Fire and Knowledge

For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I’m conservative. We disagree…But I don’t need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

—Rep. Bob Inglis, a conservative Republican who lost to a tea party candidate

A haunting quote:

Our new government is founded upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.

—Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America

As a nation we began by declaring “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it that all men are created equal except negroes, foreigners and Catholics. When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

—Abraham Lincoln

I really like this:

I am a FCSL. This is a small manifesto.

As a Fiscal Conservative and Social Liberal, you dislike heavy government. What really gets you going, however, is government waste. You would like to see people responsible for failed government projects and massive cost overruns fired – and not just politicians. Forcing people to have a stake in the success of what they do is necessary for government as much as it is for free enterprise.

You recognize that all problems cannot be solved simply with the hammer of free enterprise. Some things like Health Care do not conform well to “for profit” models if they are to deliver assistance to all. You believe it is government’s job is to protect the people through regulations that prevent excessiveness by corporations abusing their positions of power to the detriment of the people.

You strongly hold that government should not have to raise taxes to adjust to economic hardships. To this end, you would like the civil service to budget itself like a business instead of like pigs at a trough.

Socially, you believe strongly in the separation of state and religion. You believe in equal rights, are pro-choice when there is a choice to be made, and you support the idea of social safety nets that maintain the stability of society. You disagree with prohibition when it doesn’t work and strongly feel that decisions should be made logically and on the basis of facts, not emotions or faith.

We are centrists and we really would like the political extremists to stop shouting over us.

—comment on “I’m a registered republican, but the majority of my party is insane“

Perhaps your Congressmen should dig down into your own pouches and pay for whatever is needed; that would be one way to keep government down in size to its indispensable functions whatever they may be. If indeed there are any. I would be satisfied to have the Golden Rule be the only law; I see no need for any other, nor for any method of enforcing it.

But if you really believe your neighbors must have laws for their own good, why shouldn’t you pay for it? Comrades, I beg you—do not resort to compulsory taxation. There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

—Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), p. 303.

You have no talent for dishonesty, so your refuge must be ignorance and stubbornness.

—Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), p. 257.

The world’s poor do not resent the rich anywhere as much as the left-wing parties in the developed world imagine. What they resent is not having any pathway to get rich and join the flat world and cross that line into the middle class.

—Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat (2005), p. 384.

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

—Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), p. 85.