RELEVANT HISTORIC QUOTES

The following quotations, however historically accurate or attributable, have grown from an original core first kept to certify the spiritual commitment of the founders of our country. They have grown by concurring observation; and if they do not speak sufficiently to and for any time, I can't imagine who or what would.

Self Reliance 1841 (From Essays First Series)

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set naught at books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most, when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

I shouted out, "Who killed the Kennedys?" When after all, it was you and me.

[Only a people understanding and standing resolutely for representation, dissolve the risk to those who would deliver it.]

The problem with the world is that everyone thinks they can get something for nothing. That's what usury is all about. But once usury is permitted, everyone must become a usurer to keep up with everyone else. It's a problem with the system, not any one person or group of people. The only way to stop it is make a law against it.

It's actually nice to realize that all the evil in the world is caused primarily by the system, not any particular people (although there certainly are evil people). This way, one doesn't have to hate and blame anyone else for all the problems in the world. We just have to try to educate people.

Purported Justification of Usury

Another thing is that usury is morally wrong in that if I lend you three gold coins, you should only have to pay me back three gold coins, not four gold coins. Bankers will argue that there is a time value to money, which is why they charge interest, but this is false.

The creditor could easily use the debtor's "IOU three gold coins" as money worth three gold coins in a business transaction, so there is no loss to the creditor. The creditor charging four gold coins for lending three gold coins is really the same as the creditor taking one gold coin from the debtor.

ONE YEAR OF PERMANENT PROSPERITY

In the wake of a party platform which explicitly declared that if they were returned to power by the 1912 election the Democrats would not create a central bank, within the very first year of the Wilson presidency the people were betrayed by 1913's creation of the very thing they had voted down.

The dark history surrounding that event is well enough known; and yet it is not even necessary to know of it to understand the potentials, vulnerabilities and consequences of the issues at play. But because interest is even the only intrinsic process introduced by the imposed system, we know then that the very purpose of the private entities which were so carefully cloaked in the guise of federal offices was to multiply debt upon us for unlimited profit, come whatever may.

The purpose of the so called Federal Reserve System then was only that a currency subject to interest would require us to perpetually maintain a vital circulation by re-borrowing interest and principal as ever escalating debt. Thus even by reducing availability of the perpetual stream of credit which is necessary to perpetually replenish the circulation, the pretended monetary system was inadvertently given the further power to impose immediate collapse by deflation.

The so called Federal Reserve could withhold credit or make credit unaffordably expensive to deflate the circulation. So by this ready, facile power of deflation, the parasitic entity could take direct possession of vast indebted assets, as debtors deprived of a vital circulation could only fail to service their debts.

As the day unfolded, because there are no other reasons or purposes, this would be how and why they would perpetrate the first so called Great Depression.

The private so called Federal Reserve Banks therefore took this place at the core of the nation with the very purpose of unearned profit by these means — the very license to which then is to lift all ethical restraints from their fundamental opposition to any and every society which tolerates usurers to issue their currency.

The very deceptive name of this enmical, parasitic entity then is a practically necessary part of an incredible, purposed deception; and the only possible real purpose of all this is as much as to cast the nation to the fate not only of illimitable unearned taking from it, but terminal taking by a currency which can only multiply said consequences to no effect whatever but eventual collapse.

The stock/"securities" market bubble of the 1920s of course was the same kind of thing we see today. It was only a false manipulation of ostensible value, accomplished by aggressive short term lending to debtors, drawing them in to the allure of buying and selling "securities" again and again at ever higher prices than the original purchase. If these private "banks" did not already own the subject property, an obvious and very evident purpose of course would be that this false manipulation of value could soon be terminated by withholding the vital further credit necessary to service the debts of the false bubble itself. The related circulation would thus deflate, and the "banks" would immediately become the real owners of the contested property.

