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!SCHOLAR ISLAND |
Government
"No man ever saw a government, I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States."
Woodrow Wilson
"Fear is the foundation of most governments."
-John Adams
"The vast growth of the social life, steadily encroaching on both private and public life, has produced the eerie phenomenon of mass society, which rules everybody anonymously, just as bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism."
Mary McCarthy
New Yorker, Oct 18,1958
"So long as government is viewed as an agency through which virtue and happiness for the individual may be attained, so long as governments are viewed as causes rather than effects, so long as individuals believe that self-responsibility may be escaped through retreat to the collective ethic, power will be rampant in our society. As the state grows more and more powerful, the individual citizen will tend to grow weaker and weaker."
George C. Roche III
Power
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth."
C.S. Lewis 1948
"The authorities increase the size of their texts of laws. They pile up backbreaking burdens and lay them on other men's shoulders."
Jesus Christ, Matt 23
"As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions....There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider's web, and if they materialized as rubber, trams, buses, trains and even people would all lost the ability to move, and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city. They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence.
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Cancer Ward
"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."
Leo Tolstoy
"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government, they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten, that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of an advance auction of the sale of stolen goods."
-H.L. Mencken
"The State, it cannot too often be repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing, which it does not take from somebody."
Henry George
"If we are to recover social harmony and virtue, if we are to build back into society the virtues that made it work for us, it is vital that we reduce the power and scope of the state."
Matt Ridley
The origins of Virtue
"the more corrupt the state, the more laws."
Tacitus
"One of the greatest delusions in the world is that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation."
Thomas B. Reed (1886)
"Where society is most primitive it is most democratic."
Plato "Republic"
"There are two governments in the United States today. One is visible. The other is invisible."
Thomas B. Ross
"Did the mass of men know the actual selfishness and injustice of their rulers, not a government would stand a year. The world would formant with revolution."
Theodore Parker
"We have no government armed with power which is capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, it is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."
John Adams
"We have staked our future on the ability of each of us to govern according to the Ten Commandments of God."
James Madison
"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent."
H.L. Mencken
"Let it be known that you seriously hold a tabooed belief, and you may be perfectly sure of being treated with a cruelty less brutal but more refined than hunting you like a wolf."
Charles Pierce
The Fixation of Belief
Collected Papers Harvard Univ Press Cambridge 19344
"What I fear is a government of experts."
Woodrow Wilson 1912
"Is anyone wiser and better suited to govern than an old Mother, who has learnt through motherhood and running a household both how to rule and how to administrate? Our foregathers had such a veneration for the wisdom of older women that they believed them to possess supernatural knowledge."
August Strindberg 1885
"I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing."
Thomas Jefferson 1799
"The originative part of America, the part of America that makes new enterprises, that part into which the ambitious and gifted workingman makes his way up, the class that saves, that plans, that organizes, that presently spreads its enterprises until they have national scope and character, that middle class is being more and more squeezed out by the processes which we have been taught to call prosperity."
Woodrow Wilson 1912
"To be ruled is to be kept an eye on, inspected, spied on, regulated, indoctrinated, sermonized, listed and checked-off, estimated, appraised, censored, ordered about, by creatures without knowledge and without virtues. To be ruled is, at every operation, transaction, movement, to be flogged, registered, counted, pried, stamped, surveyed, assessed, licensed, permitted, authorized, apostolised, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected. It is, on the pretext of public utility and in the name of the common good, to be put under contribution, exercised, held to ransom, exploited, monopolized, concussed, pressured, mystified, robbed; then at the least resistance and at the first hint of complaint, repressed, vilified, vexed, hunted, exasperated, knocked-down, disarmed, garroted, imprisoned, shot, grape-shot, judged, condemned, deported, sacrificed, sold, tricked; and to finish off with hoaxed, calumniated, dishonored, Such is government! And to think that there are democrats among us who think there's some good in government!"
Victor Hugo
"The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun."
Buckminister Fuller
"I have never met anyone who believed in democracy. I have met many who prefer it to any other form of government and who are willing to die for it. I have met many who are willing to abide by majority opinion, but I have never met anyone who believed in mass judgment. That is what democracy is."
Louis Izer
'Those who take the most from the table teach contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry of wonderful Times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss call ruling difficult for ordinary folk."
