On Liberty: Some Readings

 On Your Inheritance:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”--General George Washington, Address to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776

“They were men who had not learned the art of submission, nor had they been trained to the arts of war; our ‘astonishing success’ taught the enemies of liberty that undisciplined freemen are superior to veteran slaves. As I was then, I am now, the friend of the equal rights of men, of representative democracy, of republicanism, and the Declaration of Independence—the great charter of our national rights—and of course a friend to the indissoluble union of these states. I am the enemy of all foreign influence, for all foreign influence is the influence of tyranny. This is the only chosen spot of liberty—this the only republic on earth. These are my orders now, and will be my last orders to all my volunteers: look to your sentries. Live free or die—Death is not the worst of evils.”–Gen. John Stark, 1809

“Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”--Benjamin Franklin

"You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life. I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it. I have never had but one allegiance--I cannot divide it now. I have loved but one flag and I cannot share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for a league. Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. National I must remain, and in that way I like all other Americans can render the amplest service to the world. The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence. Leave her to march freely through the centuries to come as in the years that have gone. Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin."--Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, Aug. 12, 1919

“Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! Receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

"What the Covid-19 panic has revealed, and continues to reveal, is the managerial elite has no respect for things like the rule of law, individual liberty or any of the other foundation items of consensual government. To protect democracy, they will rig the election process. To keep us free they will strip us of our rights. In the name of inclusion and diversity they will exclude anyone who disagrees. What we are seeing is that the real plague on our society is the ruling class."-- The Z-Man

"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 from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."--The Declaration of Independence, 1776

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."--Ronald Reagan, 1964

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”--John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

"Look around you at the smoldering ruins of American society, and it’s clear that you owe our garbage Establishment nothing.

Not loyalty.

Not respect.

Not obedience.

Nothing.

It has failed you. And now it is dead to you.

Tear it all down.

Rip out its rotten foundations.

Burn the poisonous debris.

Rebuild it on a foundation of the Constitution."--Kurt Schlichter

"It's two words: Memories Pizza.
It was that moment that everything changed for me--not only the harassment, fake Yelp reviews and the death threats that forced them to temporarily close up shop--oh, that was bad enough, but the most powerful man on Earth bullying a couple of small town pizza owners from Indiana simply for expressing an opinion on a hypothetical asked of them by a reporter with a malicious agenda? That was when I snapped. Do you remember?
It's this that sent me to a place from which I'll never return. I literally don't care what Donald Trump does because nothing he can do is worse than what they've already done.
Donald Trump isn't the bully; he only insults and abuses people in power who have attacked him. They're the fucking bullies. The left, with their smears, their witch hunts, their slanders, their insults, their riots, their violence, and their weaponizing of the federal bureaucracy. There aren't any rules anymore because the left only applies them one way. And in doing so, they've left what once was a civil compact between the two parties in smoldering ruins. I have no personal investment in Donald Trump. He is a tool to punish the left and roll back their ill-gotten gains, no more and no less. If he succeeds even partially in those two things, then I'll consider his election a win. Further, I no longer have any investment in any particular political values, save one: The rules created by the left will be applied to the left as equally and punitively as they have applied them to the right. And when they beg for mercy, I'll begin to reconsider. Or maybe not. Because fuck these people. This new philosophy has freed me of more emotional angst that I can describe. Literally nothing the left says or does matters to me anymore. I don't care about their tantrums. I don't care about their accusations. I don't care if they say Trump is lying. I don't care if Trump is lying. They created this Frankenstein. They own it. I am free of all obligation. I will never play defense again. I will attack, attack, attack, attack using their own tactics against them until they learn their lesson. What I will not do is let them play my values against me ever again. I don't need to prove that I'm better than them. I already know it."--Warden, Open Blogger @ Ace of Spades

“Is life so dear, or peaceful so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”--Patrick Henry, Speech at the Virginia Convention

"What is this oozing behemoth, this fibrous tumor, this monster of power and expense hatched from the simple human desire for civic order? How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?"--P.J. O'Rourke

"A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."--John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

"A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box."--Frederick Douglass

"Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief."--Edmund Burke, 'Letter to a Member of the National Assembly' (1791)

“There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”--John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control.”–President John F. Kennedy

"For the principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature..."--Sir Wm. Blackstone, 1753

"Once upon a time we knew what to do. A British district officer, coming upon a scene of suttee, was told by the locals that in Hindu culture it was the custom to cremate a widow on her husband's funeral pyre. He replied that in British culture it was the custom to hang chaps who did that sort of thing."--Mark Steyn

“Timid men...prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”--Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."--Pres. Dwight D, Eisenhower

“A time-honored method of taking bribes is having them paid to a family member, usually in exchange for nominal or nonexistent services. It is comical to watch “reporters” pretend not to understand this.”–John Hindraker

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”--Samuel Adams, Article in the Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771

"Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."--George Orwell

"I judge the civilization of any community by simple tests. What is the degree of freedom possessed by the citizen or subject? Can he think, speak and act freely under well-established, well-known laws? Can he criticize the executive government? Can he sue the State if it has infringed his rights? Are there also great processes for changing the law to meet new conditions?"--Winston Churchill

"This irreconcilable conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state...Make no mistake about it, this is an evil force. Don’t be deceived because you are not hearing the sound of gunfire, because, even so, you are fighting for your lives."--Ronald Reagan, Your America To Be Free, 1957

"The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown."--Pres. Teddy Roosevelt, Trust-buster