Thus amidst the false bubble of an ostensible stock market boom comprised merely of liberally free, unjustifiable masses of credit, Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover promised permanent prosperity:

So said Herbert Hoover in his speech accepting the Republican nomination for President on August 12, 1928, a mere year before the private so called Federal Reserve Banks would cease the credit to sustain servicing their false bubble's debts, thus orchestrating their intended multiplication of debt into a mass take, a coup de grace at the imposed end of the first 15-year lifespan of their system of usury in an event we now merely call the First Great Depression. Thus with a terminology either intentionally cloaking cause or leaving cause to mystics, we strip this very man made, man caused, man sought, wholly artificial event of a name which would even allude to its necessarily iniquitous nature.

And so to mere unwarranted hopes of equally or even more hapless and inept supporters, Herbert Hoover registered one of the most preposterous, indelible lies of history. And so furthermore, as is the case for any political quest which ignores or does not solve the real causes of whatever issues face us, the rest of the country and world, however impertinent, would suffer with them, only to one day many years off, merely re-commence the march to inevitable failure in the end of a second inherently limited lifespan of the very same iniquitous system — a system now proven, and in fact even then proven, to have one consequence only.

Hoover spoke for most middle-class people. They only thought the American dream of unlimited plenty was close to fulfillment. The huge industrial machine which had begun building up during the Civil War had reached fantastic heights of mass production. Assembly lines poured out products by the millions, while advertising stimulated the consumer to buy them. From privy, ice-box, and buggy the country moved almost overnight into the New Era of bathrooms, electric refrigerators and automobiles. Washing machines, vacuum cleaners and telephones promised to make life easier and more convenient. Homemade amusements gave way to radio and the movies. American business and American salesmanship had in fact put the nation aboard an express train rushing toward permanent prosperity, but the permanence of the prosperity which indeed we would have achieved otherwise itself hinged on the sustainability and propriety of the monetary system to which it was subject.

Failing to understand the facade of a monetary system which had been imposed upon them, they never dreamed the inertia of their train could be stopped by withholding credit. They never dreamed that their interdependence in fulfilling the multiplying obligations imposed upon them itself meant that over night, the withholding of credit even in one critical sector would bring the rest down like a house of cards.

Nonetheless, a little careful study would have made all that so clear that a national union would have existed which not only understood and foresaw these probable calamities, but recognized how serious it indeed remains that we unite upon nothing less than absolute solution.

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

In Response to Johann Hari's Fine CommonDreams.Org Article, "Our Infantile Search for Heroic Leaders," Native Son Writes...

The need for a "leader", a "president, king, emperor, or prophet, messenger, or representative of a GOD" is very strong in human history — and a failed doctrine as history will attest.

In 1840 the newly formed "Republic of Texas" called all of the Plains Tribes "Chiefs" in Texas (mostly Comanche) together for a "peace conference". When they were gathered in the "Council House" the Texans changed the rules of negotiations and when the Comanches protested and desired to withdraw, the Texans opened up on them with newly acquired Colt Revolvers, killing more than thirty Comanche Chiefs who had arrived as agreed, unarmed. This began what history would later record as the most bloody period in the history of both the Texans and the Comanches. It also altered the Comanche leadership approach. From that day forward, no man was called a Chief by the Comanche. From that day forward ALL Comanches were chiefs.

They learned from the "Council House Massacre." They were successful, and in 1868 after forty eight additional years of bloody war, the US capitulated at the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek — they surrendered to the Comanche, in every way.

The Comanche were later defeated by the fact that they had allowed themselves to be confined on relatively small tracts of land (which later became even smaller, and then disappeared altogether), disarmed and dismounted.

They made the same mistake TWICE (a deadly formula when dealing with Americans / Christians / Civilized People), but they succeeded where no other tribes had, by realizing that there is no real need for leaders — only those who carry out the decisions of the majority, FOR the majority — something modern humanity if it ever learned, has abandoned for the present aberration in "leadership" which has led to destruction and disaster except for a few.

The USA never has been an "example for all to follow," but it could be — simply by learning from the mistakes of the past, and changing the mistaken behavior. It could be a refreshing change from history’s long accounting, if the present US administration were to become the negative example for all time — it’s up to us all. There may not be enough time left for any more mistakes like these.

From its beginning, the USA has always been under the control of "special interests." In the eighteenth century, it was slavery/agriculture, and the beginning of the industrial revolution; in the nineteenth century it was the railroad "tycoons" and industrial "robber barons." In the twentieth century, it was big oil and big business.