Bertolt Brecht
"If the U.S. government were an individual, no one would have anything to do with him."
Jim Marrs
Alien Agenda
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the ease which the many are governed by the few."
David Hume
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
Voltaire
"The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite if we may judge from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned with it."
Voltaire
"Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the governments purposes are beneficent."
Brandeis (Supreme Court Justice)
"No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest: yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades-that of government."
Socrates
Aristocracy rule of the best
Timocracy rule of the honorable
Oligarchy rule of the few
Plutocracy rule of the rich
Democracy rule of the people
Tyranny rule of the Despot
Cryptocracy secret rule
Bureacracy rule by no one
Anarchy rule by no one
Mediocracy rule by the mediocre
Monarchy rule by the King
Kakocracy rule by criminals...or the worst
"In the main it will be found that a power over a mans salary is a power over his will."
Alexander Hamilton
"Society covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained form acting. Such a power does not destroy, but prevents existence; it does no tyrannize but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
James Madison 1822
"From the conclusion of this (revolutionary) war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war will remain on us long, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."
Thomas Jefferson
"Nowhere do citizens appear so insignificant as in a democratic nation."
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America
"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."
Robert H. Jackson
U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1950
"Our "inalienable rights are being systematically alienated. Never has an American government been so busy interfering with the private lives of its citizens, subjecting them to mandatory blood, urine, lie-detector tests. Yet the war on drugs has nothing at all to do with drugs. It is part of an all-out war on the American people by a government interested only in control."
Gore Vidal
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
"Then years after my coronation, I, the Beloved of the Gods, began to preach the Dharma to my people. Since then, I have worked to nourish and spread the Dharma among the people. Thus all beings in all religions have gained happiness and well-being. As King, I have endeavored to prevent injury to living creatures and have given up the large numbers of hunters, fishermen, and hunts that other rulers have had. If anyone was intemperate in taking the life of living creatures, he has now, insofar as he is able, given up such intemperance. This men are obedient to their fathers and mothers and teachers, and both in this world and the next, they will be able to live along with all others in happiness and well-being."
King Asoka
268 B.C.
"Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands Remember all men would be tyrants if they could."
Abigail Adams
(a letter to her husband helping to draw up the laws at the Continental congress.)
"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called."
John Stuart Mill
"Government is not a substitute for people, but simply the instrument through which they act. And if the individual fails to do his duty as a citizen, government becomes a very deadly instrument indeed."
Bernard Baruch
"Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference."
Franklin D Roosevelt
"The three cardinal virtues of government are: To simulate affection, to express honeyed sentiments, and to treat ones inferiors as equals.
The five allurements are: Presents of chariots and rich robes; to tempt the eye rich food and banquets, to tempt the palate; musical maidens, to tempt the ear; fine houses and beautiful women, to tempt the instinct of luxury; and the presence of the Emperor at the table of the foreign ruler, to tempt his pride."
Empress of China
Tzu-his
"Theres never been a good government."
Emma Goldman
:"Believing that he had come from the gods to be a governor and reconciler of the universe, and using force of arms against those whom he did not bring together by the light of reason, he harnessed all resources to one and the same end, mixing as it were in a living-cup the lives, manners, marriages and customs of men. He ordered them all to regard the inhabited earth (oikoumene) as their father land and his armed forces as their stronghold and defense."
Alexander the Great
"So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable."
Aldous Huxley
"The mega state that this century built is bankrupt, morally as well as financially, it has not delivered. But its successor cannot be small government (as the so-called Conservatives want). There are far too many risks domestically and internationally. We need effective government-and that is what voters in all developed countries are actually clamoring for."
Peter Drucker
"Above all else, the government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content."
Justice Thurgood Marshall
"Sometimes I wonder if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on, or imbeciles who really mean it."
Mark Twain
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
Thomas Jefferson
"In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly thinking people who do remarkable little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted polices which impose heave costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also on lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many."
Thomas Sowell
The Vision of the Annointed
"There is a strange relationship between the system of a country and its people. In England, the people are hostile to a man but the system is compassionate. The very old, the very young, and the ill-equipped-to-live will always be looked after. In America everyone is friendly-almost doggie-like-but the system is ruthless. Once you can be pronounced unproductive, youve had it."
Quentin Crisp
Resident Alien (Alyson Books 1996)
"Every man, when he comes to be sensible of his natural rights, and to feel his own importance, will consider himself as fully equal to any other person whatsoever."