"After all, Sir, we must submit to this idea, that the true principle of a republic is, that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."--Alexander Hamilton

"We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.”–Pres. Harry S. Truman

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”--Thomas Paine 

“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”--Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, April 2, 1790

"Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do."--P.J. O'Rourke

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”--Samuel Adams, Article in the Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771

"John F. Kennedy famously said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The line was no doubt written for him, but it captured the sentiment in favor of popular government at the time. Elections offer the public an opportunity to petition the political class for redress of grievances and if they are not satisfied with the results, get a new political class. Not only is peaceful revolution impossible, but minor reform is no longer possible. Election results are ignored by the political class, and now those election results may not even be legitimate. The Democratic Party had to rig their primary to install Biden as the nominee instead of Sanders. Now it appears they have rigged the general election to install Biden instead of Trump."--The Z-Man

 

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”--Thomas Paine, The Crisis, 1777

“Political freedom includes in it every other blessing. All the pleasures of riches, science, virtue, and even religion itself derive their value from liberty alone. No wonder therefore wise and prudent legislators have in all ages been held in such great veneration; and no wonder too those illustrious souls who have employed their pens and sacrificed their lives in defense of liberty have met with such universal applause. Their reputations, like some majestic river which enlarges and widens as it approaches its parent ocean, shall become greater and greater through every age and outlive the ruins of the world itself.”--Benjamin Rush to Catharine Macaulay, January 18, 1769

"Let me come at it this way. I love borders, the more the merrier -- town lines, county, state, and, of course, national. Borders symbolize one of the few remaining constraints on government: You don't like the grade school here in town? Move ten miles up the road. You don't want to pay Vermont sales tax? Drive over the river and shop in New Hampshire. Arianna Huffington huffs against "tax loopholes for fat cats," but I'd say the ability to rent a post-office box in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands is a "loophole" in one of the original 16th-century senses -- an aperture to let in light and fresh air. The fact that there's somewhere else to go to is the ultimate limitation on government. Borders give people choices -- and, to put it in a bumper sticker, "I'm Pro-Choice and I Vote with My Feet." When starry-eyed utopians speak of a "world without borders," you can pretty much guess what kind of a place the one-world one-party state would be, with tax rates starting at more than 50 percent, where they are in Sweden right now. That's why Justice O'Connor's indifference to jurisdictional integrity and partiality to foreigners is not just a kinky fetish but something philosophically incompatible with the job she's meant to be doing. If you wanted to construct the precise opposite of the U.S. Constitution, it would look an awful lot like "international law." The former is a document that limits the state's grip on the people, the latter is designed to ensure they can never wiggle free, no matter where they go."--Mark Steyn

“It is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free!”--Thomas Paine

"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."--Sen. Daniel Webster

“In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.”--Phyllis Wheatley, The Boston Post-Boy, 1774

"To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country."- Samuel Johnson

“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”--Benjamin Franklin, Maxims and Morals from Dr. Franklin, 1807

"The third guarantee of liberty is the Rule of Law. The idea that all are equal under the Law is deeply rooted in our democratic systems and nowhere else. Like democracy, it is a difficult, a fragile, and, sadly, an uncommon concept. The thought that no-one in the state can escape the law is, after all, a daring one. Governors and governed, groups and individuals, soldiers, policemen, and civilians, each must bow to a higher principle. This is not a thought which the powerful can easily accept. Those who hold sway in totalitarian states take good care that the Rule of Law does not challenge their authority."--Margaret Thatcher, 1979

"The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis."--Edmund Burke

"You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice...there would be a revolution before morning."--Pres. Andrew Jackson

"Never wound a snake; kill it."--Harriet Tubman

"Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth."--Ronald Reagan, 1964

"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power."--Pres. Andrew Jackson

“I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same from them.” – John Wayne

"Wealth is, for most people, the only honest and likely path to liberty. With money comes power over the world. Men are freed from drudgery, women from exploitation. Businesses can be started, homes built, communities formed, religions practiced, educations pursued. But liberals aren't very interested in such real and material freedoms. They have a more innocent -- not to say toddlerlike -- idea of freedom. Liberals want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words and to expose their private parts in art museums.:--P.J. O'Rourke

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."--Pres. Abraham Lincoln

"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."--PM Winston Churchill, 1941

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”--George Washington

“’Tis a Common Observation here that our Cause is the Cause of all Mankind; and that we are fighting for their Liberty in defending our own.”Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Samuel Cooper, 1777

“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. “–Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"To the German commander: Nuts! --From the American commander."--Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, on the Nazi demand for surrender, 1944

"We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers."--G.K. Chesterton

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control."--Dr. Theodore Dalrymple

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."--George Orwell, "1984"

"The question must be, Is the right to prevail? Are the great laws of righteousness once more to be fulfilled? And the answer from a strong and virile people must be, "Yes," whatever the cost."--President Teddy Roosevelt

 "Whatever the cost". "freemen or slaves...to conquer or die". This is your heritage of freedom, people. Possess it.

“We will vote to put this corrupt government cartel out of business. We will remove from our politics the special interests who have betrayed our workers, our borders, our freedoms, and our sovereign rights as a nation. We will end the politics of profit, we will end the rule of special interests, we will put a stop to the raiding of our country – and the disenfranchisement of our people. Our Independence Day is at hand, and it arrives, finally, in November. Join me in taking back our country, and creating a bright and glorious new dawn for our people. ”--Candidate Donald J. Trump, 2016, W.V.S.M.
--When Voting Still Mattered

Liberty Now, Liberty Forever!