The American people in the twenty first century can either make the choice to be the "negative" or the "positive" example for history — by making very important and essential changes in the leadership technique — which would be an example of true power.

Or they can piss it all away and wait for Jesus to rescue them — from themselves.

I am one of the descendants of one of those Comanches present for the 1868 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty. I still do not have a "Chief." Nor do I need one.

We must become ourselves before someone else does.

We, the government of the United States of America, have decided to return the sovereignty of your minds and bodies to you, the citizens of this great republic. We know that there are many who will disagree with this decision, preferring that the government retain rights of ownership regarding the minds and persons of adult individuals. We are prepared to face the reality that those who disagree with the granting of various previously circumscribed personal freedoms will perhaps muster sufficient votes to defeat us at the ballot box. This does not concern us as much as does the usurpation of the most basic of personal rights by those elected to serve rather than to rule. We are convinced that the herd mentality enforced by the assumption unto ourselves of the preventative administration of those rights is not the plan of those who framed our constitution and, as sworn servants of that constitution, we resolve to cease the levying of criminal sanctions on the exercise of personal preferences in regards to victimless activities of all description. It is our devout hope and firm belief that there is no alternative to the non-obstruction of full mature adult choice in matters of personal discretion if the citizenry is to come to the full maturity appropriate to dealing with the very real problems that face us as a people. Thank you and God Bless America.

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

Here are the things that must be considered:

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know our garden.

It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.

This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel like they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.

Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off toward the middle of the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

See who is there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves!
For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lonely wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

An elder Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me... It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride and superiority. The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. This same fight is going on inside of you, and every other person too."

One child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

Grandfather replied, "The one I feed."

I am only one. I can not do everything, but I can do something. And because I can not do everything, I will not refuse to do the something I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."

The majority is rapidly becoming disenfranchised by a stampede of mortgage foreclosures and resultant crash of real estate equity; by fuel prices that compel independent truckers to abandon their rigs on the highway; by a shut tight job market and so forth. Businesses are closing. Construction has come to a halt. And all the disenfranchised are hamstrung by increasingly lunatic legislation and irrational and intrusive ordinances. If anyone in government were inclined to address these and a multitude of similarly bleak issues, they would have the support of the majority. Government of the status quo, by the status quo and for the status quo would yield to government of, by and for the people.

Went to see the captain, strangest I could find,
Laid my proposition down, laid it on the line.
I wont slave for beggars pay, likewise gold and jewels,
But I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools.

Ship of fools on a cruel sea, ship of fools sail away from me.
It was later than I thought when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools.

Saw your first ship sink and drown, from rockin of the boat,
And all that could not sink or swim was just left there to float.
I wont leave you drifting down, but woh it makes me wild,
With thirty years upon my head to have you call me child.

Ship of fools on a cruel sea, ship of fools sail away from me.
It was later than I thought when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools.

The bottles stand as empty, as they were filled before.
Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more.
Though I could not caution all, I still might warn a few:
Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.

Ship of fools on a cruel sea, ship of fools sail away from me.
It was later than I thought, when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools.

It was later than I thought when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools.

Lyrics by Robert Hunter — "we must become ourselves before someone else does"

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore.

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq , the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the 'America' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

The Biggest 'C' is Crisis!

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A Hell of a Mess, so here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence and common sense?

I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo?

We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm.

Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit [sic, "debt"], or solving the energy crisis or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening [or Google mathematically perfected economy™]. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough?

Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our President put in the water? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation's economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.

"The most amazing part of the discussion was the opinion that no wage inflation mitigated the asset inflation. I think this is the very cause of the current problem.

FED policy that exacerbates inflation while benefiting wall street will make the problem significantly worse.

I think anyone who doesn't understand this should visit a shopping mall.

In south west Florida in Naples, Sarasota and Tampa — the stores are having half price sales and the stores are still empty!

Sears is going to offer a 30% discount on Kenmore appliances and that still won't clear inventory.

How is it that economists of this stature don't seem to recognize that the bottom 60% (perhaps higher...I am guessing about this) of wage earners contribute significant amounts to GDP through their purchases and they are out of money?