Joseph Priestly (17f33-1804)
"The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime."
Stirner
The ego and His own
Land-Mine Legislation by Claire Wolfe (Loompanics 1997 Summer Supplement)
Let me run by you a brief list of items "the law" in America today. As you read, consider what all these have in common.
1. A national database of employed people.
2. 100 pages of new "health care crimes" for which the penalty is (among other things) seizure of assets from both doctors and patients.
3. Confiscation of assets from any American who establishes foreign citizenship.
4. The largest gun confiscation act in U.S. history-which is also an unconstitutional ex post facto law and the first law ever to remove peoples constitutional rights for committing a misdemeanor.
5. A law banning guns in ill-defined school zones; random roadblocks may be used for enforcement; gun-bearing residents could become federal criminals just be stepping outside their doors or getting into vehicles.
6. Increased funding for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, an agency infamous for its brutality, dishonesty and ineptitude.
7. A law enabling the executive branch to declare various groups "terrorist"-without stating any reason and without the possibility of appeal. Once a group has been so declared, its mailing and membership lists must be turned over to the government.
8. A law authorizing secret trials with secret evidence for certain classes of people.
9. A law requiring that all states begin issuing drivers licenses carrying Social Security numbers and "security features" (such as magnetically coded fingerprints and personal records) by October 1,2000. By October 1,2006, "Neither the Social Security Administration or the Passport Office or any other Federal agency or any State or local government agency may accept for any evidentiary purpose a State drivers license or identification document in a form other than (one issued with a verified Social Security number and security features)."
10. And my personal favorite-a national database, now being constructed, that will contain every exchange and observation that takes place in your doctors office. This includes records of your prescriptions, your hemorrhoids and your mental illness. It also includes-by law-any statements you make ("Doc, Im worried my kid may be on drugs," "Doc, Ive been so stressed out lately I feel about ready to go postal.") and any observations your doctor makes about your mental or physical condition, whether accurate or not, whether made with your knowledge or not. For the time being, there will be zero (count em zero) privacy safeguards on this data. But dont worry, your government will protect you with some undefined "privacy standards" in a few years.
All of the above items are the law of the land. Federal law. What else do they have in common? All of the above became law by being buried in larger bills. In many cases, they are hidden sneak attacks upon individual liberties that were neither debated on the floor of congress nor reported in the media. Well when I ask this question to audiences, I usually get the answer, "Theyre all unconstitutional."
True.
My favorite answer came from an eloquent college student who blurted, "They all SUUCK!"
Also true
But the saddest and most telling answer is: They were all the product of the 104th Congress. Every one of the horrors above was imposed upon you by the Congress of the Republican Revolutionthe Congress that pledged to "get government off your back."
All of the above became law by being buried in larger bills. In many cases, they are hidden sneak attacks upon individual liberties that were neither debated on the floor of Congress nor reported in the media.
For instance, three of the most horrific items (the health care database, asset confiscation for foreign residency and the 100 pages of health care crimes) were hidden in the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HR 3103) You didnt hear about them at the time because the media was too busy celebrating this "moderate, compromise" bill that "simply" insured that no American would ever lose insurance coverage due to a job change or pre-existing condition.
Your legislator may not have heard about them, either. Because he or she didnt care enough to do so.
The fact is, most legislators dont even read the laws they inflict upon the public. They read the title of the bill (which may be something like "The save the Sweet Widdle Babies from Gun Violence by Drooling Drug Fiends Act of 1984") They read summaries, which are often prepared by the very agencies or groups pushing the bill. And they vote according to various deals or pressures.
It also sometimes happens that the most horrible provisions are sneaked into bills during conference committee negotiations, after both House and Senate have voted on their separate version of the bills. The conference committee process is supposed simply to reconcile differences between two versions of a bill. But power brokers use it for purposes of their own, adding what they wish. Then members of the House and Senate vote on the final, unified version of the bill, often in a great rush, and often without even having the amended text available for review ..
(Land-Mine Legislation by Claire Wolfe .1997 Supplement.Loompanics Unlimited)
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Book: "The War Against Authority: From the Crisis of Legitimacy to a New Social Contract" by Nicholas N. Kittrie
Book: "The Book of Rule: How the World is Governed" by Kenneth Minogue et al.
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