.
 
The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants -- or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.”  I admire the lawyers of the Counterterrorism Division, and I do not question their good faith.  Nevertheless, it is quite clear -- most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany -- that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States).  Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues.  I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people.  Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.

Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct.  Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.

Beyond that, as elucidated in my writing (including my proposal for a new national security court, which I understand the Task Force has perused), I believe alien enemy combatants should be detained at Guantanamo Bay (or a facility like it) until the conclusion of hostilities.  This national defense measure is deeply rooted in the venerable laws of war and was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 2004 Hamdi case.  Yet, as recently as Wednesday, you asserted that, in your considered judgment, such notions violate America’s “commitment to the rule of law.”  Indeed, you elaborated, “Nothing symbolizes our [administration’s] new course more than our decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay….  President Obama believes, and I strongly agree, that Guantanamo has come to represent a time and an approach that we want to put behind us: a disregard for our centuries-long respect for the rule of law[.]”  (Emphasis added.)

Given your policy of conducting ruinous criminal and ethics investigations of lawyers over the advice they offer the government, and your specific position that the wartime detention I would endorse is tantamount to a violation of law, it makes little sense for me to attend the Task Force meeting.  After all, my choice would be to remain silent or risk jeopardizing myself.

For what it may be worth, I will say this much.  For eight years, we have had a robust debate in the United States about how to handle alien terrorists captured during a defensive war authorized by Congress after nearly 3000 of our fellow Americans were annihilated.  Essentially, there have been two camps.  One calls for prosecution in the civilian criminal justice system, the strategy used throughout the 1990s.  The other calls for a military justice approach of combatant detention and war-crimes prosecutions by military commission.  Because each theory has its downsides, many commentators, myself included, have proposed a third way: a hybrid system, designed for the realities of modern international terrorism—a new system that would address the needs to protect our classified defense secrets and to assure Americans, as well as our allies, that we are detaining the right people.

There are differences in these various proposals.  But their proponents, and adherents to both the military and civilian justice approaches, have all agreed on at least one thing:  Foreign terrorists trained to execute mass-murder attacks cannot simply be released while the war ensues and Americans are still being targeted.  We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans.  Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.

The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight.  Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year.  The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried.  Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy.  It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance.  I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees.  According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training.  Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from theUnited States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness.  But I can decline to participate in the charade.

Finally, let me repeat that I respect and admire the dedication of Justice Department lawyers, whom I have tirelessly defended since I retired in 2003 as a chief assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.  It was a unique honor to serve for nearly twenty years as a federal prosecutor, under administrations of both parties.  It was as proud a day as I have ever had when the trial team I led was awarded the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award in 1996, after we secured the convictions of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and his underlings for waging a terrorist war against the United States.  I particularly appreciated receiving the award from Attorney General Reno—as I recounted in Willful Blindness, my book about the case, without her steadfastness against opposition from short-sighted government officials who wanted to release him, the “blind sheikh” would never have been indicted, much less convicted and so deservedly sentenced to life-imprisonment.  In any event, I’ve always believed defending our nation is a duty of citizenship, not ideology.  Thus, my conservative political views aside, I’ve made myself available to liberal and conservative groups, to Democrats and Republicans, who’ve thought tapping my experience would be beneficial.  It pains me to decline your invitation, but the attendant circumstances leave no other option.

                                                                                    Very truly yours,

                                                                                    /S/      

                                                                                    Andrew C. McCarthy
cc:        Sylvia T. Kaser and John DePue
National Security Division, Counterterrorism Section

Way to go Andy!  You are a true American, not a Republican, not a Democrat, just a loyal American with honor and integrity.

I have learned early on in my life, that those of the past, and many of those that have lived longer than me can teach important lessons in life.  Experience and history is the worlds best teacher of what works and what does not.  Unfortunately, most of society, in its self-centered arrogance, tends to ignore history thinking they know better.  The fact that history has shown this to be a mistake over and over has no effect, because the arrogance of the current society makes them think they are special.  Call it culture, call it technology, call it so-called "enlightenment" it almost always ends up backfiring with their society just another part of history that hopefully the next will finally learn from.

I have assembled together a series of good and poignant quotations of those of the present and the past to best illustrate what everyone could use to better warn them, better live their life, better govern, and even enjoy a good laugh.

You may have noticed it has been a long time since I wrote an article here.  It's simply because I have been working long and hard on this one.  This one may not be Pulitzer material (thank God!), but it's something I feel good about writing, and I hope at least someone reading it can find help, advice, assistance, solace, comfort, or just simple knowledgeable enlightenment about the world around them.

All of those I quote here have some form of wisdom we can learn from.  Not all of them are benevolent, not all of them are someone I'd trust to be alone with my children (if I had any), and some may make my blood boil, however, they are experts in their field, some terrifyingly so.  Most, however, are people I would invite to dinner and would be quite comfortable to have around children.  These quotes fall into three categories, the wise, the ridiculous, and the ironic.  You'll soon see what I mean.

Also remember, wisdom can come from quotes of those far from being wise, and hence the quote becomes ironic or even ridiculous to give us wisdom.

I will go topic by topic, in what I think are important issues of current times, and what we can learn from these wise, and not so wise, people about them.

Let's get started.