My brother in law is selling a trailer/camper and has put an add in the paper. His phone is ringing off the hook from people who want it to have a place to live!"

Reader response to "The Big Picture" article, "Nobel Laurelates on the Economy," April 27, 2008

Patrice Hill in The Washington Times reports:

Quote: "Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy. Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry.

While farmers here and abroad generally are benefiting from the high prices, even they have been burned by a tidal wave of investors and speculators pouring into the futures markets for corn, wheat, rice and other commodities and who are driving up prices in a way that makes it difficult for farmers to run their businesses.

'Something is wrong,' said National Farmers Union President Tom Buis, adding that the CFTC's refusal to rein in speculators will force farmers and consumers to take their case to Congress.

'It may warrant congressional intervention,' he said. 'The public is all too aware of the recent credit crisis on Wall Street. We don't want a lack of oversight and regulation to lead to a similar crisis in rural America.'" End Quote.

Note to Tom Buis: You cannot stop crack-up boom behavior with price controls any more than you can stop a tsunami with a sand bar.

When you peel back the curtain on Oz, you discover that all the magic has been created through the illusion of inflation from utilizing the dollar as the world's reserve currency coupled with massive deficit spending on non-consumption, non-investment.

And like Oz, once the curtain has been pulled back and the reality exposed, the magic disappears.

Posted by: Winston Munn | Apr 27, 2008 12:24:03 PM, to "The Big Picture" article, "Nobel Laurelates on the Economy," April 27, 2008

FROM "Diving Dollar"; June 21, 2008

The dollar has once again collapsed. Get ready for the next dollar debacle and the coming rally in gold and silver which have just broken out. The elitists have lost all credibility. The would-be lords of the universe have told so many pathological lies that no one "in the know" believes anything emanating from the forked tongues of Buck-Busting, Bear-Bashing, Big-Ben Bernanke and Hanky Panky Paulson. If our Fed Head and Treasury Secretary had been characters in the Walt Disney movie entitled "Pinocchio," their noses would have quickly grown to lengths that could have been wrapped around the earth's equator several times. God would have had to reverse the earth's rotation to extricate them.

"When you believe in things that you don’t understand, and you suffer — superstition is the way."

The coward threatens when he is safe.

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

The first casualty when war comes is the truth.

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror.

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace.

Our enemies never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people; and neither do we.

Bush on the Couch — Deep Down He Knows

I have enough sympathy for anybody in that position that I wouldn’t say he’s mentally deranged: I feel sorry for him. I think he must know that he’s going to go down in history as the most incompetent president since Buchanan. He came to the White House knowing nothing about national and international policy and consequently relied on Washington veterans — who proved to be incompetent ideologues who got him, and the country, into very deep trouble. Now he’s in a hole, and I’m sure he doesn’t know what to do and has that hopeless, helpless feeling.

Bush on the Couch — The Vessel

I think Bush didn’t have a view of America's role in the world until after 9/11, and then it was provided to him by those around him in power. They had two big ideas: One was to depose Saddam and use Iraq as a base to pacify, in an imperial way, the Middle East, and to control its oil. The second big idea, carried over by the vice-president and the secretary of Defense, was that of the unitary presidency. It also fits in with a kind of messianic belief on the part of the president that he did have a great purpose in life even though he had up until that time not discovered that, and his great purpose was to destroy international terrorism and overthrow dictators and spread democracy.

I think he's not totally delusional. The escalation is the last gasp. He had to give it, in his own mind, one more try. The most interesting thing he said was about a year and a half ago: "This war will not be solved in my presidency." And that was his exit strategy, I think. He had concluded that he did not expect to achieve success.

He clings to a thought that in 20 or 25 years, history will maybe prove him right, and people will say he really knew what he was doing. But throughout all of this, he has seemed so blithe and casual about death and destruction. It would have kept me awake at night. I don't know how he does it. He must just turn it off.

Imagine.

Most people prefer to believe their leaders are just and fair even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which they live is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it.

To take action in the face of a corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker, but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

I offend a lot of sheep, and before it's over I will offend a lot more.

The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians.

"1984"

The process of deception has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary.

"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage — torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists."

A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague.

I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security — out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.

The only security for the American people today, or for any people, is to be found through the control of force rather than the use of force.

No man survives when freedom fails, the best men rot in filthy jails, and those who cry 'appease, appease' are hanged by those they tried to please.

Bush is so far away from his refugee loser roots that he just doesn't get what it is to be American. So he steals the one thing that every American is handed off the boat: a chance. When they take away your Social Security and overtime and tell you sleeper cells are sleeping under your staircase, you don't take a chance, you lose your chance, and the land of opportunity becomes a landscape of fear and suspicion, an armed madhouse.

You want to say that George Bush is an evil sonovabitch? I'd go further: he's UN-AMERICAN.

And that's why he lost the election. TWICE.

Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

Gradually by selective breeding the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost a different species. A revolt of plebs will become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.

The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy.... It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

Beware of the leader who bangs of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double edged sword. It emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.

When the drums of war have reached a fervor pitch, and the blood boils with hate and the mind is closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and do it gladly so.

How do I know? I know, for this is what I have done.

It is not we non-interventionists who are isolationists.

The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe... and who choose to use force overseas [purportedly] to promote democracy... a counterproductive approach that actually leads the U.S. to be more resented and more isolated in the world.

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm, but because of those who abide by the harm without doing anything.

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.

"Freedom is never an achieved state. Like electricity, we must keep generating it, or the lights go out. We now witness a fire sale of American liberty at the bargain basement price of the false promise of security. The America being designed this moment will not resemble the America we have been defending. The danger is not that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans will not realize he is already inside the castle walls."

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free, and never was free again.

The secret of happiness is freedom. And the secret of freedom is courage.

I am not blaming those who are resolved to rule, only those who show an even greater readiness to submit.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. Silence comforts the tormenter, never the tormented.

Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.

Scottish Revolution, Declaration of Arbroath — a reply to the excommunication of Robert the Bruce for recapturing Berwick, as sent to Pope John XXII on behalf of the community of the realm of Scotland, 1320 A.D.:

"It is not for glory or riches or honours that we fight, but only for liberty, which no good man will consent to lose but with his life."

"Patrick Henry did not say, 'Give me absolute safety or give me death.'"

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic laws on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one in a million is able to diagnose."

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders ["Federal Reserve" System and related "central banks"]. The accounts of the Federal Reserve system have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States."

Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, NY, 1953, p 167 and also in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Boston, 1968, p 479:

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

Non cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

Western democracy is a great idea. Someone should give it a go.

The Roots of Violence:

Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles.

"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."

From her book "(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents," in Utne Reader, 5-6/08, p. 40.

"The level of U.S. household debt has risen consistently over the course of the century, climbing from just 33.2 percent of disposable income in 1949 to 102.2 percent in 2000, and to 131.8 percent in 2005, making it the highest ever measured in our national history."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety by an endless series of hobgoblins."

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

"There's seldom been control of a new federal agency that wasn't sold by the most efficient fund-raising politicians to the wealthiest pressure groups within four years of its inception."

"The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."

John Swinton was called by his peers, "the Dean of his profession." He was asked in 1953 to give a toast before the New York Press Club:

There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone. The business of the Journalists is to destroy the truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

"Life is a daily IQ test. Regarding liberty, it seems that most people are failing the test. It is up to those of us who can see what is right to make sure we do not give up the fight."

"Tyranny is always better organized than freedom."

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

"Let us know and conform only to the fashions of eternity."

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful, but it is more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which we morally can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

"I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion."

"I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suited myself less. I feel the public demand an average man — average thoughts and manners — not originality, nor even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them."

"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

"By all kinds of traps and signboards, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers."

"We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten. What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and subtlest truth?"

"Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself- an hypaethral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect."

"Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing; as the Hindus made the world rest on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent, and had nothing to put under the serpent."

"Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue to be the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?"

"The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed."

"Let nothing come between you and the light."

"We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end."

"In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change or accident."

"As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down."

"America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant."

"Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infrahuman, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called. It is as if a thinker submitted himself to be rasped by the great gizzard of creation. Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves — sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but states, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering, of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever-glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely."