Government Bailouts and New American Socialism

• "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." -- Thomas Jefferson (one of the founders of the Democrat Party and our Nation)
• "But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." -- John Adams (One of the founders of our Nation and second President)
• "In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams
• "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower (First Supreme Allied Commander Europe WWII and 34th President, Republican)
• "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." -- John F. Kennedy (35th President, Democrat)
• "That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise." -- Abraham Lincoln (16th President, Republican)
  
• "The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one." -- Adolf Hitler (Charismatic and articulate political orator, German Chancellor, called by those that heard him speak "the Saviour of Germany", and responsible for the murder of millions in WWII)
• "Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." -- George Orwell (Author)
• "How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin." -- Ronald Reagan (Actor and 40th President)
• "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away." -- Ronald Reagan
• "The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." -- Ronald Reagan
  
• "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -- Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemins, Author)
• "Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself." -- Thomas Jefferson
  
• "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." -- C.S. Lewis (Author)
• "Never spend your money before you have it." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "My Uncle was an American; but he was one of the lucky ones.  He managed to escape in a balloon during the Jimmy Carter Presidency." -- Hillary Flammond ("Top Secret" movie)
• "Already there are insidious influences working termite-like to destroy this basic principle of true democracy." -- David O. McKay
  

• "Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
• "All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." -- Sir Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister during WWII)
• "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -- Martin Luther King Jr. (Civil Rights Leader)
• "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." -- Ronald Reagan
  
• "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison (American Founding Father and 4th President, Democrat)
  
• "A lie told often enough becomes the truth." -- Vladimir Lenin (First Soviet Premiere, and communist revolutionary)
• "To be turned from one's course by men's opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold an office." -- Quintas Fabius Maximus (Roman General)
• "What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler
• "But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." -- John Adams
• "I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy
• "I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves." -- Ronald Reagan
• "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress." -- Mark Twain
  

Media and the So-called "Fairness Doctrine"

• "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." -- Harry S. Truman (33rd President, Democrat)
• "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." -- Thomas Jefferson
  

Religion, Atheism, and Government

• "A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." -- C.S. Lewis (Author)
• "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other." -- John Adams
• "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality." -- Carl Sagan
  
• "Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book..." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
• "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born." -- Ronald Reagan
• "A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril." -- Sir Winston Churchill
• "Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
• "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." -- Carl Sagan
• "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.  He hath loosed the fatefull lightnight of his terrible, swift sword; His ruth is marching on.  He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgement seat.  Oh be swift, my soul, to answer him; be jubilant my feet!  Our God is marching on.  In the beauty of the lillies, Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigured you and me.  As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free, while God is marching on.  Glory, glory, hallelujah!  Glory, glory hallelujah!  Glory, glory, hallelujah!  His truth is marching on." -- Julia Ward Howe

Education and Intellectuals

• "An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
• "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom." -- John Adams
• "Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement." -- C.S. Lewis
• "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all." -- John F. Kennedy
• "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain
• "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." -- George Washington (Revolutionary War General, First President)
• "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." -- Sir Winston Churchill
• "The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane." -- Nikola Tesla
• "Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain." -- John F. Kennedy
• "Congratulations, there is now a level zero." -- Master Shifu (Kung Fu Panda)
• On European Socialism... "I'm not European.  I don't plan on being European.  So who gives a crap if they're socialists?  They could be fascist anarchists, and it still doesn't change the fact that I don't own a car." -- Ferris Beuller
  

• "The most important work you and I will ever do will be within the walls of our own homes." -- Harold B. Lee
• "Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
• "I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." -- Gilda Radner
• "The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children." -- King Edward VIII
• "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby
• "If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you'll be going, 'you know, we're alright. We are dang near royalty.'" -- Jeff Foxworthy
• "I asked for a car, I got a computer.  How's that for being born under a bad sign?" -- Ferris Beuller
  

• "Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway." -- John Wayne
• "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
• "I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." -- Patrick Henry
• "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." -- Alexander Hamilton
• "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." -- Sir Winston Churchill
• "Americans never quit" -- Douglas MacArthur
• "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." -- George Orwell
  
• "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." -- Ronald Reagan
• "Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you." -- Harry S. Truman
• "In war there is no substitute for victory. " -- Douglas MacArthur
• "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state." -- Thomas Jefferson
• "God gave us the gift of life. It is the most precious gift ever. To be unarmed is to be helpless to protect that gift; that is outright irresponsible." -- Ted Nugent
• "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell
• "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!  America!  America!  God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.  Oh, beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress a throughfare of freedom beat across the wilderness!  America!  America!  God mend thine every flaw, confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.  Oh, beautiful for heros proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life!  America!  America!  May God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness, and every gain divine.  Oh, beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!  America!  America!  God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotrherhood from sea to shining sea." -- Katherine Lee Bates
• "Everyone has this most precious of all life's endowments-the gift of free agency -- man's inherited and inalienable right." -- David O. McKay
• "We have peace in our time" -- Neville Chamberlain (shortly before World War II broke out).  Ask him how well appeasement foreign policy went.
  

Environmentalism and So-called "Global Warming"

• "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." -- Mark Twain
• "Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense." -- Carl Sagan
• "Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." -- Nikola Tesla
• "The evidence in support of these predictions [of global cooling] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it." -- Newsweek 1975
• "The debate is over" -- Albert Gore Jr. (There never was a debate, just a consensus of 2500 scientists in need of government funding, when 37500 other scientists with contrary opinions and findings offered to debate, the 2500 refused.)
• "One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it." -- Master Oogway (Kung Fu Panda)
• "The greatest loser in any argument is the one who's argument is so weak, that their only response is to attempt silence the opposition." -- SuperSparky

Believe it or not, I had to really shorten this list.  With wisdom, comes volumes of understanding and in just a few words.  Wisdom cuts to the bone.  It says it like it is and is not politically correct.  I found the wisdom of some, who'd you never expect, be the most profound.

We cannot forget the past if we hope to survive the future.  Remember, "Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." -- John Wayne