"They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty."

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws."

"As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom."

"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."

"When you're taking flak, you must be over the target."

"Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic."

First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

QUOTE OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN, OFTEN ATTRIBUTED TO WASHINGTON

"Government is not reason, and it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master: never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

"People who think of government as the institution to entrust with enough power to right all the world's wrongs seem to never consider that they must thereby give it enough power to do wrong to all the world's rights. In fact, they seem NEVER to consider what the founders always thought was obvious: that the 'good guys' will NOT always be in charge!"

"Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain."

"Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained."

"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your Honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poor house"

Moral Courage

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

GOVERNMENT IS MERELY A SERVANT

"The government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, or to decide who is a patriot and who is not. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them."

IN THE BEGINNING OF CHANGE

"In the beginning of change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

"Tell me please why this Patriot Act is being used for so many criminal investigations in this country, like petty drug cases, that have no connection with terrorism? If you give the government power, it will use that power; It will use all of that power and more."

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

"In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."

"No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result."

"The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom."

"Given the low level of competence among politicians, every American should become a libertarian. The government that governs least is certainly the best choice when fools, opportunists and grafters run it. When power is for sale, then the government power should be severely limited. When power is abused, then the less power the better."

We thought we were fighting Communism. But in the end it was all about who gets what.

"To the American people I bid a fond farewell. Guard your liberties. It is the trust of each generation to pass a free republic to the next. If I know you right, you will rouse yourself from slumber to ensure exactly that."

"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. The revelation of thought takes man out of servitude into freedom."

"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation."

MONEY

"When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket, and then that society vanishes in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?

Watch Money. Money is a barometer of a society's virtue.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing — when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that our society is doomed.

Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence."

INDEPENDENCE (ATLAS SHRUGGED)

"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment, and nothing can help you escape it — that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life — that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence."

WHEN EVIL WINS

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default — by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles.

"If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell."

CLOSED EYES OR MINDS

"If, in order to escape the responsibility of moral judgment, a man closes his eyes and mind, if he evades the facts of the issue and struggles not to know, he cannot be regarded as 'gray'; morally, he is as 'black' as they come."

SLAVERY

"The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave."

"Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel."

POLITICAL FREEDOM AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM

"Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries."--

The greatest threat to mankind and civilization

"The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it."

IS IT RIGHT?

Cowardice asks the question — is it safe? Expedience asks the question — is it politic? Vanity asks the question — is it popular? But conscience asks the question — is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.

ACHIEVING FREEDOM

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

DEMAGOGUES

"The spirit of Lincoln still lives; that spirit born of the teachings of the Nazarene, who promised mercy to the merciful, who lifted the lowly, strengthened the weak, ate with publicans, and made the captives free. In the light of this divine example, the doctrines of demagogues shiver in their chaff."

WHEN WE ALLOW FREEDOM TO RING

"This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

"And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

RIGHTEOUSNESS

"I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and non violent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land."

"Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live — men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization — because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake."

THE MISCONCEPTION OF "EXTREMISM"

"Was not Jesus an extremist for love? 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.'

Was not Amos an extremist for justice? 'Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.'

Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'

Was not Martin Luther an extremist? 'Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.'

Was not John Bunyan an extremist? 'I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.'

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.'

Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'

So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremist will we be.

Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice; or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill, three men were crucified. We must not forget that all three were crucified for the same crime — the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment."

WAR

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

We have guided missiles and misguided men.

WHAT WE WILL REMEMBER IN THE END

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience."

"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves."

•  Nor of course can the people be construed to have delegated anything which they do not or cannot certainly understand, or which has not been divulged in the fullest truth.

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."

"We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do; and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do."

THE WORDS OF CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL OF LUKE, CH 6 (KJ)

34  And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive [more than you have loaned], what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. [to take the multiplication of their debt]

35  But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again [hoping for no more than you have loaned]; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.

LEVITICUS 25 (KJ):

36  Take no usury or interest; and fear your God, that your brother may live at peace with you.

EZEKIEL 22 (KJ):

12  In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God.

13  Behold, therefore I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee.

14  Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I shall deal with thee? I the Lord have spoken it, and will do it.

15  And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and disperse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthiness out of thee.

EZEKIEL 22 (ALTERNATE TRANSLATION):

12  In you, men accept bribes to shed blood. You take usury, and make unjust gain from your neighbors by extortion. You have forgotten me.

13  I will surely strike my hands together, disapproving the unjust gain you have made and the blood you have shed in the midst of it.

14  Will your courage endure or your hands be strong in the day I deal with you?

EZEKIEL 18 (KJ):

1  The word of the Lord came unto me again, saying,

2  What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge?

3  As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.

4  Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

5  But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right,

7  And hath not oppressed any, but hath restored to the debtor his pledge, hath spoiled none by violence, hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment;

8  He that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath executed true judgment between man and man,

9  Hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God.

PSALM 15 (KJ):

1  LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill?

5  He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.

"[non-observant] Jews forbade the practice of usury within their own community, while they permitted it to be practiced against outsiders. This is one of the many instances of their having altered the revelation with which they had been favored, in open rebellion against God.

The Bible is a record of their rebellion, written by their own hand."

TRUE JUDAISM VERSUS ZIONISM

True Torah Jews is a non-profit organization formed by religious Orthodox Jews dedicated to informing the world and the American public and politicians in particular, that the idealogy of Zionism is in total opposition to the teachings of traditional Judaism.

•  CLICK HERE for jewsagainstzionism.com.

In economics, the majority are always wrong. The study of money, above all other fields, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

"The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. Those who have been once intoxicated with power and have derived any kind of emolument from it can never willingly abandon it. All that it takes for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing."

The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly...it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

"Power kills; absolute power kills absolutely."

"Power draws the corrupted; absolute power would draw the absolutely corrupted."

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"Political power is everywhere the most serious threat to liberty. The more power politicians have, and the more able they are to disregard constitutional rules, the more serious the threat."

"Give government the weapons to fight your enemy and it will use them against you. The coercive power of government is always a beacon to those who want to dominate others — summoning the worst dregs of society to Washington to use that power to impose their will upon others."

"The United States was supposed to have a limited government because the founders knew governmental power attracts swarms of crooks, demagogues and despots as surely as horse manure attracts swarms of horse flies. Overload the police with victimless crimes and other minutiae, and eventually only creeps and bullies remain cops."

"No matter who you are or what you believe, you have to understand that some day the worst control-freaks among your bitterest enemies will control the federal government, and you better have restored effective, working constitutional limitations on that government before that time arrives. A moderate is either someone who has no moral code of his own, or if he does, then he's someone who doesn't have the guts to take sides between good and evil."

"Do we really think that a government-dominated education is going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?"

"A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it."

"Anyone who needs to be persuaded to be free, doesn't deserve to be."

Now the motto of the state of New Hampshire:

"Live free or die."

Letter to Thomas Jefferson

All the perplexities, confusions and distresses in America arise not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.

TRUST NO MAN LIVING WITH POWER TO ENDANGER THE PUBLIC LIBERTY

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power.

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."

THE NATURE OF ALL RIGHTS

You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.

PROPERTY

The moment the idea is admitted into society that Property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

"Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist."

Author David McCullough on JOHN ADAMS

Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough, in his exemplary and obligatory work, "John Adams" says:

The American Revolution was made by British subjects, individual men and women who, by our modern sense of proportions, were amazingly few in number. The war they fought was the most important in our history, and as too few today seem to understand, it very quickly became a world war. But the revolution began well before the war. As John Adams famously observed, 'The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.' And it changed the world.

There was no American nation, no army at the start, no sweeping popular support for rebellion, nor much promise of success. No rebelling people had ever broken free from the grip of colonial empire, and those we call patriots were also clearly traitors to the King. And so, as we must never forget, when they pledged 'their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor,' it was not in a manner of speaking.

We call them Founding Fathers, in tribute, but tend to see them as distant and a bit unreal, like figures in a costume pageant. Yet very real they were, real as all that stirred their 'hearts and minds,' and it has meaning in our time as never before.

With change accelerating all around, more and more we need understanding and appreciation of those principles upon which the republic was founded. What were those 'self-evident' truths that so many risked all for, fought for, suffered and died for? What was the source of their courage? Who were those people? I don't think we can ever know enough about them.

Nature of the Republic (from David McCullough's "John Adams")

If [the] empire of superstition and hypocrisy would be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and all morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other's self love.

Benjamin Rush to John Adams (from David McCullough's "John Adams")

I rejoice in the correspondence which has taken place between you and your old friend Mr. Jefferson. I consider you and him as the North and South Poles of the American Revolution. Some talked, some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all....

To Benjamin Rush (from David McCullough's "John Adams")

Dear Sir,

It seemed to me that you and I ought not to die without saying goodbye, or bidding each other adieu. Pray how do you do? How does that excellent lady, Mrs. R?....

Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principles, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?

Citizenship

Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.

Appreciation of Freedom

"Oh, posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man... The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.

WHO SHOULD BE FREE

"The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought."

QUESTION POSED, INCITING THE BOSTON TEA PARTY

"Now what liberty can there be where property is taken without consent?"

Speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776

"If you love [the promise of dispossessed] wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

The whole history of progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning, they want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

The Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar Constitution followed the Reichstag fire.

"It is well enough that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

"There is no safe political refuge for those afraid to take responsibility for their own lives."

"Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington — regardless of who wins the Presidency."

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."

SCOPE OF THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY

"It is common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind; and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own."

UNCONFIRMED

"They who can forfeit liberty for ostensible safety deserve neither and shall lose both. Make yourself sheep, and the wolves will eat you."

War and Peace

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

USURY WAS THE REAL CAUSE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

•  Having usurped British Parliament, "the Bank of England" required the American colonists to adopt a currency subject to as much as 30 percent annual interest. As interest is the rate at which debt is multiplied, the greater the rate of interest, the faster the dispossession by artificially multiplied indebtedness. Franklin thus later explained the substantial effects and principal cause of the American Revolution to a friend in France:

"We would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that they took from us our money, which created great unemployment and dissatisfaction. Within a year, the poor houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets everywhere."

When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government.

COMMON SENSE IS THE DIFFERENCE MAKER PRIOR TO THE ATTACK ON THE HESSIAN (ROTHSCHILD) OUTPOST AT TRENTON

•  Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, published The American Crisis on December 19, 1776, just days before Washington crossed the Delaware at McKonkey's Ferry, Pennsylvania to attack the Hessian outpost at Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas day, 1776. The well known words of The American Crisis encouraged Washington's troops, who had suffered a stinging series of defeats, and were largely otherwise inclined to leave the revolutionary service when their legal commitments to serve in the revolutionary militia expired on December 31:

"These are times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

"O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!"

REASON AND IGNORANCE

"Reason obeys itself; Ignorance submits to what is dictated to it."

"In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me."

"When they took the 4th amendment away, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the 6th amendment away, I was quiet because I had never been arrested. When they took the 2nd amendment away, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken away the 1st amendment, and all I can do is be quiet."

IGNORANCE AND ERROR

"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."

Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800. Inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial.

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

CONSEQUENCES OF USURY

If the American people ever allow banks to issue their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation [by having to maintain a vital circulation by perpetually re-borrowing principal and interest as subsequent sums of debt, increased perpetually so much as periodic interest], the banks and [bank owned] corporations which will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

Letter to James Madison, Paris, Dec. 20, 1787

"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on Earth... and what no just government should refuse."

FREE GOVERNMENT

"Free government is founded in jealousy, not confidence. It is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind those we are obliged to trust with power. In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Material Abundance Without Character

"Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction."

PREMISES OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers [only] from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right [and even the obligation] of the people to alter or to abolish it.

PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT

"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all."

PRINCIPLES ESSENTIAL TO THE PERPETUATION OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

"Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid or the croakings of the wealthy against the ascendancy of the people. The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our Constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people."

OBLIGATION OF THE CITIZEN TO MASTER THE ISSUES

A democracy cannot be ignorant and free.

MORAL OBLIGATIONS AND LIMITATIONS OF MAJORITY RULE